Flat Vocalist - What should I do?

[arv_foh]

Try and get the best takes you can, then Melodyne or Autotune them until they are correct... if the dude can't sing in key, he can't sing in key, and you might do a million takes and nothing would change that.

I wouldn't spend a horrible amount of time trying to get perfect takes.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I've started to record vocals in the control room now - monitors absolutely cranked to hell but I don't bother with the phase thing, I'd guess that would only make the problem worse. I cut out a lot of the bleed by hand anyway - would rather trust my own editing than a gate. Most vocalists I've recorded tend to feel so much more comfortable this way.

There's some parts on a Bleeding Through album where you can hear the speakers in the vocal. The phase slightly changes in those parts.

I'd prefer to work on headphones, but make sure the latency is as low as possible, monitor direct if possible.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Sometimes if the guy can't figure out what the right note is I'll bring up my Structure sampler. The default patch is a sine wave and I spend a minute or two with him practicing hitting the note. Giving him an absolute target to hit.

Worrying about pitch sucks though.

 

[riffmachine]

try out melodyne, soooo much better than autotune

+1 on Melodyne

 

[Machinated]

I'm using melodyne, but tbh I'm wanting to switch to antares

melodyne is useful, but it feels like its sucking out a ton of high end, and it can be pretty artifacty too (and sometimes its hard to solve).

loads of people assume antares is only "auto mode" as they just get the cracked version and dive right in. using graphic mode on antares is what you should be doing

 

[greyskull]

how are you using it ed?
are you recording into it via melodynebridge? i found that gave me no end of glitchy nonsense as well as making the quality suffer...
You're better of consolidating the vocal comp, then importing it into melodyne and THEN opening up an instance of melodyne bridge and connecting it to the vocal track.
One caveat is that you have to set the tempo manually; but thats pretty easy, turn on variable tempo editing mode, click on the tempo at the begining; write in the correct tempo, and then FOR THE LOVE OF GOD turn Variable tempo editing OFF QUICKLY before it fucks everything up.
But when you're done spot it back into Pro t.... OH WAIT you use logic.... is there a Spot to logic option?
Anyway DONT record into melodyne.
Having said, ive been tempted to pick up AT i Kinda miss it in a way. theres something about the way it sounds when used tastefully thats adds a wierd compression to vocals that can be kinda good. or not that and itd be great to have for backing vocals and or impersonating tpain when my iphones out of battery.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Graphic mode in AT is soooo slow. I'm really liking Melodyne Plugin but I find it doesn't get all the note separations automatically.
The workflow of Melodyne bridge is terrible IMO, on the other hand Plugin can quickly use up all your RAM.

 

[jval]

Melodyne plug is faster and easier than auto-tune but after years of using it, I can't stand what it does to the vocal anymore. Totally messes up the frequency response not to mention the timing which can get screwy sometimes. I've been using graph auto-tune more now, and it sounds so much better...
Anyways a tip for bad singers... get as close as you can as fast as you can because they're not going to get better with more takes. Something that works well if you're not gonna do extensive tuning is to get them to double all their vocals. It has a way of hiding the out-of-tune-ness.. must be a psychoacoustic thing. When you have 2 takes that are out of tune, the line becomes blurry and the brain will pick out the average in-between note rather than hearing the two individual tracks.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Melodyne plug is faster and easier than auto-tune but after years of using it, I can't stand what it does to the vocal anymore. Totally messes up the frequency response not to mention the timing which can get screwy sometimes. I've been using graph auto-tune more now, and it sounds so much better...
Anyways a tip for bad singers... get as close as you can as fast as you can because they're not going to get better with more takes. Something that works well if you're not gonna do extensive tuning is to get them to double all their vocals. It has a way of hiding the out-of-tune-ness.. must be a psychoacoustic thing. When you have 2 takes that are out of tune, the line becomes blurry and the brain will pick out the average in-between note rather than hearing the two individual tracks.

this is exactley my technique / strategy

jval, we have a lot in common im finding...

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Anyways a tip for bad singers... get as close as you can as fast as you can because they're not going to get better with more takes. Something that works well if you're not gonna do extensive tuning is to get them to double all their vocals. It has a way of hiding the out-of-tune-ness.. must be a psychoacoustic thing. When you have 2 takes that are out of tune, the line becomes blurry and the brain will pick out the average in-between note rather than hearing the two individual tracks.

this is exactley my technique / strategy

jval, we have a lot in common im finding...

Interesting. Doubled vocals don't work for everything though.

Performance (delivery, edge & character) > tuning.
Tuning and timing can be corrected, performance is either there or it's not.