VocalsPitchMixing

Natural Vocal Tuning: Vibrato, Drift And Formant

A sung note is a centre, a slow drift, a vibrato and a way into it. Tuning sounds natural when you edit those four separately instead of flattening them.

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By Nolvra

A Note Is Four Things At Once

The reason heavy tuning sounds like tuning is that it treats a sung note as one number. It is not. A held note has a centre, the pitch you would write down. Around that centre it wanders slowly, sagging as the breath runs out or creeping up on a long vowel. On top of that sits the vibrato, the fast regular wobble the singer adds on purpose. And before any of it there is the way into the note, the scoop or slide from the one before. Pull all four onto a straight line and the note is in tune and no longer sounds sung. Natural tuning means editing each of the four on its own, and leaving most of them alone.

What Over Correction Removes

When a corrector snaps a note to the nearest semitone it moves the centre, which is the part you wanted, and it also flattens the drift, irons out the vibrato and turns the transition into a step. Those last three are where the performance lives. A slow rise into a held note is tension. A vibrato that widens at the end of a phrase is the singer choosing to open it up. A scoop into the downbeat is style. Take them away and what is left is a series of perfect pitches with nothing connecting them, which the ear hears as a machine even when every note is right.

The fix is not a gentler version of the same move. It is a different model of the note. INTONE stores each note as a centre with separate amounts for its slow deviation, its fast deviation and the transition into it, so straightening one does not touch the others.

Editing The Four Parts Separately

Move The Centre With PITCH

Use PITCH to place the note where it belongs. It moves in semitones, and holding Alt or Shift moves it in cents for small corrections. This changes the centre and carries the drift and vibrato along with it unchanged, so the note keeps its shape and simply sits somewhere else.

Straighten The Wander With DRIFT

DRIFT scales the slow deviation inside a note. Drag down for straighter. On a long vowel that sags at the end, a little straightening is usually all it needs. The left edge of the note sets the transition into it, so a scoop can be shortened without being removed.

Set The Vibrato With VIBRATO

VIBRATO scales the fast deviation. Drag up for more and down for less, and zero percent is flat. Most of the time the right move on a sung vibrato is no move at all. Reach for it when one note's vibrato is wider than the rest of the phrase, or on a double that needs to sit still under the lead.

Fix The Tone With FORMANT

A pitch move also moves the formants, the resonances that tell a listener how big the voice is, which is where the chipmunk effect on a pitched loop comes from. FORMANT shifts the voice brighter or darker without changing the pitch, so a note pushed up a long way can be pulled back toward the singer's own tone.

SNAP, SOFT And Where To Draw The Line

INTONE offers two whole phrase moves on top of the note tools. SNAP pulls every note onto the key. SOFT brings the notes closer to the key and keeps their drift and vibrato, which makes it the safer first pass on a lead vocal. The drift mark decides which notes get flagged in the first place: plus or minus 10, 15, 20 or 25 cents. A tight mark suits a stacked pop chorus, a loose one suits a raw take where some wander is the point. The INTONE quickstart walks through each tool and its key.

Rules For A Tuned Vocal That Still Sounds Sung

  • Fix the centre first and judge again before you touch drift or vibrato. Often the note was only off centre.
  • Straighten drift a little at a time, and stop as soon as the note stops reading as flat.
  • Leave vibrato alone on the lead unless one note is clearly wider than its neighbours.
  • Shorten a scoop instead of deleting it. The transition into a note is part of how the singer phrases.
  • Watch the formant on any note moved more than a couple of semitones, and pull it back toward the voice.
  • Treat sibilants separately. The LEVEL tool works on a note's sibilants with Alt and drag, so an S can come down without the vowel, ahead of the de-esser in the chain.

Four Parts Of A Note, Four Tools

INTONE edits a vocal note by note inside Ableton Live: PITCH for the centre, DRIFT for the slow wander, VIBRATO for the fast one, FORMANT for the tone, each on its own.

See INTONE

FAQ

How do you tune vocals without the robotic sound?

Move only the centre of the notes that are wrong, and keep each note's drift, vibrato and transition. The robotic sound comes from flattening all of those along with the pitch.

What is the difference between drift and vibrato in a vocal?

Drift is the slow wander of a held note away from its centre, such as a sag at the end of a breath. Vibrato is the fast, regular wobble a singer adds deliberately. They are edited separately because fixing one should not remove the other.

Does changing the pitch of a vocal change its formants?

A plain pitch shift moves the formants with the note, which is why a voice pitched up sounds smaller. A separate formant control lets you move the pitch and keep the tone close to the singer's own.

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