(For those that don’t use Melodyne or AutoTune, etc.
If one needs to slide the vocal a bit, or stretch out the ending of a note, do you generally do it by adjusting the segments within VariAudio, or come out and work within Audio Warp?
Thanks!
Personally I always slide vocals into time in the project window during the comping and top/tailing procedure. To extend notes I either dup a section and crossfade it or I use time-stretch on a suitable portion of the vocal (e.g. a vowel clip, using MPEX say, and time-stretching an audio event with the mouse then crossfade). I then render this lot to a new track, disable the original for backup, and start pitch correcting.
I have Melodyne and Autotune, and I use those and Vari-audio in about equal shares.
I could probably use Vari-audio or Melodyne to slide and stretch vocals, I doubt if there would be any noticable difference. But I do it in the project manager because it’s part of my comping process, i.e. I’m putting together several takes which are not always in sync, so at that time I might as well sync them up properly as well while mashing them together. I also top and tail at this time, e.g. remove slurps and sniffs between lines, tighten up ends of notes, breaths at starts, remove pops, etc. It all goes hand in hand with the comping for me. Also having done this and rendered (bounced) down it makes the tuning process clearer and neater.
Mike.
Hey Mike - what an elegant-sounding way of doing it. I will give that a go the next time around. Thank you for sharing that!
I work the same as Mike does as far as syncing first, flatten the edits then variaudio for correction if needed. It is a lot easier to sink vocals in the arrange window with other instruments, other vocals, etc. Just more to see at once and you may find other things that need it too while you are there.
One thing I do that may be different is if I need to extend a note a little longer, if it is clean and straight , I will chop the existing tail, copy it a portion of the way past where it was copied from, use the event volume handle and match the waveform amplitude with the one I an extending then fit a crossfade into it.
I seem to always hear artifacts stretching notes in variaudio so I do it this way. I may just be hyper critical too.
Mr Woodcrest - yes indeed, avoid artefacts - which are the devil of course. Sometimes when I remember, I make a point of asking the singer to do artificially long notes. On the basis that a) they can be used later if need be, and b) longer notes are easier to shorten than short notes are easier to lengthen. It’s a bit anal…
Absolutely. I’ll have them do that artificial long note just to fade to taste then punch them overtop of the tail for the next lines. Ya know… if the takes are comp style. Even if they are not comp-style overdubs, when I am jarred by a cutoff, I will lay a marker to punch the line again with a long tail. Consider too, if this is a turn around or hook, that tail can ride off into the sunset while the next part begins and that can be mixed so many ways. Works with a whole slew of instruments too. Did it with guitars the other day.
Where I find time stretching shows its worst is with multi micd instruments. It screws up the whole image. Flattening to stereo helps it a little where the artifacts are masked by the rest of the instruments. But if that image shifts, it really bothers the heck out of me.
Anyway… good sharing techniques with you.