Can auto-tune make me a good singer?

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I'm with Beth Roars, singing coach, vocal coach. Vocal... expert? I don't know what to call you. Sure. We're gonna record one line of me singing to send off to a producer, to see if they can... if they can fix my voice. And give them a great— the best chance possible in order to create something very beautiful. Yes, and also so... so we've got me singing badly on camera as well. The plan is that we're gonna have someone look at the thing I record, and try and autotune and produce it. Mhm. To... To do what apparently every YouTuber is doing, and start a singing career. I am not going to start a singing career. He might start a singing career. I am not going to start a singing career. (wheezes) ...He's gonna start a singing career. So, very first thing... Yeah? I should probably admit how I sing without any training or production. Yes. So, let's... First line of O Holy Night, I'm only doing the first couple lines. So that's... alright. Okay, here we go. Do you want a chord? Oh yes! I'm not gonna be able to hit that! Okay. ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ O Holy night The stars are brightly shining ♪ I missed that "shining". I missed that. Honestly, I— You're so— It's so funny, you can— It's not that bad. There's only... I feel... I don't feel like I'm confident at all with it. Like, I feel like... And partly that's 'cause there's four cameras running and everything like that, but... It feels like... I am too tense. It feels like I am... shouting... in a church. Yeah, okay. No pun intended, given it's a Christmas song, but like... It feels like I'm barging in somewhere and going, "Haah!" Well, look. I feel like a lot of it for you is gonna actually be the confidence. Yeah. Because... your voice is a good voice. I'm telling you, your voice is a good voice. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So many people come into singing lessons, and they're on that first lesson. You are way past most firsts. I'm not joking. Okay, that's... You've got resonance. People struggle with resonance. Your pitching is great. I also struggle with receiving compliments, it turns out! So thank you, that's— that's lovely. Let's start with a warmup. Okay. Okay. Let's see what's going on with your voice. Yeah, alright. Okay, so. We're gonna do just a little scale. You're gonna be down the octave, so you're gonna be down here. [C3] For me... [C4] So you're gonna do, ♪ Ma[C], ma[D], ma[E], ma[F], ma[G], ma[F], ma[E], ma[D], ma[C] ♪ ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ Literally, perfectly on pitch. Really? Okay! I told you, that was great! You know what, I heard this clip— I feel like... I feel like I'm being flattered here(!) No, no! Like, literally... Okay, okay. That's like the hardest thing. Everyone as well. When you freak out at that first chord that I play, everyone goes like - (gasp) - and then it all goes off, so you're doing great. 'Cause I know my karaoke is not— My karaoke is good at about that range, but as soon as you get outside that octave, it starts to fall apart. Well, that's normal, 'cause that's around your speaking range. So you're exercising that every single day. And then when you get outside of your speaking range, everyone goes like, "Agh, what do I do?!" Yeah, if you go a couple of octaves up with that, it's gonna fall apart. We'll see what happens. Okay so, we're gonna go one step up. (in C♯ major) ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ So resonant, this is great. (in D major) ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ (D♯ piano note) Good. From here. (with faint rasp) ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ Good. I felt like I lost that halfway through, but okay. You just pushed it a little bit, but we'll talk about this in a second. I don't know what that means...! Exactly, we'll talk about it. Let's try here. (E piano note) ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma,[<] ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ Cool. So... That's starting to waver at the top. Yeah. I'm losing that. So, the... take-home key that I want you to feel about singing... is that the effort you put in does not equal a better output. Okay. Good. I like not putting effort in(!) Yeah, you want to be really efficient. I'm so physically nervous. I'm going like this, 'cause I'm just— I'm deeply uncomfortable with this. It's okay, it's okay. Everyone always is. Especially the first time you're singing in front of someone that you've never sung in front of before. The internet! The internet. (laughs) It's not a nice— Okay. But you're doing really good. So, all I want you to do— In fact, what you have so good is you've got so much resonance. And... I actually trained that. That was deliberate. Like, I— many, many years ago, doing university radio... I got to uni, I was like, about 18... and my voice was... very much in the front of my mouth, about here. and everything's sorta just (nasally) up here. And then I sort of trained it over the years to go down and back. Yes. Yeah, it's so resonant. And that's great. So, this, we'll go to this one again. ♪ (E half-scale on piano) And as you get to the top one, at the moment, you're kind of reaching up to that top one, as if it's like a triangle. I want you to think of it all on the same plane. You're not putting any more effort to the top one than you are at the bottom ones. Okay. Okay, let's give that a go. ♪ (E piano note) (in E major) ♪ Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma ♪ Okay, let's try something. Give me, like a dopey bear... ♪ Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah ♪ ♪ Wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo ♪ See how much easier that is? Yes. Why is that easier? There's a couple of reasons. You're creating a big space inside your mouth. So, your mouth is a resonance chamber. I always think of it like... like a trumpet. If you just heard your voice box by itself... Your air is moving through the voice box, through the vocal cords. They vibrate, and that creates the sound. Yes. As we go higher, it's just an extension of your speaking voice. You don't need to do anything madly different. (laughs) Alright. You can speak. You're doing great. Cool, let's... So, let's go to where we were. We were coming— So we're gonna try a note up here. We're just doing a little ma-ma-ma. Yeah. And this is a tricky part of our voice, because... this is a transition between your chest voice and your head voice. Now, it's tricky because there's an actual anatomical shift happening here. In your chest voice, there's muscles inside the vocal cords, and at the back of the vocal cords, that are responsible for tightening and relaxing them. Okay. Erm, so... When you tighten your vocal cords, the note gets higher, and when you relax it, it gets lower. When you go into your head voice, the whole larynx tilts forward a little bit. There's muscles on the front. Okay. So if you were being 100 percent "anatomically" head-voice, which never actually happens, but if it was, it would be just using that tilt. Alright. If it wasn't, if it's 100 percent anatomically chest voice, just using the muscles inside the vocal cords and at the back. Mixed, there's this middle ground where you're using these muscles in combination, and it gets a little bit tricky. Yeah, I can feel it, sort of... I don't know. It feels like something's moving. Well, it probably is. (both laugh) As you get higher, that resonance is probably gonna move up your body. Okay. And that's okay. So, that's where the idea of "head voice" and "chest voice" comes from. It essentially comes from most singers, 'cause everyone feels it a little bit differently. Most singers feel chest voice in their chest, and most singers feel head voice in their head. Okay. Actually, can you give me a "Woo-hoo"? Woo-hoo! That is your head voice. Yeah, that's entirely up here. And then, again, it's one of those things that people feel like, "Uh oh, as I get higher, I have to do something totally crazy!" This is my stupid catchphrase, but if you can woo-hoo it, you can sing it, right? (laughs) Okay, alright, fine! If you can woo-hoo that note, you got it. Give me, like... (G piano note) that note. ♪ La[G] ♪ Cool, can you make it how you can feel it as far back as you can, in your head? ♪ La— ♪ No, only by dropping an octave. No, you didn't. Did I not? That felt like I did. You just made it more resonant. That's interesting. (loudly) ♪ La ♪ Is that the same note? It is the same note! Yeah, this is interesting. Okay! Because that placement changes the tone of the note. And that can be confusing, because... you've got your note. But actually, a note isn't just one note. You're not hearing one note. You're hearing all the frequencies on top of it. So actually, instead of changing the note, you're just adding more lower frequencies by bringing it back. Okay. And by making it thinner and forward, you're boosting the higher frequencies. Okay. So it's the same octave, but we're hearing... It's like it's been EQ'd. Yeah, exactly! Okay, cool. And that's the amazing thing about a voice, you can kind of EQ your own voice as you go. Now, we can get help at the studio, but also we can do... We're gonna need it. But alright, let's... Yeah, so... ♪ (B half-scale on piano) (in B major, strained) ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la ♪ You're doing so good. That fifth was completely wrong. Doesn't matter. You're doing so good. ♪ (C half-scale on piano) (in B major, strained) ♪ La, la, la, la, la[X], la[X], la, la, la ♪ Okay, can you feel how that... I said about that tilting backwards thing? Absolutely. Think of that forward thing again. Okay. ♪ (C piano note) (in C major, measured) ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la ♪ Yes. ♪ (C♯ piano note) (in C♯ major, fading) ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la, la— ♪ (laughs) No, that— Whoa! That's like a journey. So on the way up, this is that transition between head and chest voice, and it is like this for every single person. And by the way, we're way higher than O Holy Night, so you're gonna have no problems. You might just need to raise your soft palate a bit, if that is something you can... It's been a while. I remember having to do stuff like that when we were doing production in phonetics. I was never any good at it. But alright, let's try it. Okay, so think of that there. ♪ (C♯ half-scale on piano) ♪ Ma, ma— ♪ Nope, missed the first note. (low register) ♪ Ma[C♯]... ma[F]... ♪ No, one more time. ♪ (high C♯ piano note) ♪ Ma[~C♯]... ♪ No. ♪ Ma[F] ♪ (C♯ piano note) ♪ Ma[F]...? ♪ (high register) ♪ Ma[F], ma[G♯], ma[D♯] ♪ ♪ (C♯ piano note) ♪ Ma ♪ (crackly) ♪ Ma... ma ♪ Yeah, look, look! Yes. Dopey. ♪ Ma[C♯], ma[D♯], ma[X], ma[X] ♪ Nope. Okay, give me, just like, a little shimmy! Alright, yep. Shake the thing off. We're gonna shimmy around, woo! Shake the thing off. Alright. (C♯ piano note) Okay! ♪ Ma— ♪ ♪ Ma[C], ma[D♯], ma[E♯], ma[~G], ma[~A], ma[G], ma[~F♯], ma[X], ma[C] ♪ That missed all over the place! Yeah, but no, you're doing good! ♪ (C♯ piano note) Okay, give me the woo-woo-woo on that. And keep shimmying! Will you give me the note again? ♪ (C♯ piano note) ♪ Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo-woo[F♯], woo, woo ♪ Okay, so you went up your head voice. Perfect. Once it was up there, it felt fine, but that transition cracked so badly. One more time. ♪ (C♯ half-scale on piano) (grating) ♪ Woo, woo— ♪ It's okay. There you go. (weakly) ♪ Woo, w-woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo ♪ No, I just... It's tricky. It's not falsetto, it's just all up here, isn't it? Well, you're going into head voice, so that is... That feeling is you've, kind of, transitioned right over. Yeah. Let's go a bit lower again, and we'll just try and remember that feeling. ♪ (G piano note) (in G major) ♪ Woo, woo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, woo, woo ♪ Yes. Keep that sound forward. ♪ (B piano note) (in B major) ♪ Wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo ♪ Yes! ♪ (C piano note) (in C major, strained) ♪ Wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo ♪ Yes, you did it. That's the one we got stuck on. ♪ (C♯ piano note) (crackly) ♪ Wo, wo, wo, w— ♪ (in C♯ major, strained) ♪ Wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo, wo ♪ Yes! Hooh! You got me there, you got me there. It wasn't a great transition, but that was a transition. Yeah, that was it. That wasn't like a big old jump. And as you can feel, you can feel it kind of wobbles at first. And the boring answer to this is just going over it a lot. Oh yeah. This would be hours of practice. But that's a thing I've never achieved before. Like, I've never... I felt that switch from one voice to the other. Yes. Ohh! Thank you! Yay! Woo-hoo! Alright, so... so, let's... Let's give the producer two versions. Okay. Let's do one that I'm comfortable with. Let's keep it in chest voice. Let's keep it low. Let's give 'em one where I can show off a bit maybe and hit most of the notes. Yes. Like, give me the first chord, but I'm gonna try and do it a cappella. So we got the production... Yes. Okay, so just— You're chilled. You're relaxed. Keep that space. Yes, and it's all down in— down in— down in chest voice. And it's all what I'm comfortable with. Alright. ♪ (C major piano chord) (loudly) ♪ O Ho— ♪ I wanna try something with you. Alright, okay. So, we're gonna grab a singer's friend, a straw. You're gonna put this in your bottle of water— Sorry, I dropped it on the floor, which is not really— That's fine, that's fine. Alright. So we're gonna put this straw... Okay. Yep. ...in your water. Right. Give me, like, an "ooh". Any note. (bubbling) ♪ Ooh ♪ There. ♪ Ooh ♪ See how much air you're putting through? (both laugh) Yeah, I see that! That's um... Cool, yeah. Yeah, that's a little too much. Okay. You want it to be like boiling water. (bubbling) ♪ Oooh ♪ Okay, so you're gonna be singing your O Holy Night on an "ooh". I was trying to power through that, wasn't I? Yeah, too much push. Okay. You want as much air as the bubbles. Uh, can I get the...? ♪ (C major piano chord) ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ Okay, that was much better. That felt much more comfortable. And it's so— It's still not great, but it's... It felt more comfortable. Yeah, and that's a real example of, it's not how much effort you put in. It's just like, it's so counterintuitive. 'Cause we feel like, "Right, I'm gonna do this", and then... Well, I wanna Pavarotti it! Yeah. But Pavarotti, you don't see him— He's not like, "Grrr!" And a lot of that, even when you're watching rock stars... It's performance. Alright. It's not like what's happening on the inside of their body. Right, let's give the producer... something to deal with. Let's go up, one octave, two octaves? Wherever I was stuck, to the point where I'm gonna have to... ♪ (testing melody and chords) (wispy falsetto) ♪ Oh ♪ Yeah, you're doing that. (laughs) Oh no! You're gonna be our choral... This is gonna be terrible. This might all need to be in head voice. This is gonna be so bad. Alright, yeah. Here we go. ♪ (C major piano chord) ♪ Oh ♪ (strained falsetto) ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night[X] ♪ ♪ (cough)[X] It—[X] ♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ Good luck! (chortles and wheezes) Whoever's... Whoever the producer is... good luck! Thank you so much, Tom. My name is Adam Neely. I run a channel that explores what music means, and what it means to be a musician. He's gonna hate the high version on the Internet, which is amazing. (chuckles) Tom, you are a brave man for embarking upon this project. So I salute you, sir. Hey Tom, how's it going? Hello! Yeah, doing well. Looking forward to seeing whatever it is you've done with this, 'cause... Yeah, I've had some fun. I don't think I gave you much to work with. You actually— There was one take of you singing O Holy Night that was pretty good, when you're singing in the chest voice. When you're down the octave. (chuckles) It actually sounded pretty nice. I figured we could listen to... just listen to it. I'm gonna hate every moment of this. Just go for it! (laughs) Yeah, of course, of course. Okay, so this is without any of the stuff that I did to it. And I added a little bit of piano background. A little accompaniment. This is what we have right here. (with piano accompaniment) ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ I... ♪ It is the night ♪ ♪ of our dear savior's birth ♪ I've just experienced, I think like, full-body cringe reaction at my own voice there, but it is— it is saved by... God, just putting the piano in the background makes such a difference! I think it does. Honestly, I mean, I'm not your— I'm not you. And I don't have the same... I can feel my cheeks flushing red at this point! But now, with the magic of modern music technology, we can tune it. So this is slightly— It's been slightly tuned. This is what it sounds like. (subtly smoother vocals) ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ I mean, that's better. That felt— That felt better. Yeah, yeah. It still sounds like me, and I still feel like... there's a lot of singing training I'd need to make that work, as like having... I dunno, it's still my voice, and I don't think my voice is good enough to do singing yet. Well I mean, there was a few things, and when I was tuning it, I pointed this out. We can look at actually how the notes are... Oh, okay. ...are lying on the tuning scale right here. This high note right here? This was perfect. Really? When you sang it, it was perfect. It's right there. The tone color I think you could maybe improve with vocal training. That's the big thing. Okay, I... So, you've got the words for this, and I don't. What do you mean by "tone colour"? So, when you're— I'm not a singer or a singing coach, but I've definitely worked a lot with tuning vocals. It's a lot about resonance and placement of vowels. In other words, shaping vowels in your— in your mouth. And you can see that you're doing a vibrato right here. Yeah. Like, this up and down, that warbling of the pitch. And you can see that it kind of, uh... An ideal vibrato, with an ideal vocal control, kind of looks like a sine wave. Just up and down, perfect around the pitch. Yeah, that's not... It starts that way, and towards the end, it opens up into a more controlled vibrato, which is great. When you say— So that should be going in amplitude at the same...? I'm trying to work out— 'cause that's like the function of... Well, this is the function of pitch. ...the frequency change. Exactly, yeah. And it should be, in controlled vibrato. Controlled vibrato normally goes alongside the tempo of whatever the piece of music you're singing or playing. Oh, okay! Mine was completely uncontrolled. It's just... I never even thought that that was a thing singers could control. Yeah, that's something that you spend a lot of time practicing, being able to control the vibrato that way. Wow! And just... It makes it feel more like you're connected to the rhythm that you're singing. So you're doing vibrato on 16th or 32nd notes or something like that, and hitting...? More or less, yeah. And you can control it, depending on what... what the style of music is... I mean, I didn't even have a metronome in the background. So okay, fair enough. That's... The timing, there's still a rhythm, even if there isn't a metronome going on. I mean, I'll take the pitch. I'll take matching the pitch on that one. But the rest... yeah. Yeah. So one thing that I was noticing when I was going through it is... at the ends of phrases, that's when the pitch got a little bit waffly. And that's a thing that comes from breath support, being able to control the ends and the beginnings of notes. And that's something that's hard for Melodyne to actually correct for. But I did my best. I think it sounds pretty good, honestly. We should point out, Auto-Tune is a brand name here. Right. This is Melodyne. This is pitch correction. "Autotune" is the title, but yeah. So... and I'm guilty of this. "Autotune" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase for any kind of pitch correction. Yeah. So sometimes, I'll say I'm "autotuning" you, but the name of the program I'm using is Melodyne, which is more of the industry standard for this kind of pitch correction. Auto-Tune can do this, but Auto-Tune you normally associate with that, like, T-Pain effect, the really robotic effect. I think it's really interesting though, that like... even with Melodyne and even with you, you've done this for so long with so many things... you can't turn an untrained voice into... a trained, "this could go out on a record". (sighs) Well, uh... I mean, people try! Yeah, we could try(!) There are enough YouTubers out there with Christmas singles that people try. Well, there are other stages here. I wanna emphasize that. Because if we were going into a recording studio, I could probably — or somebody who is more trained than me — could probably vocal coach you into getting better and better takes. And also, we could do something called "vocal comping", which is record the same thing many, many times, and then take the very best bits from each recording, and then put them together into, like, this Frankenstein take, which is actually very, very common, and honestly goes a longer way to creating the feeling of a professional recording, or sounding like a professional singer, than just Melodyne. So if you had Melodyne and the practice of comping going on here, we could put together something pretty... pretty legit. I just need to sing every line 50 times, and you would go, "I nailed that note that time, that note that time." Exactly. Chuck a load of piano and production underneath, a bit of reverb on there, and yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um... So basically yeah, I just need you to sing this 51 more times... (both laugh) ...and we're good to go(!) I never want to hear this song again. (laughs) Having said that, you've got the head voice take left. Yes. Okay. Okay. This is the head voice take. I'll do it, just to spare you, I'll do it without taking the Melodyne off. Oh no, no, no, go for it. You might as well. Okay. Alright, so... 'Cause I haven't heard it back. I haven't heard this at all. I've heard it when I produced it, but I haven't listened to it back. I've got no idea what it's gonna sound like, other than I remember the voice not being good. ...Okay. Fantastic. So... Yeah, here we go. So I added a little bit of strings too, just to, you know, have it. I like strings. String section's good. Yeah, yeah. (strained falsetto) ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night[X] ♪ ♪ (cough)[X] It—[X] ♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ That sounds like someone doing a bad impression... of, like, a 70-year-old grandmother who can't sing. (laughs) That's... That's appalling! Agh, okay, right. It's amazing, but, you know... I hate this! A lot of singing, a lot of music is just the confidence to do it. And this is not that! Yeah. You are holding back, Tom. Give us the juice(!) (chuckles nervously) That's... that's... That's not music. That's a war crime. Come on. (both giggle) So, okay. This is with it, with tuning. So I really had to spend some time on it. But this is technically in-tune. Yep. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for listening to this so many times, to make that work! ♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night[X] ♪ ♪ (cough)[X] It—[X] ♪ ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ You couldn't have trimmed the cough out the middle of that, could you?! No, that was the fun part. It's like, it's part of the arrangement. It's also still clearly someone singing so far out of their range. It... (sighs) Tone color is an important thing in singing, and you can't... you can't change that. Tone color is how all of the harmonics of the voice come together. And it... We don't have a good way of synthesizing that yet, to be able to correct for that. I'm sure technology will develop in the next 5-10 years to be able to really go in and really edit vocals like that. But for right now, we just... we're not there, we're not there. We can only really correct for timing and pitch. So, you know, vocals are a lot, and singing is a lot more than just timing and pitch. You know, there's musicality also involved in it. (both laugh) Okay, so then... Oh god, there's a "then"! Oh yes, of course there's a "then"! (chuckles) This is the fun one, so what I did... Oh, "this" is the fun one! Oh yeah, no, they're all fun for me, Tom. They're all fun. So, because you sang it in the same key, just down an octave... Oh no, okay. I could take the first one... of you singing in chest voice, which I thought was pretty good... and then I could cut it up and then time align it to your head voice version. So now, these are the two versions, which are aligned on top of one another. And then I took that chest voice version, and then I doubled it a bunch of times alongside all the doubles of the head voice, the falsetto versions. You spent so long on this! I'm so sorry! Thank you! Oh no, it's so fun. And then... And then here's the sheet music for what we're about to... (belly laughs) This is O Holy Night, the Tom Scott Choral Edition. I wrote in the cough and all of that, just for... I was about to say! (both laugh) You know, this is fun. "How do you notate a cough?" I know the answer to that now, It's on screen. You have a little 'X' in time. Most of it was in time. So this is the full version. Let me... Let's listen to it. Let me just do that, do that, do that. (garbled choir) ♪ O Holy night ♪ (solo)♪ O Holy night ♪ ♪ The stars are brightly shining ♪ ♪ It is the night ♪ (solo)♪ (cough)[X] It—[X] ♪ (choir) ♪ It is the night of our dear savior's birth ♪ Good luck! (both chuckle) There we go, okay. Merry Christmas, Adam. [Caption+ by JS* https://caption.plus] Merry Christmas, Tom. Merry Christmas.

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Channel: Tom Scott plus

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Keywords: tom scott, tomscott

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Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 11 2021