Recording - May 2013 - 39

In the case of a vocal track
with too much unwanted
room sound in it, I have
found that simply drawing
back the “Sustain” knob on
the plug-in is just about all
you need to do, and you will
begin to notice pleasing
results almost immediately.
Somewhere between –3 and
–6 seems to work nicely for
this task. I typically would do
this in front of a compressor, Figure 3: SPL Transient
Designer can work miraas a compressor can often cles when focusing overly
“open up” the background
washy vocals.

Figure 4: The first instance of Auto-Tune for
a pitchy vocal has a fairly slow Retune Speed
so it’s gentle on the audio...

and 80 (see Figure 4). Then,
I put another Auto-Tune plugin into insert 2 and set it to a
slightly tighter Retune Speed,
somewhere between 30 and
40 (see Figure 5). In some
cases I may even put a third
Auto-Tune plug-in between
these if I feel I am still “hearing” the effect of the plug-in.
In any case, I tend to put the
Auto-tune plug-ins first, before
any eq or compression etc.,
as it seems to work best this
way most of the time.
In the case of background
voices that are for the most part
sung very well, I may use AutoTune as follows: If there are two
background voices, I apply AutoTune to only one of them, with a
low-to-medium Retune Speed. If
there are four background voices, I apply Auto-Tune to two of
them, again starting with a low-tomedium Retune speed. I leave the
other tracks in the backgrounds
untouched. This can sometimes
help make the backgrounds feel
a little tighter as an ensemble, but
it still leave the human element
intact. I find that if you start to fix
it too much, it just sounds like one
voice, and then it doesn’t sound
“big” anymore.

noise of a given signal when
used in heavy doses. By using
the plug-ins in this order you
can use the compressor to help
smooth out the vocal part, and
control the track’s background
ambiance with the Transient
Designer.
Transparent use of AutoTune
Here is a tip that is pretty
straightforward, regarding
tasteful and subtle pitch correction. I am not much of a fan
of using Antares Auto-Tune for
the purpose of correcting
pitch, but sometimes a final Figure 5: ...and the second instance has a faster
Retune Speed to do the rest of the cleanup,
vocal track comes to me for a
mix that, to my ear, needs a lit- for an overall more musical and realistic result.
tle help.
These are just a few of the many cool
I have found a way to use Auto-Tune ways that plug-ins can rescue problem
with a more subtle but effective result, by vocals without making them sound unrealisapplying two or sometimes even three tic. Experiment and you can discover ways
instances of the plug-in, each one with a lit- to adapt these and other techniques to clean
tle faster retune speed than the one before. up your toughest vocal problems.
I find that this has a more transparent effect
in getting a vocal track into shape, be it for
Jason LaRocca (larocca@recordingmag
just a single vocal line of a song or some- .com) is best known as a music recordist
times even for an entire track.
and score mixer for a wide variety of sucTo achieve this effect, I put an Auto-Tune cessful films like Ruby Sparks and The
plug-in into the first insert slot and set the Mechanic, and TV shows like Crash, Once
correct key of the song. Then I set the Upon A Time, and the new Beauty And The
Retune Speed somewhere between 70 Beast. Learn more at jasonlarocca.com.
RECORDING May 2013

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Recording - May 2013

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