Vocal Editing - Elastic Audio, Slip Editing or VocAlign?

+ 1

These days though, I reject to do "deep editing" on vocals though if it's not 100% necessary. I'll usually only move single syllables to get them to lock with the harmonies/doubles, when there's nothing painfully off.
 
Cool guys, sounds like a combo of Elastic Audio, VocAlign and Autotune will be the ticket here. Already checking with Tony about the price...

Thanks a bunch.

Feels a bit counter intuitive to me to be tuning before moving time, but I get why and I'll try to get into the habit of doing it.
 
Flextime for stretching and cutting up stuff by hand for other things (I guess you can't call it slip editing, since I do it in Logic).

Believe it or not, but I've never had to autotune yet (except for some joke stuff). That's because I've only done stuff with professional singers, screamers and instrumental bands.
 
The workflow and UI for Melodyne is awful though. I tried it once, and while it did everything I wanted, it took way too long and was way too frustrating.

+1 and if you 'upgraded' to Melodyne Editor from plugin the same tasks take 3x longer. Oh and you won't be able to go back to old sessions because the iLok license gets replaced. :guh:
This new version did everything possible to make things more difficult for the user.
Tuning defaults to 0% instead of 100% so you have to move the control up to 75% instead of down.
Same with timing.
Analyzing takes for fucking EVER! where it used to be instant. Wish they kept a simple one for vocals and a more complex one for the rare times you want to fuck with polyphonic buggery.
 
What do you use instead, C F H? VocAlign? I can't imagine slipping stuff around by hand would be too comfortable in PT.

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys.

I slip everything by hand. I only use vocalign (which is my preferred tool) on big stacks. Anything less then 8 vocals I do by hand, syllable by syllable. I'm old school I guess.

There's something about elastic audio that bugs me, and I find I'm way faster at manually editing then stretching shit...just me I guess.

Aaron Smith said:
Crazy, this seems backwards to me and is the opposite of what I've always done. I always thought it seemed like a better idea to have the takes locked in, then get the tuning to match once the waveforms are locked... What's the big upside to tuning first and fixing the timing last?

This just goes back to working with autotune/melodyne back in the day. I use to spend an hour or so perfectly timing a vocal, only to have melodyne shift the timing slightly all over the place. I don't know if it still does it, but it just made me adopt this workflow. I can ALWAYS fix the timing of a vocal, I can't always fix the tuning properly...so I tune the vocal and if it works..I time it. Generally though I don't put that much time into it though. I'm running about an hour to 2 hours for all timing and tuning of all vocals in songs usually.
 
Ok, VocAlign is godly.

I have never used a tool this fool-proof and time-saving. If I knew it would be this effective I may have sprung for the Pro version, because as far as I'm concerned it's already paid itself off.

The drawback is that perhaps it pulls the vocals in a little 'too much', losing some of the largeness and depth of smearing the vocals a bit, but otherwise it seems to be an avenue towards that perfect vocal pop/rnb sound where all the harmonies sound like one stacked autotune sandwich of shit. Respect.

Trying the Autotune method described above. Still takes AGGES to go through songs when dealing with many tracks of vocals. I really really dislike the Autotune UI. Here's to hoping it grows over time.

Also tried Elastic Audio X-Form on a lead vocal track. Nigh-perfect stretching. Couldn't hear any artifacts with the mix rolling, compared to the Monophonic mode which was glitch-mania.
 
Ive always found flextime in logic helpful for this (apples ripp off of elastic audio). Normaly i'll send the tracks off to be tuned and tweaked and then i'll stretch / slip as needed when i get them back.
 
The new cubase has some awesome vocal editing features in it (you can even change the formant, it's crazy). If you have a copy of it maybe try that?
 
for screamed metal vocals (withouth real pitch), slip editing works great for me. on the ends of words with 't' or 'd' zooming to death and editing the letters makes them sync. sometimes on long complex doubled takes, Vocalign works a bit easier. Like Aaron I edit or choose one tight reference and edit stuff on it, with slip or vocalign. Can sound really great.

for melodic vocals, I find it hard to cut in the audio and moves things around because the notes are changing. i usually use Logic Flex Editing in Monophonic mode and also slip editing.

for tuning I use Autotune EVO. I like to keep everything inside Logic, like ermz said it's a pain to open another software, bounce, ... I put the arrange window on my laptop screen and I expand the AT UI full screen on my big screen. Gives you a nice workspace. On the laptop/arrange window you can really see where you are in the timeline, much better than in the AT UI.

I prefer to editing the timing first and then tune. Sometimes the tuning creates weird artifact and I don't want to strech or edit those. Sometimes I put AT on auto mode on the track when editing the timings, if the out-of-tune-lity annoys me to edit the timing. Gives you also a nice preview.

does anybody know if the new Melodyne is still introducing a delay on the tracks ?
 
coming from melodyne, i use nuendos variaudio for everything - tuning, stretching etc.

its the fastest method for me. btw. ermin - arent you mixing in cubase 5 ?
this has variaudio (although i like it a littl emore in n5)

i even used it on my latest release on violins and celli