Autotune while tracking?

[crillemannen]

I think that some of you misunderstood me...
I meant to imply that the autotune was TO HELP the vocalist sing better and to be easier FOR HIM to hear when he´s "out".
I dont have the best ears in the world but at the the very least i can hear when something is out of tune
A good vocalist inst going to need any of this...but i meant this to be an aid for the not-so-good one...
you know...that kind of musician that when you ask them in what key signature is the song they look at you like
you just asked them to explain to you the solution to the international economic crisis .....
in Chinese...
while dancing naked...

I don't think so. From a personal view i don't like singing with autotune while tracking. Screws up more then it helps. I do coach allot when i record other singers though, think im quite good at that. And as you're getting more and more experienced you'll be good at judging if a take is a keeper or not, even though its not perfect before its tuned.

 

[egan.]

I agree with criller. Even latency tolerable for other instruments can be tough for vocalists b/c the lag causes them to over adjust. I'd imagine having a pitch that's locked in would cause (or at least allow) you to be further out without noticing.

 

[C_F_H_13]

I agree with criller. Even latency tolerable for other instruments can be tough for vocalists b/c the lag causes them to over adjust. I'd imagine having a pitch that's locked in would cause (or at least allow) you to be further out without noticing.

I agree completely. The only way I ever use autotune "live", is as a guide for me. I feed the vocal to an aux with autotune on it. Put it in graphic mode, and set it to track in every time I hit record. They sing the part, and I can visually see how flat/sharp they are. No one hears this track at all.

I've had to track with the actual plugin on twice and while it was done for a "sound", it made singing damn near impossible. Most singers glide to a note, even if it's insanely fast, but auto tune grabs very quickly, so the singer would over correct and go way sharp. I think any singer with any actual talent, would have their abilities severely impeded by the live tracking with auto tune.

Having said all that, i know there's hundreds of singers in the world that do it every day.

 

[greyskull]

I know of a pretty big dude who has vocalists track with the Autotune in the non-graph mode (set up scale beforehand, of course) running, and when it triggers a wrong note he has them retry the take. Basically guarantees that the singer will stay within a set parameter and that the take will be easily tuneable after the fact in graph mode.

There are a few Guy's over here in England who do exactly that (naming no names.......)

Except they just leave it in auto

 

[theNeologist]

I'm going to go with no.

This seems like it would hurt more than help..with regards to being a distraction. And like someone above mentioned the vocalist would be so focused on hitting the notes they forget about the performance. While pitch is crucial...so is the performance.

And I'd prefer to be in control with what is edited. Sometimes nuances in a vocal can add character or lead to different ideas..so if everything's hitting the mark if would take the creativity out of it.

Dunno...seems like a bad idea.

 

[Jordon]

When tracking vocal doubles, I'll throw it on the lead track so that the singer has a spot-on guide to sing to. This is especially useful when I have a different singer doubling the lead vocal. I don't do that often, but it's a cool way to shake things up.