KVR Audio

musicbookscience · Post by **musicbookscience** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:57 am

Hello , hope you are well. I apologize if this does not fall into this topic, let me know and I will delete this.
I am trying to learn vocal editing, specially the badly out of tune ones. Youtube couldn't help. Please do not suggest "re-record vocals". The goal is to learn working with such bad vocals and make them sound like popular modern songs. In that case, how should one go about and what tools should be bought? If there's any actually good online course on learning such vocals, kindly share. Thank you.

Steve Bolivar · Post by **Steve Bolivar** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 1:46 pm

Probably Melodyne 5 assistant will give you most of what you need. Most DAWs come with the low end version so you can get an upgrade discount to the assistant version.
https://www.celemony.com/en/melodyne/wh ... elodyne-do

Good luck

musicbookscience · Post by **musicbookscience** » Thu Nov 03, 2022 10:51 pm

I actually have melodyne 5 editor and autotune pro with autotune unlimited for a year. I just couldn't find anything on youtube that digs deep into learning these tools to create world class vocals.

Steve Bolivar · Post by **Steve Bolivar** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 3:31 am

Did you check out the videos at the Melodyne website? Start with the basics they have there. I'm no Melodyne power user but I know it can correct tuning, timing and amplitude of a poorly sung vocal track. It's possible right now you don't know enough about Melodyne or autotune to search for the right tutorials.

But when working with bad vocal recordings you are always in the position of polishing a turd. These tools will not turn that turd into a world class vocal. Best case you'll make it sound ok. Maybe if the instrumental parts of the song are stellar, a mediocre vocal is all that's needed.

andymcbain · Post by **andymcbain** » Fri Nov 04, 2022 1:27 pm

A world class vocal needs a world class recording and performance first - I'm afraid. But Melodyne will go some way to helping you rescue any timing and pitch errors. Get to know what all the various tools do and how to use them. It can't work miracles, so try not to expect them

ciperlone · Post by **ciperlone** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:16 pm

Popular modern songs have great performances, great recordings, and even great vocal coaches that help the vocalist to reach their full potential. So, I'm sorry to say this, but if that is really your goal, the least you can do is to have a great performance from your vocalist. You shouldn't create pressure, but instead, try to be the vocalist's best friend ever, because great recording can only happen with the right mood.
Also, this is way faster than spending tedious time editing bad stuff to try to make it sound good. "Polishing a turd" is usually not the best practice.

Having said that, what if you CAN'T re-record, and have to just work with what you got? There are some tricks:
Post editing: correct the tempo of the vocals, take special attention to respect the breaths, the continuous performance (in the case of several vocal takes) and the feeling of the words of the lyrics. Having multiple takes and comping the best sections help a lot! Also, take care of all fade-ins and outs, and double and triple-check them!
Autotuning: tuning some notes NATURALLY (not sounding like a robot) generally improves the overall performance.
Robot voice: this is especially useful in really bad recordings, and can be used as a creative effect.
Post effects: saturation and distortion make the voice feel more aggressive (widely used in Rock and Metal), and might help mask bad takes. Reverbs and delays usually help make the vocal sound more beautiful, epic, dreamy, serious, etc.
Vocal chops: you can use several long notes, throw them to a sampler, and use it as an instrument. This is very trendy nowadays.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:36 pm

musicbookscience wrote: Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:57 am Please do not suggest "re-record vocals". The goal is to learn working with such bad vocals and make them sound like popular modern songs.

99.9% of popular modern songs would not have started out with 'bad vocals'.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to hear, but generally speaking (especially with recorded media) you get shit in-shit out.

Any kind of auto tune software can help with pitch correction alone, and some of it is pretty advanced these days, but if the actually recording/performace/tone is bad, there's really very little you can do about it that the human ear won't hear and recognise as still being bad.

skarvika · Post by **skarvika** » Wed Nov 30, 2022 8:07 pm

I've found iZotope Nectar 3 to be good, and it has a built in autotune feature. If you have a truly out of key singer who's worse than just being a little flat/sharp, autotuning will still end up sounding bad because it'll need to kick in hard to correct the vocal. In those instances, if you really can't get a halfway decent take from them, that's when I'd pile on the effects and call it a stylistic choice. Vocoders can help here. You could try to do a Cher style autotune if the singer is really insistent that you make it sound 'natural.' Any amount of plugins can help a little, sure, but what everyone else has said is true...you'll never get a world class vocal if the take itself just sucks in the first place. You can only rescue it to the point where it's listenable, but when working with an actually bad singer, that should be your primary goal.

ramseysounds · Post by **ramseysounds** » Sat Dec 10, 2022 11:36 pm

musicbookscience wrote: Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:57 amYoutube couldn't help.

This bit I just don't believe. If you have Melodyne, learn it

jcrisman · Post by **jcrisman** » Sun Dec 11, 2022 4:25 am

musicbookscience wrote: Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:57 am Hello , hope you are well. I apologize if this does not fall into this topic, let me know and I will delete this.
I am trying to learn vocal editing, specially the badly out of tune ones. Youtube couldn't help. Please do not suggest "re-record vocals". The goal is to learn working with such bad vocals and make them sound like popular modern songs. In that case, how should one go about and what tools should be bought? If there's any actually good online course on learning such vocals, kindly share. Thank you.

As you said that you have Melodyne 5 Editor, you already have the basic tool that you will need as Editor will allow adjustments to pitch, formants, volume, timing, sibilants, and vibrato. Celemony does have a detailed manual for each edition in addition to their video tutorials found at their website and on Celemony's YouTube page. A lot of vocal editing is a combination of putting in the practice time of editing and working with the best possible raw recordings.

Melodyne Editor Manual: https://helpcenter.celemony.com/M5/doc/ ... standAlone

Celemony YouTube Page:

jordan_io · Post by **jordan_io** » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:08 pm

Don't want to be a dead horse but bad vocals will never sound like a modern pop song. If they're out of tune, best thing you can do is start with Melodyne, that's the industry standard. If they're very out of tune, they will start to sound robotic and unnatural, and at that point there's nothing you can do.

There's no way around it, you need a great performance and recording chain for the modern vocal sound you are looking for.

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:47 pm

As a few others have already alluded, bad vocals can (and usually do) entail much more than just pitch problems. A bad vocal performance usually means bad pitch, bad timing, and bad dynamics (e.g., from poor mic technique). Melodyne has tools to help with each of these, but the quality of the results you'll get will be largely correlated to the quality of the source material, and the worse the source, the more audible the artefacts will be (i.e., it will be less "pro").

But, a bad vocal recording usually doesn't end there. Bad performances are often/usually accompanied by other problems, such as high noise floor or possibly distorted levels, bad tone from a cheap mic, poor tone from a poor recording chain, etc. It's impossible to say how much of this applies to the OP's situation, but given the nature of the question, I'm going to guess that the recording has much more than just some simple pitch issues.

dermichl · Post by **dermichl** » Fri Dec 23, 2022 8:15 pm

Would you try to polish up a badly tuned guitar recording? Getting vocals right is more than just working through a recording...

edit: there‘s an old saying „we can‘t fix it in the mix!“. I have learned this lesson from either side of the recording desk...

fese · Post by **fese** » Fri Dec 23, 2022 8:53 pm

Just run them through a vocoder…

EdwardGivens · Post by **EdwardGivens** » Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:05 pm

depends on the style of music. modern pop is pretty plasticky. Autotune is as common as lipsyncing "live" (cough)
It's weird but of late I'm noticing singers actually singing with that nasally Autotune tone even without it!
Indie (I'm old so I'm thinking Nirvana through the Strokes) is replete with questionable singing and nobody minds.
I would gently nudge people to rehearse more smoke less and not obsess. That said I have used the 3 takes and comp technique followed by Melodyne on the comped vocal track. Sounds more natural than Autotune. You can still hear the lack of support and poor stylistic choices but at least you're not wincing at the high notes.

How to work bad Vocals