Melodyne Tips for extreme out of tune vocals?

[SkybluestudiosBEN]

Ive came into a few situations where a vocalist im recording is WAY OUT OF TUNE, like in a different KEY out of tune.....Of coarse I try and have these people sing it better but sometimes they just DONT KNOW HOW!

In melodyne when I try and make these big changes to different keys and notes sometimes it artifacts like crazy......


My question is does anyone have any tips to reducing the artifacts? Maybe not completely getting rid of them but im sure someone here has a trick or two that could be useful.



Thanks

 

[Forceps]

Maybe change pitch of the parts that are really off key before routing them through melodyne? So melodyne has to do less work and the artifacts aren't that big?

I've been in a similar situation, eventually I sang the song for them and sent them home to practice with my takes. It did work in the end, but it sucks when vocalists don't hear they're off key

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

If they're that far out, there's really not much you can do - Melodyne and Autotune are essentially pitchshifters, and if they can't fix it then doing something else first is unlikely to help. You can't really reduce the artifacts without reducing the amount of correction needed, and it's not really like compression where you can stack up several pitch-shifts and make the end result more transparent.

Forceps basically mentioned the easiest solution - a lot of people sing out of tune not because they're tone deaf, but because they don't know where the notes they're singing are (if you see what I mean). If you record the melody on another instrument (piano is normally best as it stands out well against rock/metal music), and let the singer listen to it a few times, they'll almost certainly get a lot close when they sing it.

Steve

 

[RevoltStudios]

If you're using Cubendo, I have to do it's pitch control with the lines and do it that way in tough spots. When you get it close with that, melodyne will work better.

 

[plague_rider]

Melodyne would work, but i recommend you look at the times where the signing is in pitch, its not gonna look perfect in melodyne, it'll be a little sharp or a little flat, what i recommend is the bits you adjust, keep them to that level of accuracy...

 

[Damphire]

I've found that Melodyne can produce a natural pitch shift up to 3 notes up or 3 notes down, beyond that it starts to sound weird. I'd recommend that you "produce" the shit out of those vocals, a la Joey Sturgis. You could, for instance, harmonize the vocals in those parts where artifacts occur with a line that feels more natural, to cover it up.

Also remember that melodyne offers note transition control to avoid robot-sounding transitions. And you can automate and remove artifacts by hand with patience.

 

[SHIBbYinc]

Sorry to kinda hi-jack this, but I keep hearing the term "artifact" what does that mean in terms of vocals?