Phasing when autotuning doubled vocals.

[SawdustRecordings]

Hey,

you guys know this issue for sure. I'm usually having three identical takes of my vocal melodies plus harmonies. These tracks are panned to 30% left, center and 30% right. Now if tuning them with autotune in graph mode they begin to flange and create a kind of chorus. Most times I love this effect. It makes my vocals sound fat and wide. But in the band I am currently mixing it just sucks! Can't even tell why. It just sounds robotic...How do deal with this issue?

 

[guitardude570]

I use Melodyne and don't have any experience with Autotune, but I'd say ease up on your pitch correction. The beauty of doubling vocals is that your pitches can be a little off and still sound great as a whole. The slight differences in pitch can make it sound bigger and thicker. Only tune the vocals as much as you need to for the given project :Smokin:

 

[Nimvi]

Have no experience with autotune but maybe you could check if the processed signal isn't 100% wet? Sounds to me like the original signal is being mixed with the pitchcorrected one.

 

[SawdustRecordings]

@guitardude: what if i HAVE to tune the guy cause he just cant sing?

@nimvi: it is 100% wet. the phasing is genereted because of two or more vocal tracks that are pitched to the same tonal frequency.

 

[guitardude570]

I'm not sure how Autotune works, but with Melodyne you can vary the strength of pitch correction. If there's a way for you to correct his pitch and tighten it up to some extent but not flatline it, I would go that route

 

[Aaron Smith]

I think you're just tuning things too strictly... It's possible that two sets of vocals can both be tuned to be unnaturally stable in pitch, but be off enough from each other that you get that flanging type stuff. On "The Undying Darkness" from Caliban, the doubled clean vocals are like that all over the album and it actually really annoys me. I would bet that if you back off on how hard you're pushing the tuning, you can get both vocals to sound a lot more symmetrical in the stereo field.

 

[Fandus]

only use autotune to make a decent take better. you will have alot of problems if the takes to begin with are shakey as hell. get the vocalist to track it all line by line, very small parts and get him to hit at least close to where it needs to end up.

 

[Aaron Smith]

Loop record is your friend

 

[freakkguitarist]

i run into this alot when recording poppier bands...esp if the singer needs alot of tunage..... what helps me is to sharply cut the highs and lows so only the midtones really shine through, i feel it helps cut back on the frequencies that are fighting/phasing the other thing i do MORE often would be just to add a hefty amount of tape saturation/slight guitar amp distortion on the panned vocals, then drop their volume slightly... that also depends on the type of music, i cant imagine EVERYONE liking their BGVs distorted haha.

im personally not a fan of tuning one voice a few cents higher... if anything ill just go back and let off the melodyne or auto tune to give the BGVs some variation