Vocal

DaveJames · February 2023

Any suggestions for a vocal device for private home recording, pitch correction, harmonies, etc, thanks.

victorludorum · February 2023

Please don't be insulted, as I'm not trying to be flippant at all here, but is 'practice' not working? If you've been practising enough and you're still miles off, then maybe singing is not for you. I know that sometimes we don't have the luxury of going out and finding someone good to sing things for us, but if the songs are your own and you can sing them pretty well, then work on your own voice and try and avoid these toys, unless you're planning to use them for specific effects, à la Cher et al

octatonic · February 2023

I disagree victor.
It is normal to use pitch correction in the edit.
It doesn’t make a great performance.
It can save an otherwise great performance with a couple of fixable issues.

They aren’t ‘toys’.

They are tools.

It is weird for a producer to not have access to them.
Sure, some don’t. Steve Albini comes to mind.

He doesn’t even use a DAW though, just tape.

But he is Steve Albini and I’m not.
I need to be able to do the edit because who has time to do 1000 different takes?

Every producer engineer I know (out of hundreds) has them and uses them to varying degrees.

OP, there is nothing I recommend as external hardware.
I use Melodyne and Autotune for offline editing of performances.

Bezzer · February 2023

"Please don't be insulted but you're ****" LOL ...

@octatonic is absolutely right, everyone uses it, it is a tool. I use it all the time with singers of all levels. I would much rather correct one dodgy note in an amazing take then record 100s more until it's all absolutely perfect driving the life and sparks out of it in the process. It won't make a bad singer sound good ... just in tune ... ish ... there are limits.

Also find it really useful for "sketching out harmony lines" ... duplicating the lead vocal and playing with it to build an interesting, non-parallel harmony. Very useful having this as a guide recording it until it is burned into the brain.

External hardware, there are a few vocal processing units but they are expensive and don't give results as good as software ... they are useful live (I have a little boss unit in my trio where I'm the only singer to thicken the choruses with a quiet harmony). Software wise I've always liked Melodyne ... I'm coming round to variaudio built into Cubase too, its just as powerful and built into my DAW!

Grangousier · February 2023

Why do people insist on using so-called "reverb plug-ins"? If you haven't got a really big room to record in you might as well give up.

octatonic · February 2023

Bezzer said:

"Please don't be insulted but you're ****" LOL ...

@octatonic is absolutely right, everyone uses it, it is a tool. I use it all the time with singers of all levels. I would much rather correct one dodgy note in an amazing take then record 100s more until it's all absolutely perfect driving the life and sparks out of it in the process. It won't make a bad singer sound good ... just in tune ... ish ... there are limits.

Also find it really useful for "sketching out harmony lines" ... duplicating the lead vocal and playing with it to build an interesting, non-parallel harmony. Very useful having this as a guide recording it until it is burned into the brain.

External hardware, there are a few vocal processing units but they are expensive and don't give results as good as software ... they are useful live (I have a little boss unit in my trio where I'm the only singer to thicken the choruses with a quiet harmony). Software wise I've always liked Melodyne ... I'm coming round to variaudio built into Cubase too, its just as powerful and built into my DAW!

100%.

Melodyne is a great tool for showing singers precisely where they are out of tune too.
You can drill down quite deep and show elements of the waveform that are nailing the performance but not the pitch and they can have another go at it.

Great for guitar, piano etc too.

digitalscream · February 2023

For what it's worth...when I recorded my band's first album, we had a great singer - I mean truly great - but there were a couple of pitchy bits that we didn't notice at the time of recording, and we simply couldn't get the room for recording again in time. The options were a) re-record the whole track in a different-sounding environment and hope it didn't sound wildly different from the rest of them, or b) correct the pitch.

I went with (b), just manually correcting the pitch using Reaper's built-in plugins. Trivial, took about five minutes - and, at the time, I was learning Reaper at the same time.

If all you need to do is correct 5-10 bits here and here, then doing it manually is a totally reasonable approach.

victorludorum · February 2023

I can see that in a lot of contexts, using a plugin makes sense, but if i have read @DaveJames 's post correctly, he's using a small portastudio, and I'm not sure that he's using a DAW. From his posts I get the impression that he's just beginning, hence my comments about working on pitch and harmonies by listening and practice. I'm probably blinkered because that's how I did things, and I am glad that i did because I think that it helped me develop as a songwriter. I haven't ever considered using autotune, but if I were offering a professional recording service, then I most certainly would. If I came across as insulting then that certainly wasn't my intention; maybe @DaveJames could tell us a bit more about what he's doing and what he's aiming for. I knew he'd given up the goalkeeping, but I thought the modelling gig was still going strong?

Sporky · February 2023

I don't think it's one or the other. Practice is essential for all musical performance, of course, but results also matter.

I've written stuff I can't play. I could either dedicate a year or two to improving my playing, or I can find a way around it. No-one seems to notice when I do the latter (most often using Kontakt into Helix).

goldtop · February 2023

DaveJames said:

Any suggestions for a vocal device for private home recording, pitch correction, harmonies, etc, thanks.

If you want a live-use (for performance or just fun), there's a bunch of TC Perform widgets for these things. I think there are several versions, each with a slightly different application. There might even be one with a guitar input that harmonises the vocal according to the chord detected.

BillDL · February 2023

goldtop said:

......There might even be one with a guitar input that harmonises the vocal according to the chord detected.

The Boss Vocal Harmonist (VE-2) is one such pedal device, but there are others by different manufacturers.

thecolourbox · February 2023

I have a TC Helicon Voicelive Play Electric which is a vocal effects unit that also contains guitar amp modelling and some TC Electronic guitar effects. It uses the guitar chords to help with the pitch correction and harmony. There are also built in "room sense" mics which are hopeless and cause problems for me. The vocal effects are nice enough, if you keep them subtle. I don't tend to record using it unless I'm needing a quick and easy demo type thing, because you can't obviously undo the compressions or reverbs etc after the fact and I like to fiddle with that in the DAW, but for singing live and for quick demo recording it's pretty nice unit to have. Was also really good for live streaming type videos as well.

There are other models without guitar inputs, and at least one which is more acoustic focussed.

Not all of us have the time to devote to perfecting their vocal chops and it's not really necessary if you're just demoing or need a quick and easy vocal chain to record.

This was done with mine:
https://on.soundcloud.com/hDxea

Musicwolf · February 2023

I use Vari-Audio (which is part of Cubase Pro) for correction but I also have a TC Helicon VoiceLive 2 which can generate harmonies. Cubase can generate and the VoiceLive can correct pitch - but they both seem to be better the other way around.

On top of this I also practice and, as part of my practice, I record myself in Cubase and then use Vari-Audio to check how far off I am. That way I can measure progress (it has also taught me a lot about how the way that I monitor affects my ability to pitch).

Often sometimes use the VoiceLive to generate harmonies then, as long as they are within my very limited vocal range, I'll re-record them myself. Again, the more I practice the less I need to do this as the harmonies come naturally.

All of these pitch correction and harmony tools work better the closer you get to singing in tune in the first place, but they are great for polishing / fixing the odd mistake which would destroy an otherwise good performance.

I like to think of them as being the audio equivalent to a spell-checker*

*Checks spelling in order to avoid irony

DaveJames · February 2023

victorludorum said:

Please don't be insulted, as I'm not trying to be flippant at all here, but is 'practice' not working? If you've been practising enough and you're still miles off, then maybe singing is not for you. I know that sometimes we don't have the luxury of going out and finding someone good to sing things for us, but if the songs are your own and you can sing them pretty well, then work on your own voice and try and avoid these toys, unless you're planning to use them for specific effects, à la Cher et al

I used to have a voice, but at sixty years of age and shouting at the wife, it has dwindled, like MCcartney, also the falsetto has gone.

victorludorum · February 2023

DaveJames said:

victorludorum said:

Please don't be insulted, as I'm not trying to be flippant at all here, but is 'practice' not working? If you've been practising enough and you're still miles off, then maybe singing is not for you. I know that sometimes we don't have the luxury of going out and finding someone good to sing things for us, but if the songs are your own and you can sing them pretty well, then work on your own voice and try and avoid these toys, unless you're planning to use them for specific effects, à la Cher et al

I used to have a voice, but at sixty years of age and shouting at the wife, it has dwindled, like MCcartney, also the falsetto has gone.

Well Sir Paul has used it, apparently, so i guess you should be allowed to too

victorludorum · February 2023

Android has just edited my edit, so i'll type it again.

Well Sir Paul has used it, apparently, so i guess you should be allowed to too

victorludorum · February 2023

Why does Android keep cutting off half of my message!!!!!

victorludorum · February 2023

There was a smiley icon at the end, but hey ho. Here's the rest:
Are you using software or just the Tascam?

victorludorum · February 2023

thecolourbox said:

I have a TC Helicon Voicelive Play Electric which is a vocal effects unit that also contains guitar amp modelling and some TC Electronic guitar effects. It uses the guitar chords to help with the pitch correction and harmony. There are also built in "room sense" mics which are hopeless and cause problems for me. The vocal effects are nice enough, if you keep them subtle. I don't tend to record using it unless I'm needing a quick and easy demo type thing, because you can't obviously undo the compressions or reverbs etc after the fact and I like to fiddle with that in the DAW, but for singing live and for quick demo recording it's pretty nice unit to have. Was also really good for live streaming type videos as well.

There are other models without guitar inputs, and at least one which is more acoustic focussed.

Not all of us have the time to devote to perfecting their vocal chops and it's not really necessary if you're just demoing or need a quick and easy vocal chain to record.

This was done with mine:
https://on.soundcloud.com/hDxea

Does it do autotune in real time?

Musicwolf · February 2023

victorludorum said:

Does it do autotune in real time?

The TC VoiceLive works in real time.

DaveJames · February 2023

victorludorum said:

DaveJames said:

victorludorum said:

Please don't be insulted, as I'm not trying to be flippant at all here, but is 'practice' not working? If you've been practising enough and you're still miles off, then maybe singing is not for you. I know that sometimes we don't have the luxury of going out and finding someone good to sing things for us, but if the songs are your own and you can sing them pretty well, then work on your own voice and try and avoid these toys, unless you're planning to use them for specific effects, à la Cher et al

I used to have a voice, but at sixty years of age and shouting at the wife, it has dwindled, like MCcartney, also the falsetto has gone.

Well Sir Paul has used it, apparently, so i guess you should be allowed to too

Thank you sir.

victorludorum · February 2023

DaveJames said:

victorludorum said:

DaveJames said:

victorludorum said:

Please don't be insulted, as I'm not trying to be flippant at all here, but is 'practice' not working? If you've been practising enough and you're still miles off, then maybe singing is not for you. I know that sometimes we don't have the luxury of going out and finding someone good to sing things for us, but if the songs are your own and you can sing them pretty well, then work on your own voice and try and avoid these toys, unless you're planning to use them for specific effects, à la Cher et al

I used to have a voice, but at sixty years of age and shouting at the wife, it has dwindled, like MCcartney, also the falsetto has gone.

Well Sir Paul has used it, apparently, so i guess you should be allowed to too

Thank you sir.

My phone kept cutting off the end of my message and there was a smiley at the end of it, but I think you get the spirit if it :-)

Are you using software to edit your vocals, or are you doing it direct in your Tascam?

flying_pie · February 2023

I agree that autotune is a tool and has it's place, but I never use it. Just think how many classic albums made in pre DAW times don't have autotune perfect vocals but still sound great. Imperfections give character and feel.

A classic example is Sheryl Crow's If It Makes You Happy where she goes noticeably flat in the word happy before it gets to pitch - if you autotuned it to perfection then you'd remove the soul from the track

I'd rather record my best takes, punching in if needed, and accept the odd imperfection here and there as long as it's not painful. If it's not right then it needs redone until it's naturally right. But everything else goes as far as vocal processing

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