pbouldin
25 February 2010
Hi,
I'm assuming this is a rookie question -
I'm working in Cubase and have a multiple track project and it was suggested that a vocalist "may" be a little flat and that I might try increasing her pitch. Also he mentioned it's done all the time. He's not been mixing but this is what he heard. So I experimented -
First question - she's not flat except in some areas, is it still common to raise the pitch on the whole track (as he had heard)?
Second question - She's often goes into vibrato (where here pitch is moving naturally) and so when I adjust the pitch it sounds pretty funky. What can you do there?
What are the general norms on pitch shifting, I guess?
Thank you!
Patrick
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It sounds like you're using something like pitch shift utility t
It sounds like you're using something like pitch shift utility that comes with the program to adjust the pitch. That's not going to be very helpful in this case. You're friend is probably referring to something called "Auto Tune". It can be handy when applied well but it still has it's limitations. To buy the program could be another problem since it's pretty expensive ($400-ish for the software version and probably similar money for the hardware processor). I'm sure there are other people who make something similar for less money, so you can check that out too.
My recommendation for solving your problem is this... I'd have your singing come in and record at least 10 more vocal passes. Once that's done you listen to each one and make a "composite" track of the best of the takes. You'd listen for pitch, tone, annunciation, etc. and word by word put together a track that compiles the best takes. If that's too time intensive, then just have her come in and rerecord the parts where she's out of tune. There's no substitute for getting it to sound the way you want it up front, before you start processing the sound. Even the best engineer is going to change the sound slightly with Auto-Tune.