Welcome to Sage Audio. Today we’re covering how to Tune Vocals. To get the most from your music,
watch the entirety of each chapter for a complete understanding of the topic.
But first, If you have a mix that you need mastered,
send it to us to receive a free mastered sample of it with the link in the description.
Setting the Right Notes
For this video, we’ll primarily be using Slate Digital’s Metatune plugin
to tune our vocals, since it looks like it’ll be a popular plugin for years to come.
When determining which notes to tune, you can select your scale, or you can easily
observe the input using the heat-mapping feature of this plugin. Here we can see
that the vocal is focusing on C, D#, G#, and A# - meaning we should use these notes for tuning.
We’ll simply select these keys and Metatune will tune the vocal to these notes.
Creating a Natural Sound
If you’re trying to create natural-sounding vocal tuning, use a slower speed of about 20ms,
and lower the sustain to make this timing program dependent.
You’ll notice that a bar shows how the timing will modulate
depending on the incoming signal - conversely, we can increase the sustain for quicker tuning.
If you use a positive sustain, lower the speed a little more to compensate.
Since the amount dial isn’t a wet/dry, but a value of how closely the notes will be tuned
to a perfect tuning, we can reduce the value without worrying about tase cancellation.
Lower this to about 60 to 70 for a tuned but more believable sound.
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Creating an Aggressive Sound
If you want your tuning to be aggressive, do the opposite of what we just covered - that is,
set a quick speed, raise the amount to 100, and either don’t worry about the sustain or use a
positive value. This plugin can use lookahead to create super-quick tuning.
Set this to -3ms for the most aggressive and robotic sound.
Tuning for BGVs
When tuning BGVs, you can do so more aggressively before it
becomes noticeable - perhaps the most convent aspect of using this plugin on multiple BGVs
is utilizing the group section. If you have multiple instances of this plugin,
you can assign them to the same group, and the settings will change on each.
Additionally, the vocal doubler option
is great for expanding vocals and creating complex stereo imaging.
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MetaTune Vs. Autotune
If we listen to MetaTune and compare it to Autotune,
we’ll notice similar sounds - that’s because they work more or less the same way. However,
the doubler settings, lookahead tuning, and note stabilization which we’ll cover later,
set this plugin apart from other tuning plugins currently available.
I’m using an Autotune access plugin for this comparison
but know that the settings will be similar to what would be accomplished on the full plugin.
Note Stabilization Tricks
Note stabilization is a helpful feature of this plugin since adjusts the tuning based
on the length of the note. Short doesn’t tune notes less than 40ms, Mid doesn’t tune notes
less than 80ms, and long less than 200ms, which can even be used to change the melody.
These settings work well at reducing note flutter when lots of vibrato is being used.
One trick is to isolate different sections of your vocal-based on their
length and amount of vibrato, then select different stabilization settings for each.
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Subtle Reverb After Tuning
After tuning, if you use subtle reverb with some modulation,
you can diffuse your tuned notes and make the sound even more natural.
I’ll use the FabFilter Pro R and increase the character dial which alters timing
and pitch modulation - but subtly use any chorus or reverb that offers modulation.
This works well when the reverb is isolated to the mids and is set to less than 10%.
Saturation After Tuning
After tuning the vocal, saturation will help to strengthen the notes and perceived pitch
by introducing harmonics. These harmonics are inherently tied to the fundamental of the vocal,
in turn strengthening the perception of that fundamental,
and making the overall note sound more in tune.
Saturation helps notes sound more in tune even without a tuning plugin,
but it works even better when a tuner is used first.
If you have a mix that you need mastered, send it to us to receive a free mastered sample of it
with the link in the description. Thank you so much for watching.