Melodyne - How to change tone and keep the same (or similar) timbre?

[Gabarito]

Hi, all.

I have a challenge that a friend of mine said that's impossible to achieve.
I'd like to lower a voice 3 tones down, but keeping the most similar timbre from the original version.

Is it impossible, the way I was warned?
If no, how to do it using Melodyne?
Or other tool?

Thanks.

[Gabarito]

Explaining more...

In fact, my goal is to change the whole song to a key 6 half tones lower.
Not just one or two notes.
I.e, from A to Eb.

But when I do that, the voice changes too much and gets another timbre and it seems to belong to another singer, not the same one.

Challenge is to adjust that modified timbre to return to the original one. Or, at least, to a very similar one.

I'm talking about the whole song, not only parts of it.

If so big jump (6 half-tones) is not possible, how about 3 or 4?

[Gabarito]

Sorry if I make dumb questions, but I'm very new to Melodyne.

Yes, I was aware that formant tool would be the right one to work on timbres.
I'll show as example of song that I'm trying to "transpose" key, preserving timbre.

First, I have the original panel:



So, I changed pitch from A to D#:



And moved formant back to A:




It show up too many artifacts, as you can see.
Is it normal?
Did I do the right procedures to achieve what I'm trying to do?

[CinningBao]

You want to move the formant shift in the same direction as the pitch shift. I find somewhere around halfway between maintains the same 'size' of singer, and there are many variables. However, half an octave is a big shift, and many performances might not work being pitched that far away from the recorded pitch.

[Gabarito]

Thank you, CinningBao, for your comments.

Yes, it's a big shift, so I'm changing it. I'll be satisfied with just 3 or 4 semi-tones.
Playing a little with programs I've never used before, I found a very obvious panel that I think gave me some results similar what I was looking for.

I mean this very evident panel:



Applying 4 pitches down and around -1500 formants, it's enough to get something near of I was expecting.

I found out that it saves me from dragging waveform up and down.

So, I think I'm satisfied with the result I got, for while.
I have to learn a lot more about this and other programs.
If is it the case, I'll come back for more questions.

If you have more tips, suggestions, I'll listen and try them all.

Thanks.

[cron]

It looks like Melodyne is in polyphonic detection mode in your screenshots. Unless your singer can somehow produce multiple simultaneous pitches across 4 octaves, that does not look like a vocal track. I'm not a Melodyne user so I don't know if the detection mode influences the pitch shifting available to you in the panel, but it's a pretty safe bet that it's the reason why dragging everything down in the graphical editor didn't work.

[cron]

Ah, I've just seen that you're trying to shift the entire track. Shifting an entire track while preserving the timbre of the individual parts is a significantly more difficult task than shifting the vocal alone. Melodyne isn't really suited to that AFAIK. I believe the polyphonic editor is optimised for isolated, single instruments (e.g., a guitar playing chords).

Shifting vocals cleanly is a uniquely difficult challenge any way you slice it though. Pretty much everyone in the world is a highly skilled listener when it comes to voice because we intensively practice using and listening to it for over 12 hours a day, every day. When people complain about Auto Tune, they're always talking about its use on the vocals, not the 8 instances of it massaging the string section in the background. Voice is so much fun to play with because it has this strange duality where the smallest processing is noticeable, yet it's almost impossible to deliberately mangle it to the point where you can't tell that voice was the original source. How many other instruments could you easily identify through, say, a ring modulator?

Have fun anyway! It's a really interesting area to play around in.

[Michael L]

Sometimes I find better results from a simpler effect such as Toneboosters' VoicePitcher (demo or $19) that lets you shift vocal pitch in semitones and cents. You may need to tweak to avoid muddy harmonics. It also has formant correction so formant frequencies are constant when you change pitch, for a more natural sound.

[Gabarito]

It looks like Melodyne is in polyphonic detection mode in your screenshots. Unless your singer can somehow produce multiple simultaneous pitches across 4 octaves, that does not look like a vocal track. I'm not a Melodyne user so I don't know if the detection mode influences the pitch shifting available to you in the panel, but it's a pretty safe bet that it's the reason why dragging everything down in the graphical editor didn't work.

You're right.
That is polyphonic detection mode from a full song, with all instruments.
I'm sorry for didn't say it before.

[Gabarito]

Ah, I've just seen that you're trying to shift the entire track. Shifting an entire track while preserving the timbre of the individual parts is a significantly more difficult task than shifting the vocal alone. Melodyne isn't really suited to that AFAIK. I believe the polyphonic editor is optimised for isolated, single instruments (e.g., a guitar playing chords).

Shifting vocals cleanly is a uniquely difficult challenge any way you slice it though. Pretty much everyone in the world is a highly skilled listener when it comes to voice because we intensively practice using and listening to it for over 12 hours a day, every day. When people complain about Auto Tune, they're always talking about its use on the vocals, not the 8 instances of it massaging the string section in the background. Voice is so much fun to play with because it has this strange duality where the smallest processing is noticeable, yet it's almost impossible to deliberately mangle it to the point where you can't tell that voice was the original source. How many other instruments could you easily identify through, say, a ring modulator?

Have fun anyway! It's a really interesting area to play around in.

Good considerations, cron.

Result sounds artificial, indeed.
But, for my purposes, I could reach a way to do what I was trying to do, at first.

And I'll confess what is it.

I like to hear and sing some songs together with my wife.
And some songs are higher than the comfort of my vocal range.
If I only down the pitch, timbre seems to come from another singer, from the music I'm hearing. Very weird.
Adjusting it, to higher, it goes back to what it was before.


I'm satisfied with results I could get, by now.
Nothing for business.

[Gabarito]

Sometimes I find better results from a simpler effect such as Toneboosters' VoicePitcher (demo or $19) that lets you shift vocal pitch in semitones and cents. You may need to tweak to avoid muddy harmonics. It also has formant correction so formant frequencies are constant when you change pitch, for a more natural sound.

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael.
I'll try Tonebooster later.

[jens]

It looks like Melodyne is in polyphonic detection mode in your screenshots. Unless your singer can somehow produce multiple simultaneous pitches across 4 octaves, that does not look like a vocal track. I'm not a Melodyne user so I don't know if the detection mode influences the pitch shifting available to you in the panel, but it's a pretty safe bet that it's the reason why dragging everything down in the graphical editor didn't work.

Your right.
That is polyphonic detection mode from a full song, with all instruments.
I'm sorry for didn't say it before.

the two polyphonic algorithms (which are more general-purpose ones) are of course not as artifact-free when it comes to voice-manipulation as the "Melodic" algorithm is.

[jens]

Sometimes I find better results from a simpler effect such as Toneboosters' VoicePitcher (demo or $19) that lets you shift vocal pitch in semitones and cents. You may need to tweak to avoid muddy harmonics. It also has formant correction so formant frequencies are constant when you change pitch, for a more natural sound.

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael.
I'll try Tonebooster later.

This is of course not polyphonic at all.

[Boy Wonder]

Back in the day when I used to record vocals, I had a chance to audition some vocal tuners - Melodyne, Vielklang, Autotune, ReVoice Pro, Octavox, Quadvox, and VariAudio in Cubase. VariAudio won as long as I wasn't trying to shift past 3 or 4 semitones, then it started having artifacts like the others. Vielklang came in second. I never tried RePitch. ReVoice was just complicated to use. I haven't demo'd Waves Harmony but, according to them, it's the bees knees. (But doesn't every company make that same claim about their product?)

[k2006]

Toneboosters Voicepitcher v3 - older version is free as part of free legacy bundle.https://www.toneboosters.com/support.html