How To Make Melodyne Sound Natural - Tips and Tricks

today's video is going to teach you the key ways to tune vocal tracks while preserving the characteristics that make the performance natural and as I go over these tips I'm also going to show you how I like to work so that I can make your life easier when you go try to implement all these different strategies and if you can master these concepts artists will love you that being said this video is gonna be for people who already have some basic knowledge of how Melodyne works it's also okay if you don't because the strategies are conceptual there are a lot of other tutorial videos out there that you can go watch to figure out how the software works and then you can apply as the things in this video afterward this video is also for the engineers who want to improve their Melodyne skills and also for all the producers out there who are having to take on more of the engineering responsibilities especially if you're an independent musician and you don't have the resources to pay an engineer for certain parts of the vocal production process so let's get right into it in order to demonstrate these strategies that we're going to employ to keep the vocals in melody and sounding natural I'm going to go ahead and use a project I worked on recently with heavy love and the song is called quarantine and chill which just recently came out we're gonna go ahead and use his raw vocals which I'm sure is unforgivable so I went ahead and transferred the raw vocals into Melodyne for us already and let's just go ahead and pull up and Melodyne and the first thing I like to do is just pull up the zoom tool so I can get a good feel for what's going on I like to be in pretty close so I can get into the details of it now the way I like to work is to use the da for all the transport controls instead of Melodyne because if you use the onboard transport controls of Melodyne and you actually press the spacebar like you normally would with any DAW then it will transport you to where your die is and not were you wearing Melodyne and a completely ruined workflow so that's why I like to work that way so what do we need to do to keep the vocals more natural well what we shouldn't do is select all the vocals and go to the macro knob and just slightly to a hundred percent and call it a day to be clear this is gonna take a lot more work than it would be to just do that but in the end it'll be worth it because it's gonna sound a whole lot better so the first thing we want to do to keep the vocals natural is to avoid adjusting the transition points between the notes and this is one area where I think most people get it wrong and it's the most essential to preserve the human quality of the vocal performance so let's go ahead and take a look at one example of that and what I want you to pay attention to specifically is when he says the word baby quarantine and show you ain't gotta go nowhere baby [Music] so it's not far off right now but let's see what we can do when we take a look at it so if we were to correct this as normal we would probably just open up the pitch tool double click on each note and see how this sounds babe which is not bad but we can make it even better so what I noticed is when the translation of the note happens it's a little bit flat on the on the very first part of the note and then it goes a little bit sharp after that so what we can do is open up the note separation tool so we can split the note apart in a couple of different sections and attack them differently don't know where babe so what we've done is we've preserved the human quality of it because he actually starts the note a little bit a little sharp on the D and when he's going up to the e but that's part of what makes his voice his voice and as long as he ends up at the right note then we're making good progress on making it sound more pleasant to the ear while preserving the natural qualities in the human voice now what we could do is we could we could correct that to be exactly in the correct Center and see how this sounds babe and it has just oh you can almost tell that it's been tuned that way where it's a little bit harder to tell if we move it back to where it was it's a lot more subtle now let's go ahead and look at another example of this and this time I want you to pay attention to what's happening in the word know I think of YouTube a girl you know what time it is yeah so we kind of hear that the Dino on the second half of the note has been it's a little flat to be that he was going for right there so if we wanted to correct that while being mindful of the no transition we might do something like this I think of I think a future beggar you know what some it is yeah so as you can see I correct at the beginning and the end of that vocal run but I kept the transition where it was even though it looks like it's a bit off it's actually a lot more natural of a sound than if I had corrected it to the middle which let's let's take a look and see what happens when I do that right now so if I correct this part of the note where it would be chromatically let's see what it sounds like I think of you to the beggar you know what time it is yeah it's not too bad but it could sound more natural and I'd be better if you just left it alone however there is one exception to this rule and that's when you are looking at whether or not the vocalist overshot or undershot the note that they're trying to hit in which case you actually would want to mess with the transition and where they first hit the note in comparison to where they hold the note so listen to the very end of this phrase he starts the note a bit flat and then his vibrato kind of brings him a bit sharp so we're gonna figure out how to handle his vocals in this situation or to preserve the natural qualities and his movies while also correcting for the pitch know what time it is yeah you know what time it is yeah now another really important thing for me to point out here is that when Melodyne is analyzing all the notes it's doing so on an average and not necessarily where the note should be so you need to go through and you need to figure out exactly where the note should be accurately represent it and then fix it yourself and this is where the macro will really let you down so what I've done here is I've split the note apart and the initial attack of the note has been corrected to the right pitch as well as the vibrato even though it still runs a little bit sharp I'm gonna leave it that way because that's the quality of his/her broto and that's what makes him sound like him better you know what time it is yeah and I even forgot to leave that other one as it was and if you hear that you overdid something like I did where I just left the note chromatically in the center which I didn't want it to go ahead and select the note and then reset the individual edit of the pitch Center and it would bring it back to where it was recorded now here's a little tip for when you want to use the note separation tool in a natural way all we split the note where the notes deviations crosses the very middle or where this the pitch Center is supposed to be so in this case if we pull up on our separation tool we can divide it right here and that's the most natural I found the most natural place for you to split it from so you can adjust each one individually know what some is you know what some it is yeah now when you're splitting the notes apart and trying to be mindful of the transition you can use the pitch transition tool but in my experience it's it sounds a lot better to do it manually than it does to use that tool so next we have the third tip I want to give you and that's pay attention and be careful correcting the blue notes or any other embellishment in the vocal performance I see a lot of people correcting these - a chromatic note which has a significant impact on how natural it ends up sounding vocalists bend in and out of the notes just like guitar players do so you want to be really careful about this and you don't want to overdo it with melody and by attempting to fix these blue notes they're essential to the natural character of the vocal so let's go ahead and look at an example of that so when I play to someone you were to focus on the part of the melody he sings when he's saying the words you and that's a fine oh but the song you can't lead a prayer that's a--fun so what you'll notice right away is that the words you and that's a fine are both out of key that b-flat is nine key Oh an a-flat is nine key either but that's okay because again that's a natural part of his performance so what you can do with these is you can move them up closer to where their picture center should be so in this case the b-flat would be pushed down a bit and you can just hold all and click by the way to drag these notes down and you can move this a fly closer to the a well maybe crack that note a little bit and then see how this sounds you can lead a grand that's a fun I think the feet will me if you feel it's necessary though no a really good example of this is actually in the hook at this song when he's saying quarantine and chill the first half of the hook has a Blue Note in it and the second half of the note has the same melody but it's actually supposed to be in key on the second half only so it would be a really good example to show you the difference between the two and how you actually might want to include both so let's go ahead and take a listen to the hook and I want you to focus on where he says the word chill on the first half and where he says the word chill on the second half and the difference between those two in the melody yeah that's quarantine and chill this quarantine the chair baby so let's go ahead and split these notes up a little bit and see what's going on with the melody that's core girl s quarantine in show just going to show you an example of how I would probably pitch correct this part so I can see these are a little bit flat something I'm going to go ahead and double click to get them to where Melodyne thinks their pitch center should be drag this one sharp because about I was incorrect in that circumstance yeah that's quarantine and qu okay so according to the scale this notion of should be here yeah that's porn scene and qu but it sounds really weird so we don't want to mess with that part because it's actually an intentional part of the melody but if we go to the second half of the hook that's quarantine I'm gonna split up the notes one more time like I did with the first half of the hook and then we're going to take a look at the difference in the melody especially where he says chill okay so this might be your starting place this quarantine the Jail babies okay so as we can see when he says chill this time he actually he actually goes all the way up to the B whereas over here he only ever makes it to the B flat so this is something that needs to be conscious of and make sure that you know which part is supposed to be part of the performance and which one is a yeah that's porn scene and chill this quarantine the chill baby now I wouldn't sound right either to correct it the way that he had it before because it would sound like this yeah that's quarantine the jail baby which is not right that's not what the mo is supposed to be this quarantine the jail baby that's what the melody supposed to be so there's all kinds of vocal embellishments that happen all the time a lot of stuff doesn't even make sense right away that it would be different on the first half than the second half but that's exactly how vocal performances go and you really need to be cognizant when you are editing the melody because really you have a responsibility to the artist and you don't want to mess with their melodies there are actually even situations that you come across where the vocal melody is sitting right in between two notes they've been between two semitones and it gives us sort of strained quality that is key to the emotional output of their performance and it definitely wouldn't be the same if you corrected it which leads me to the next point which is you need to use your ears and not your eyes when you're doing this type of work because a lot of times what ends up looking right doesn't sound right and doesn't feel right and vice versa they have to remember that music is not an exact science and the voice does a lot of things that don't necessarily look right but they do sound and feel right and that's the most important thing so I put together a couple of examples that demonstrate this concept let's take a listen to this section of the vocal Ben don't then run up the stairs man you see where he says stairs it's actually right in between two notes and if you corrected it then it might sound like this and then run up the stairs marathon so that's not quite right now if we brought it down to where it should be diatonically then it might sound like this and then run up the stairs marathon you can hear it dipping so actually where it does belong is right in between those two notes so let's go ahead and reset the pitch Center on that Bend dog then run up the stairs marathon and actually when he says marathon the exact same thing applies to now if we zoom in a little bit we can see that the apex of the pitch line that Melodyne draws for you is actually in between the two notes on marathon as well so if we drag this up to the pitch Center let's see what that sounds like and go then run up the stairs marathon which is not bad now let's see if we corrected a down one and had a bigger jump in dog then run up the stairs marathon so you're gonna have to make a judgment call in these types of situations to see what sounds the most natural to you to me and I liked it right where it was when he recorded it so let's go ahead and move that back to where was Ben dog then run up the stairs marathon which to me sounds the most natural of all of them so when you look at the grid that Melodyne has created for you neither of those knows to look like they're in the right place but they sound like they're in the right place if you want to make it sound more natural so that's why it's important to use your ears and now your eyes when you are making the cyber decision so to give you another example of this I just want to bring us back to an earlier part of the song and I want you to listen to the way that he sings the word home know when we both no need to kiss intent okay so you can hear that he doesn't quite hit to know exactly on so what we can do is we can take the note separation tool split it apart at the transition and then I also want to grab the pitch drift to a halt and go and literally bring it all the way down so let's see how this oh well we both need distance you might think that this looks a bit extreme but actually the way that he hits it if you are employing the very first principle that we talked about by being mindful of the transition between the notes you can actually go more extreme with the center of the notes and it will sound the way that it should sound so let's go back to the way it was no when we both no need to listen and then this is how we changed it no when we both no need to kiss until we both walk so the beginning in the end of the note I've actually been preserved but the center though now we've gone pretty extreme with and you can do that now as a bonus work float set that I want to give you guys if your mellow dining multiple vocals or your mellow dining background vocals make sure that you that you've already tuned the main vocal and then while you're tuning the background vocals make sure you have the main vocal playing so that you're not correcting to the wrong note and you are sure about the way that the melody is supposed to go with the main vocal all the these little imperfections and idiosyncrasies and the voice are actually what gives it the heart and soul for the most part and the emotional qualities as well the pitch can always be corrected but the emotional content and the take can't you just have to be aware that you're not influencing the emotions too much with the way that you are correcting the pitch and like I said this process does take extra time and effort but if you really care about the how the end product turns out then you'll want to put in the extra time and effort to make us out as good as it can and honestly if you don't feel like you have time to do tedious tasks like this people hire me to do it for them all the time and if that sounds like you just shoot me an email with what you need done and also include it in the description below I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and let me know if there's anything you want me to go more in depth on alright see you next time

Channel: Sensho

Views: 19,191

Rating: 4.9639235 out of 5

Keywords: how to make melodyne sound natural, celemony, melodyne, how to tune vocals, pitch correction, melodyne vocals, make harmonies in melodyne, melodyne pro tools tutorial, melodyne project, how to melodyne, melodyne before and after, vocal tuning, melodyne artifacts, melodyne vocal editing, melodyne vocal runs, melodyne in 2020, melodyne tips, sensho, melodyne tutorial, editing vocals, tips on tuning vocals, melodyne studio, pitch correction plugin, pro tools, autotune

Id: APs_IEOgTxo

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020