Hi,

I was wondering if there was a spot I could download a tutorial of how to do backup vocals with Melodyne. I have Studio, so I know it can be done, but what ever attempts I've given it has resulted in very robotic like souding vocals, too close, too tight, too unnatural too unnn everything. I've seen the demo video for Melodyne and I've seen how good it can sound, but I have yet to find anything in the fine manual or on line that says... here is what you do and how you do it... or a guide to getting it closer to not "too un-xxxxx"

Thanks.

R

ps I've truly enjoyed Melodyne, by far the best purchase I've made of any plugins for Logic so far.

I copied my reply from another thread as it still applies.


"If you have a vocal track and want to make some harmonies from that track, may I suggest:

1) Read the manual. Melodyne is steep, deep and full of features.

2) Activate "Key snap". It's found in the lower left corner of the window, bottom of the note ruler.

3) Set the tone scale. It's found under Windows > Tone Scale

4) In the editor (Windows > Show Editor), select the notes in the vocal track you want to make harmonies from, and Shift-Alt-drag those notes up or down. Melodyne automatically creates a new track, and places the harmony there. The notes will snap to the tone scale you've set if you have "Key snap" activated (see above)."


However, making good-sounding mixes is a lot of work. And creating harmony vocals from a single lead vocal track is quite difficult. It can easily sound robotic and lifeless, but that's where good mixing skills come in handy.

When you've edited the copied harmony parts in Melodyne the best you can, it's time to mix it in your host.
No mixing engineer would mix the harmony vocals exactly the same as the lead vocal. Here's some tips:

1) Compression - Depending on the musical style, I tend to compress harmony vocals a bit harder than lead vocals. Maybe a bit faster attack to keep the harmonies "back" in the mix.

2) Eq - I often carve out more freqs from harmony vocals to make them different. Roll off the lows a bit higher, and take out some articulation in the 3-5 kHz range. That will put the harmonies further back in the mix. You can also take out some high freq content.

3) FX - Hey...get creative. Again, try to treat your harmony vocals different from your lead vocal.

Lastly, one more tip about harmony vocals...record them for real, and then edit them in Melodyne if needed. Really, it's nothing like a real performance.

To sum up - make a different sound for the harmony vocals, and they won't be so robotic.

Good luck.

Hey Stig,

many thanks for another competent and useful post. Your contribution to this forum is much appreciated!

I'll make this thread a sticky one, since other users might come across the same question.

Cheers.

I very much agree with everything PT Lover wrote, especially about different FX for Backing vocals and the "it's nothing like real performance" thing.

Anyway, a few more tips:

0. If you have an influence on the recording: make it as dry as possible. Most artifacts I suffer when using the pitch tool excessively come from reverbations or background noises in the original recording.

1. If you plan to do a homophonic arrangement (i.e. all voices sing simultaneously at the same tempo on different pitches) or a canon-like thing (all voices sing the same tempo / note lengths but start at different times), you can also import the same file into several tracks of your arrangement to start with.

2. Use the modulation tool: I usually leave the lead vocal with most of the original vibrato and remove most vibrato from the backing vocals (leave a little vibrato in there, otherwise it will sound robotic).

3. Use the formant tool: I do it blob by blob, playing until everything sounds balanced. Generally moving the formant subtly into the same direction as the pitch change improves the sound a lot (e.g. after I took the pitch down by a fifth = -700 cents at 100% formant correction, I take the formant down by ca. -10 to -100 cents). If you do not have that much time, you can play whith the formant correction setting of the pitch tool, maybe try 95% instead of 100.

4. this is for people with lots of spare time: Turn some longer consonants (like "f" or "s") into individual blobs using the note separation tool. Sometimes the capability to control the volume and pitch of consonants does a bit of a trick.

Enjoy! Thomas

PS: You can find my most extreme "create background vox with Melodyne" project under the following link:
http://ccmixter.org/contests/magnatune/ ... ppella_Mix).mp3

Most of the best points have been covered in the (great) two previous posts. One thing I do find effective (and yes a little time consuming) is to slightly change the length of some words or short phrases within the harmony vocal (lengthening or shortening). This seems to help distinguish the harmony track(s) from the lead.

Whaaat? You mean Melodyne doesn't make it easy? The guy in the video sure made it look easy.
Whaaat? you mean actually sing? hehe If I nail the lead vocal I don't wanna have to move on to the harmonies, That's what I bought Melodyne for..no?
salsa

Most of the vocalists that come through my studio can sing (a bit), but a lot really struggle finding good harmonies, I use Melodyne as a harmony guide in the following way. . .

1) Copy lead vocal.and move to a 2nd track

2) Move the line up/down in pitch to find a good harmony starting place, retuning any non-harmonic notes by hand

3) Now using this track as a guide, turn the main vocal down or off and just sing along with the retuned part on a third track once or twice thru, retouch with Melodyne if needed

4) Mix both the Melodyne and your real parts, seasoning with effects as per PT Lover’s post above

As always, if symptoms persist seek medical advice

Your post was exceptional. Especially your final contribution"record them for real"...as great as these DSP work-arounds are, as the song goes "Ain't Nothin' Like the REAL THANG"

Thank you.

PT lover, great post.

G'day.

Just bought Studio 3.2.2 and love it. this is my first visit to the forum and after reading a number of posts, I've gotta say - that one was fantastic. Looking forward to using this thing in anger and getting some great results.

Keep up the good work guys

Cheers

Hi man I totally agree wit you I use that
software for almost 2 month and I got some
really great tip in this forum and for most of them
I didn't even had to ask someone has already did.I want to recommend this two wonderful sites protein+shake, role+player

thnx a lot everyone

Very late to the party but getting into using Melodyne more and more. Another suggestion is to take a copy of the new back-up singing and to pitch shift it by a small amount (say 2%, but vary to taste) then drop that down behind the back-up singing so you can just hear the "doubling". This tends to make the background singing sound different to the main vox. All the otehr suggestions above work with this too.

Regards
Mick

There are a number of ways of making a harmony track sound more real. What I usually do is copy the selected bit or track to a parallel track - in the Edit menu, under 'paste special'.

Then make sure that in Preferences you have checked 'Consider Original Notes on Scale Snap'. Make sure you select the correct key of the original track on the left hand side in the Editor window. Then with Scale Snap on so it still 'fits' musically, I shift the notes down or up to where it harmonises That usually sounds really bad - the formant often goes a bit weird, especially when shifting down. I shift a few notes around so it's a bit different to the main melody line.

Then...I play that through a few times to learn how it goes - and then I mute the original vocal and sing/record that harmony melody line to the instrument track, and then delete the bad sounding template track. I find that works pretty well.

If you don't want to sing the harmony part and record it on another track, copy paste the bit or track to parallel track like before. Shift the pitch either up or down to a harmony that sounds good like before. If the harmony melody is a replica of the original melody but at a different pitch, use the Random Offset option in the Edit drop down menu - Edit>Edit Note Time>Add Random Time Offset, and this automatically adjusts the timing slightly to make it sound more real, and yet is still in time with the original.

You can also fiddle with the formants and/or the time handles - the tool under the Move Notes tool - to make subtle differences to the attack speed of the blob (or selection of blobs) from the original.

I also find that adding 2 different harmony tracks to the original confuses the listener enough for the singing and the harmonies to sound good.

Just an add on: I haven't actually tried but quite often one has to try a couple of times to make a real good enough lead vocal so this produces some slightly different takes that are lying there for free. Save them, fix them up and use them for harmonies?