What is Pitch Correction and How to Use It | Music Production For Beginners

[Music] hello there in this video we're going to discuss one of the hottest topics in music production and that is pitch correction pitch correction means a few things but primarily it means I can take a recording of anyone's voice and use some quite advanced and really accessible technology to completely manipulate a voice to sound like this I could go on but I'm guessing you're already starting to get the idea of how pitch correction actually sounds in 1998 sure had a hit song by the name of believe believe was different to any other hit around that time because it contains some seriously heavy handed pitch correction on the lead vocal line and of course the melody in other words we weren't just listening to sure singing we were listening to a version of a voice and melody that had been heavily altered or engineered now this created a hot debate in and around the music industry we all know that sure could sing but what if this new technology fell into the hands of the wrong people what if people who couldn't sing we're now able to release hits and become stars some folk really hated it others jump straight on it and yet here we are in 2019 and pitch correction has now found its way into almost every level of contemporary music production it's impossible to tune into a commercial radio station today and hear a track that doesn't have pitch correction on the vocals and well I hate to have to break it to you but depending on which radio station you listen to it's highly likely that your favorite artists are also using pitch correction over their lead vocals at large shows and gigs it's not just become acceptable to use it's something that we all have to understand and use and this is regardless of the quality of this singer we were I'm not saying it's here to stay but it's definitely going to be around for a while so we may as well get our heads and our ears around it in this video I'm going to quickly talk you through the basics of pitch correction we're going to look at two different types of pitch correction and discuss how and when to use it I'm gonna show you how you can use pitch correction for a more natural sound for example changing the pitch of one particular note on something like an organic jazz recording now we're also going to look at some important tools which will help us achieve the in fashion contemporary sound which we hear on the radio stations and also how we can use pitch correction to create a crazy but kind of awesome focal line or effect that pops out now the type of pitch correction we will use will depend completely on the genre of music we're recording and of course for the reason why we're recording for example I might use a quick pitch correction plug-in for a demo track and then use a more advanced pitch correction application for a song that's been commercially released and it's going to be played on radio so let's start looking at both of them but maybe kick things off by starting with a live algorithmic pitch correction now the nice thing about digital recording is the ability to restore and record a number of vocal takes and I've got a number of lead vocals in this project here we record multiple takes of vocals because we want to get the vocal line perfect that's what we're after and it's the most important part of the track so we also record a number of takes to double up the lead vocal line and what I say doubling up I mean that there are two or more vocal takes of the same vocal line like the melody for example mixed in together to beef it up they might have different effects or pitching settings to make their vocals stand out more on this track I've got here let's solo the lead vocal track and just have a quick listen [Music] we'll find I won't hide you you're always gonna be enough so I won't stop all that sign it sounds pretty good and look it's a really good singer but now let's solo another vocal take and just have a listen to them both together now you can hear that these two takes are not completely in tune with each other and that doesn't mean they're necessarily both out of tune tuning can be subjective with vocals because our voice doesn't always hit right in the center of a note and things like vibrato and how loud we're singing can cause fluctuations in our pitch even the best thing is they're never going to record too vocal takes that are exactly the same we're going to look at the first kind of pitch correction I'm going to open the pitch correction plug-in which is a plug-in that we can load straight onto a track now that means that the signal from our lead vocal is being sent through the plug-in and in real time the plug-in analyzes the vocals recognizes a pitch and we can then use the parameters inside the plug-in to alter the pitch correction now the first point with regard to a pitch correction plug-in is that it needs to be the very first plug-in in your signal chain it's not going to work if it's trying to analyze a signal that already has reverbs and delays in front of it in terms of pitch correction well it's kind of similar to an electric guitar tuner you plug your guitar in you play a note and the tuner tells you exactly where the pitch is now guitar tuners have been around for years so the pitch recognition side of things isn't necessarily all that new although our computer processes and the advanced algorithms can obviously analyze the pitch quickly and have some juice left over to instantly correct the audio signal the neat thing is that we can define how much pitch correction we want to apply and where we want the pitch to be moved during the correction there are three main sections in the plugin on the Left we can define how much we want the plug-in to correct the pitch in the middle we can set a scale or enter notes that the singer is singing so the plug-in is moving the correction to the correct notes on the right we can change the foreman which basically means we can change how the vocals actually sound I'm gonna deal with that in a moment when we hit play the pitch of the vocals is represented by a blue line which you can see here above the piano keys in the middle of the plug-in above the scale source we can change between internal-external and the chord track now this is where we choose the notes that the vocalist is actually singing you can manually enter notes use a scale and play the actual notes on an external MIDI keyboard or you can get the chords from the lead vocal from the core track the default settings chromatic and that's a pretty good place to start because it means that the pitch correction is assuming then it can move a note to any note on the piano keyboard to activate the pitch correction we have to actually go to the Corrections section on the left hand side now watch what happens to the pitch indicator when I start moving this speed control [Music] lower settings in this section will give you a more natural approach so keep it nice and low and your track will sound more natural this can be perfect for leave vocal demos or backing tracks when you don't have time to analyze and fix every individual note it's only making small and discreet changes to the pitch the speed section basically defines how much you're gonna sound like sure turn it all the way up and you've got that classic sound almost a synthetic sound the tolerance is about how the audio is analyzed and what it impacts so let's start turning them both up and see how it sounds so now we can be a bit more specific over the notes we're pitching let's go to back to the scale source if we know the key of our track we can select a scale and the pitch correct plug-in will only correct those notes now that's pretty cool if you know the notes the vocalist is actually singing you can custom enter those notes and the pitch correct will only apply to whatever you select now let me give you a quick example if I only select C's here everything's going to be pitched to C's and it sounds pretty bad because the pitch Corrections really working hard but as I start to add other notes it starts to sound a lot more reasonable a good singer should only really require the chromatic setting a singer who's struggling with pitch may require you to manually enter more notes and force the plug-in to apply the correction to these nights alone it's still sounding pretty crazy because I'm going gangbusters over here on the pitch correction tab if I lower these guys down then once again it's more natural and organic while we're on the topic of gangbusters you can also transpose the vocal so let's go crazy and bump it up twelve semitones so what i'm doing here is moving the vocal up to exactly the same notes just a register higher that's pretty extreme and it's going to sound a bit rough let's start messing with the pitch correction settings see how it's a lot more natural when we drag speed and tolerance down now the haters are probably going to hate me but seriously w lead vocal and apply an octave up or down turn the crazy vocal track down and it's actually gonna sound really unique in some places especially if you wanted to beef a chorus up and you can also transpose down one more freaking awesome thing that you can do is change the foreman now in simple terms it just means we're changing the tone of the vocals we're messing with the harmonics I guess and you can really get some unique tones here which work really well for that contemporary type of effect bass pitch correction or you can also use it to make it sound like somebody else is singing a harmony which is pretty useful if you've only got one singer you're calling me once again you can control how much you use and you can of course combine it with how much pitch correction you're adding so it's really important to point out at this point the pitch correction is not about pitch correction anymore as you can see we can change the vocal melody we can change the register of the voice we can change the tone of the voice and we can also change the pitching characteristics very quickly get that really current and commercial vocal sound most importantly you can still achieve a natural sound for more organic recording or go crazy on the synthesized sound if that's what you're actually after using the pitch correct plug-in is really easy and it's a really effective way of pitching vocals but it's important to note that it will only affect the vocals while the plugins actually activated and it's not doing anything to our original audio file so you can never mess it up too much just deactivate it also because it's a plug-in there's a load of presets here that you can use to find your way so now we're going to move on to another type of pitch correction this is a more advanced type of pitch correction but don't be scared because it's really easy to use and you can do so much more with it the next form of pitch correction is editing based once again it's almost wrong to call it pitch correction because in reality it actually does so so much more than just correct the pitch now we can get in and change individual notes completely refigure melodies and harmonies and also create harmonies from scratch it's almost the complete vocal editing workstation what I've done here is disabled the pitch correction plug-in a lot of doors have built-in pitch editors and Cubase has very audio it's an instant way of being able to analyze the track audio and give us a visual representation of the vocal pitch it's a vent bass so to activate it I first double-click on an event now I can see the audio waveform down the bottom and double clicking on the audio event gives me the editing ABB's over in the inspector on the left-hand side I'm clicking on the very audio tab to see the settings for pitch correction and now let me show you the process that actually occurs when we pitch correct something first I select edit very audio straight up you see the computer quickly analyzed the vocal and the waveform down in the lower zone is still there but now there's a piano scroll on the left hand side and blocks with squiggly lines through them over the top of the waveform let me just play this section for you it's pretty cool obviously the blocks are the notes that the singer is singing and we can see these notes on this grid now the squiggly lines are the micro pitch the analysis is so sensitive that it can even pick up vibrato or scoops in and out of vocals and this is represented by the squiggly line now the important thing about pitch correction is that the analysis of the vocal is accurate now kinda looks like a kid or a child has got a pencil and just scrawled all over the page but the micro pitch is one of the reasons why editing based pitch correction is important let's have a look at some pitch correction basics first up you can move these blocks around holding down with your mouse and moving up and down well snap them into the piano notes on the left and you can see these notes represented out here on the grid hold down the shift button and now you can slowly drag them up and down in between the blocks now being able to move the blocks means two things we can apply pitch correction and we can also completely change the melody so if this thing is left and you think another note might work you can simply move the pitch around and you've instantly reconfigured the melody just don't tell the lead singer we can apply pitch correction to one note or block or select a number of blocks to apply pitch correction to once again we can move them or we can start to use the built-in editors over in the inspector on the left hand side for example the quantize slider will them all into the grid the straighten curve will start to smooth out those squiggly lines which is really removing all the vibrato and any fluctuations in pitch it's very handy if you've got someone who really struggles to hold a note for any length and time and also very handy for the shear effect so check it out as with the pitch correction plugin we can change the form one of the most powerful features with editing based pitch correction is the ability to edit individual notes let's have a look at some of the things you can do to one note in particular I'm going to open this up in a full-screen view I'm going to turn on the smart controls notice that there's now a number of handles around each individual note this is one of the coolest workflows not just for correcting pitch but for editing vocals and if for some reason the analysis has not separated two notes I can just hover my mouse around the bottom get the scissors and chop them into separate events and treat them individually in the top two handles on either side I can use the tilt feature to start editing the micro pitch to the vocal note their handle in the middle at the top lets me straighten the pitch curve so get rid of the vibrato and then the handle in the middle at the bottom is the quantize feature which locks the notes to the grid this is really the point where it becomes so much more than just the terminology pitch correction the bottom right handle will raise or lower the volume so we can instantly change the volume on one note if the singer has just gone too loud or we can raise it if this thing has not gone loud enough on another note now that's really useful for someone who doesn't have a whole lot of experience singing into a microphone on the bottom left we can change the format we've already discussed this but it's really cool being able to do it in this manner because we can give each block or each note an individual sound and we can really come up with something crazy and interesting and that's particularly cool for current with pitch correction I know it doesn't sound natural but it's what the kids want and remember use as much of it or as little of it as you want the next super amazing thing about this editing workflow is the ability to edit timing so check this out if a singers early I can change the start point for the night now we could always do that before but now we've got this awesome time stretching algorithm which means we can stretch a node out so it lasts a little longer or make it shorter and it sounds great it's really cool for editing a load of vocals which you can do all in this one editor so we can change the timing now I love working with the chord track I can write with 3rd and I can use it to control pretty much almost anything inside Cubase I now use the pitch correction data and call track together to generate up to four harmonies and you can try a number of different voicing settings I can also turn the pitch correction data into a music lead sheet or score and put lyrics and chords in there so I can quickly take the melody that I've just sung to a band and I can start rehearsing or recording none of these edits are final Cubase remembers everything and it stores everything so it will always give you the option to make a new copy of the vocal you've recorded at the start so you've always got your original vocal line and you can easily reset all of these correction changes and just start all over again or copy your vocal to another track and make a different version which could be really cool if you're doubling out a lead vocal there are so many options pitch correction does so much more than just correct the pitch of a melody but it's the basic concept of pitch correction that's crucial to the process and that is that the software analyzes the melody and then it gives us a whole bunch of really cool tools that allow us to either correct it in real time or get in there and do it note for note finally the most important concept with pitch correction is knowing when to use it and when not to and gain it comes back to what you're recording and what you're going to use that recording for it's not just for vocal so you can pitch correct anything monophonic like a bass guitar a violin or a guitar solo so just remember it's everywhere and I'd suggest that any producer in this day and age should really have a handle on how works in when to use it and look it's not just for producers if you're a singer songwriter or a songwriter and you need a bit of pitching love to get your demos across the line then this is a perfect solution if you're just starting out it's a great way to be able to learn to sing into a microphone record your voice and learn how to better pitch your vocal recordings hey thanks for taking the time to stop by let's start a conversation down here in the comments below about how you use pitch correction and feel free to shout out with any questions especially if you're looking at getting into door recording and you just want to know more about doors and pitch correction software there's plenty of how-to videos on the Cubase youtube channel which provide an in-depth guide to pitch correction so make sure you subscribe check them out give us a thumbs up if you've learnt something from watching this video and thanks again for stopping by I'll catch you in another video

Channel: Cubase

Views: 52,998

Keywords: what is pitch correction, how to use pitch correction, music production for beginners, pitch, pitch correction, vocal recording, editing vocals, correcting a vocal recording, manipulating voices, autotune, VariAudio, pitch correction on vocals, what is pitch, pitch meaning, voice tuner, basics of pitch correction, changing the pitch on a voice, autotune voice, autotune VST, Cher effect, DAW, Cubase

Id: DnNPShT9uoQ

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2019