Working with Pitched Screams

[Trep]

I've started noticing a lot of the vocalists coming through lately are going for a kind of pitched scream, with some melodic approach. The best example to give would be similar to Linkin Park, Norma Jean or stuff off the latest Bring me the Horizon album Sempiternal.

How do you guys go about producing these style of vocals? With any clean vocal, theres usually some degree of tuning used for editing for less than perfect performances. Most pitch correction wigs out when it hits harmonic distortion so is there any way to tune audio with distortion. Listening to the examples given, the pitch is so tight!

http://youtu.be/QJJYpsA5tv8
http://youtu.be/vhYu4HMhT5w
http://youtu.be/Gd9OhYroLN0
http://youtu.be/I9720uHPsWY

 

[xFkx]

With this type of vocals you can get away with the vocalist being off pitch methinks.

but if the vocalist is seriously out of the key of the song, then melodyne tackles this task a bit better than AT.

 

[updog]

^agree.

I also used a pitch shifter plugin once and tuned one note by ear since it sounded a little flat to me. If the guy is good and/or doesn't constantly do pitched screams, you probably wouldn't have to do more than something akin to that.

 

[brianhood]

you can do wonders with Melodyne, as long as you aren't moving anything more than 50 cents or so. Just don't try to snap it to grid on pitched screams.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

If you use melodyne, make sure you actually enable the corrected detection mode

http://helpcenter.celemony.com/editor2/en/singletrack_tour_31.html

Seen that in a Creative Live seminar from Andrew Wade, explaining that it's still the best tool for correcting raspy vocals (he showed an example of exactly that kind of vocals)

 

[TPMusic]

One possible way of doing it would be record screaming and singing and then pitch correct them together. Also you can use the clean vocals as a way of reinforcing the pitch in the screams.

Melodyne would be your best bet for pitch correction on screams though, seems to work if you put some time in it as seen in the Andrew Wade seminar on creative live.