KVR Audio

lingyai · Post by **lingyai** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:10 pm

This has been bugging me a bit lately... I've been editing some vocals in Melodyne. It's something of a godsend for me as I tend to sing a little bit flat without noticing it. Sometimes, I catch it when playing back, but other times, not, and so only when looking at the Melodyne blobs on the note grid do I see that I'm off pitch.

Now, sometimes, when I nudge the blob some cents up so that it is spot-on, I certainly hear an improvement.

But other times, the imperfect version -- provided I'm only, say, 10-15 cents flat to begin with -- actually sounds better to me. Not because of any Melodyne artifacts / other un-naturalness (which, for what I do with Melodyne, are minimal or nil), but just -- I don't know, my ears are happier.

Now, maybe I've got something wrong with my ears or brain which makes me this way, dunno. My question for my KVR buddies is -- apart from special FX, such as thickening a vocal with detuned stereo tricks, for example -- has anyone else ever found slightly imperfectly tuned vocals prefereable to those 100% on target (again, assuming the latter sound natural)?

Septimon · Post by **Septimon** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:33 pm

might have to do with "Well temperament", don't have the time nor the precise knowledge to properly explain it, just google it

garryknight · Post by **garryknight** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 7:24 pm

Depending somewhat on the genre, very slightly flat vocals can sound better than or as good as perfectly in-tune vocals. But even slightly sharp vocals really grate on my ear.

lfm · Post by **lfm** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:37 pm

Many techniques in synths and otherwise are built on blend+detuning to enrich the flavor - so why not vocals.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:36 am

Melodyne enforces Equal Temperament tuning. That's usually great & perfect, but classical trained violin players for instance use slightly different finger positions (and thus pitches) for a Eb and D#. On the piano the same note, for violins it is not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_%28music%29
Also on a trumpet the quarter & fifth intervals are at exact 3:2 cq 2:3 ratios and thus 1.50000 instead of 1.498307 what the ratio for that interval is in ET tuning. This is a difference of merely 2 cents.

Another phenomena is "blue" notes: these are inbetween a minor & major third and sound quite right! But in tune they are certainly not.

So to conclude: trust your ears! You can make everything "perfect", not only the pitch but also timing snap onto the grid. But if you go too far, you'll remove the soul, the human imperfect element which makes it nice to listen to.

CinningBao · Post by **CinningBao** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:48 am

lingyai wrote:... when I nudge the blob some cents up so that it is spot-on,..

This is the problem - don't reference the screen blob to determine it's pitch - just use your ears to correct. Some singing styles suit being slightly flat, others slightly sharp.. some songs sound better when feature notes are sung slightly sharp or flat.. don't think 'notes are notes', because, they aren't. All musical styles are different in this respect.

Much like BertKoors explanation of Eb and D#, though I use the B# and Cb example (probably incorrectly!), the many 'wrong' notes between each 'perfect' note aren't wrong - they are part of the expressive choices.

It's funny, I slip in and out of phases of being annoyed at 'wrong' notes - Tears for Fears 'Every body wants to rule the world' is a great example of popular music prior to easy pitch correction tools - I was 10 or so when it came out, and I was frustrated at the time that no-one cared about the miss-hits (wrong notes). So, earlier this year I loaded the first verse into Melodyne polyphonic mode and fixed the notes! Listen to the original and compare it with this - the change is veeery subtle, but to my ears (because I'm so familiar with the original) sounds a touch better.

https://app.box.com/shared/static/hs1eg ... vjvkkc.mp3

Sorry for rambling, but in harmony with Berkoor's message, a good, expressive vocal doesn't necessarily need to hit each note pitch perfectly.

lingyai · Post by **lingyai** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:52 am

Thanks all for your comments, folks. Sorry for not replying earlier -- for some reason the mailbot didn't notify me of responses.

I appreciate the explanations, and feel a little better now, i.e. feeling more confident about letting my ears judge (my default mode anyway, but as it's my own voice under the microscope, I got a bit insecure) as opposed to my eyes.

Mind you, I'm not aiming for souless perfection, just trying to avoid howlers!

I've continued editing this week, and, more and more am comfortable "overruling" Melodyne when needed. Another thing which helped was looking, in polyphonic mode, at the original of one of the songs I'm covering -- Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," which I've always loved for its beautiful, haunting vocals. And I saw that he's "missing" some notes which, when "fixed", just don't sound right -- not because they depart from what I've always heard (I've no problem with that) but, well ... ears just ... no likey!

And actually, I'm realising that going with your ear is especially important when a word or continuous phrase glides among a few notes -- then there are shades of grey which will have to be tolerated no matter what.

Nonetheless, Melodyne is just awesome, beyond its correction capabilities. Am getting the hang of making small changes (e.g. in formant, and note transition) which make a big enough, nice difference to keep, without sounding either artificial or being beyond what I could actually do if I did more takes.

Thanks again!

Using remediably imperfect vocal tuning -- thoughts?