You may ask, what if my hook is high pitched while my verse is a lower tone? Not a problem, you can use different vocal range settings for each individual situation! This is important, especially if you’d like to make your vocal sound natural. Of course a higher pitch singer is going to sound better using a high range vs a deep voice, sounding better on a low range setting. Imagine your vocal sitting on that piano, where would it fall? This is where we must now change the vocal range of the AutoTune itself to fit your unique voice. We have the Key, our vocal sounds amazing, now it’s time to set our vocal range! Think of a piano… As you move right the pitch begins to increase, as you move left, it begins to decrease. Make sure that you’re paying substantial attention when applying AutoTune as you will begin to develop a better ear for sections of the track that sound out of pitch. If the track is completely out of key the most practical fix is to of course re-record, as AutoTune can only make up for so much! Time and time again artists send me tracks to give feedback on and it seems that many of them crank their response rate high to hide the fact that they’re not in key, or they simply don’t have the ear for it. If you find that the track sounds good at that high of a retune speed then it will of course sound great as you decrease the speed. This will cause the AutoTune to interact with your vocals much faster, applying a robotic AutoTune effect like T-Pain. Now that we have found the key I suggest that you crank the response rate (Speed) so that you’re able to hear whether the vocal is in key or not. Though this rarely happens, it can be a bit frustrating and give you the thought that your entire track is out of key, that may not be the case! Sometimes tools such as audio keychain & Tunebat can process the key incorrectly, especially with more complicated instrumentals. If you’re having issues with your AutoTune sounding off, make sure that you cross check the key using another platform. Auto Key (Downloadable Plugin from Antares).Here’s a few tools that you can use to find the key of your track: Next we will need to find the key of the instrumental that we are using in order to make our vocal adjacent to that instrumental.
So now you have a clean vocal, let's slap that AutoTune on and call it done! No, not quite. What ends up happening is complete disappointment, confusion, and lack of motivation due to the complexity of higher end plugins. Many new artists get stuck in the mindset that they need to go out and spend thousands of dollars on fancy plugins to start. The Plugins listed above are the most important when it comes to getting this vocal crisp and clear, I always suggest learning the stock plugins of your DAW as the mechanics will be similar once you end up upgrading. If you want to know the starting point to most engineers' processes checkout my Vocal Presets ! I hope that my process I’m sharing below helps you out!Īs mentioned before, In all of my Vocal Preset packs I use this exact method to provide a template for artists to achieve this clean vocal immediately. Too many mix engineers are charging loads of money and following a similar process that anybody can learn with a little bit of time and effort. I strive to help artists save time and money by automating the mixing/mastering game. The following order of operations that I follow within my mixing process has been built around all of my Vocal Presets. In a nutshell, AutoTune will make your voice sound adjacent to the instrument that you’re playing! Once this is determined we are able to decide upon the retune speed and the note transition.
The most important aspect of AutoTune is knowing what key the instrumental is in so that the vocal matches. During the process AutoTune adjusts the notes within your vocals to match the note of the scale you decide to use.
Just about every track that you hear includes AutoTune, as it has become essential to the production of modern music.ĪutoTune was developed as a means to digitally correct vocal pitch.
Audio Engineers quickly caught wind of this new software and it immediately took off, becoming one of the most vital plugins used in mainstream music today. Andy Hildebrand back in 1996, which was released to the public shortly after in 1998.