Auto tune, are you a user? (vocals not car)

[Andrew]

Gotta ask the question to everyone because I'm curious :?: - Do you use autotune (atnares or whatever) in alot of mixes? is it becoming a regular active tool in your setup. Are vocalist getting lazy in the 'fixit with autotune' attitude. Is it no longer acceptable to have small errors in bands voices etc?

and finally does anyone liken 'auto-trune' to Milli Vanilli type miming? I was just a kid then and was devistated my fav band was fake :cry:

[jkhuri44]

i find using autotune depends on the over all talent and style of the music, and most importantly, your impressions of the music you're mixing...

best way i can put it...

if your recording some piss poor hyper edited mall metal kids, with some "dude" that started singing 6 months just to get laid...you need to do whatever you can to make those vocals NOT stink...autotine's a good start

if you record vocals that make your palms sweat from intensity, i doubt you need anything...

using auto tune on everything kills the humanity in music...singers that practise and mean what they sing, deliberate over every nuance of their performance, how they hit pitches, whether they start speaking then slide into singing, etc etc, how much rasp they stick into a performance, etc etc...

singers with real technique have built in autotune :P and small errors only matter when there is no emotion or character in your vocalist...

[chris p]

Yeah, I have used it, and probably overused it.

My experience comes in two forms: one is adding the Cher effect, although I have tended to do it a little more subtly - used like this, its is an effect just like reverb, and like reverb it has it uses and abuses. Take it or leave it, try it and sees if it adds to the track, double it with a flanged echo reverse compressed version, that sort of thing.

The other form of course is pitch correction. Having used it, I am so in the camp of saying get the singer to sing in tune in the first place, or get another take, or get another singer. That said, it isn't always possible, and that's where you have to do the deep artistic vibe thing of looking at the soul of the recording. Is singing in tune more important than a natural, open-sounding take?

Case in point #1 - I'm recording a group of primary school aged girls, none sing on key all the time. Put them all together and it sort of balances itself out, with much more naturalness than I get if I'd autotuned each individual track. Even when it doesn't, its the vibe of a bunch of kids singing their hearts out that counts with this, and the odd (or even frequent) off-key is just part of that. This isn't just a professional / amateur divide - Bob Dylan wasn't autotuned - its about what the record is supposed to be capturing.

Case in point #2 - I'm recording an album of original material for a church songwriter. The CD can be sent to other churches (it comes with the sheet music in PDF on the same CD) so that they can hear the songs and then play them in their own services. The singer is good, but its not her day-job, she's doing the writer a favour and she's only available for 4 hours on one day (to track 7 songs). OK, we all know this is NOT going to work, but we have to do what we can. The vibe here is that its the music and the lyrics that need to come first, the performance of the singer is secondary. So we track as best we can, and yeah, I have no concerns about autotuning the singing to Bourke and back if necessary to nail the melody line, because lots of people need to learn this song by listening to the CD, so its got to be right.

Two final comments - if you autotune, don't leave it on for the whole track. Just hit those notes that need it. And secondly, there are alternatives. For just fixing a couple of notes here and there, I'd much rather use Logic's inbuilt Pitch and Time Machine.

Is it milli vanilli miming? No, I don't think so. Autotune cannot fix an absence of talent. I have tried it on my own singing, and it just doesn't work. But then again, lets head back to Bob Dylan - perhaps perfect pitch is not the true essence of recording?

[Peter Knight]

I've just mixed a song on the weekend with about 16 tracks of vocals - probably not that much when you think of modern R&B but this is a rock song!

The guys have good enough pitch, not perfect, but good enough. I thought about AT'ing their layered backing vox but didn't for 2 reasons:

(1) They tended to "trail off", letting the pitch drop right at the end of each phrase by about 1/2 a step, so AT probably wouldn't have coped anyway.

(2) Considering where those parts sat in the mix, it sounded great without any tuning anyway!

However I did Vocalign the hell out of them, that made a more appreciable difference to the mix than any tuning would have.

[Aearth]

I've recorded some great singers with good pitch and they still ask me to use autotune on they're tracks. It's like a singer's security blanket, I can't work it out.
I'm over autotune, I try to work the singer till they get it right and only use AT as a last resort.


Nick

[mfdu]

one word - vibe.

if it has the vibe, then that's what counts. but that's just my approach.

i do not use auto-tune, personally. but i am purposefully pushing a particular vibe and sound. if the client wants that auto-tuned 'polish', they probably ain't wanting to work with me anyway.

but then, i have just gone full-time in the day job. as a result, i have taken on a new form of compensation.

WILL RECORD FOR WHISKEY.

(he he he)

chris.

[Kris]

I use it liberally when necessary. Most young performers want to sound like Avril or The Veronicas and they have auto tune in sizeable quantities.

Even if the pitch is good, auto tune produces a shiny sound a lot of singers like.

[Jason]

I try to do the same as Aearth. Do what ever I can not to use it & if I have to, just the bum notes and leave the rest.

[Kris]

a lot of people seem to be switching to Melodyne instaed of AutoTune....

[Jeremy H]

i bought an antares hardware auto tune 5 or 6 years ago. $2700 !!!!!!!

I bought it because I wanted to record my own vocals and I couldn't sing. It always sounded verrrrry fake to me - but after a while I found that it helped me to sing well enough that I didn't need it anymore. (I do original material and I'm never sure what the melody line is supposed to be anyway - until I hear it back - it also helped me to work out harmonies.)

I still use it very occasionally - but just for a note here and there - never for a whole track.

Now and then, we have a party and I get non musos to record something for fun - it's cool for making stuff like that listenable.

[Chris H]

Comes in handy when mixing double bass of live recordings where the player playes a bit off note due to lack of stage monitoring.You can't hear the sublties live but once recorded they sometimes need a touch of pitch correction. I'm using the pich correction plugin in Logic Pro. It's fine for this. Hadrly ever use it for vox

[mfdu]

hey chris h - that's a good tip.

because autotune is so prevalent on vox, i "forgot" that you can use it on other stuff.

i still don't use it. but i'm just strange like that.

chris.

[Ausrock]

Nah Chris, you're not strange...............or at least, if you are then you've got company.

I'm doing bugger all recording in our studio for two main reasons........1)since the wife went on to permanent night work a couple of years ago the household routines aren't really compatable with trying to run a studio "properly", and...........2) I'm not interested in taking muso's money to make them sound something they're not, consequently I won't use autotune or other similar "enhancements", I track to either a Fostex "D" series h/disk recorder or to 16 trk 1", the PC is only used for accepting the final mix for CD.

Cheers,

ChrisO

[Chinagraf]

If I can't fix it by splitting off the bum notes and pitch shifting them use Melodyne. Tried autotune for along time, hated it. Sometimes you get handed something to mix and the vocals aren't up to scratch, so if it's form overseas and you can't retrack them, whaddaya gonna do? Melodyne is also great for making up harmonies from the lead vocal when they don't have the budget for bv's. You do need a musical ear to use it though, which I think is a good thing.

[Henry]

Autotune is what Flouro is to sunlight! Melodyne is the way to go, Autotune will go broke, its that good!! Retains phrasing, emphasis etc 100% whilst correcting pitch. Completely seamless pitch correction with one touch of the button.

[jkhuri44]

thankgod for that,

coz even though i hate autotune, i find it only REAAAALYY helps with good singers that just want "perfect" pitch, but to get things useable you have to highlight phrases you want corrected, and that really is a pain in the ass...

id be keen to try out melodyne if its as sweet as your saying....!!!!

[Andrew]

hhhmm Lots of varied responses, lots to think about...this is good. thanks everyone for contributing :wink:

[Peter Knight]

I'm not interested in taking muso's money to make them sound something they're not

What if that's what they're after? (devil's advocate question)

What about Beat Detective, Sound Replacer etc.... all an integral part of the game for some people.



[edit] oh yeah, what about moving the guitars forward 30ms like Andy Wallace says he does?

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_andy_wallace/

[Ausrock]

Hey Knightsy,

It's simple mate..........they are free to find a turd polisher elsewhere :-).

I guess I have the luxury of not trying to make a living (or anything) from the studio which allows me to indulge myself in standing by my opinions and principles regarding "incomplete" musicians, etc.

ChrisO

[mfdu]

hey Ausrock - i'm with you. do it for the love, stand firm on principles, provide a vibe, and step not into the steaming pile of autotune and turd-polishing.

in my place, the only time autotune gets a turn is when it's as an effect.

beat dectective and sound replacer are totally valid - again, as an effect.
i don't chop up drum tracks to fit. i rarely comp multiple takes - the closest i normally get are drop-ins.
if i need to slide guitars 30ms, then i'll use a delay (or nudge it).

if they want the whole spliced and diced experience, then they've come to the wrong place.

yes, that's indulgent.

chris.