pitch correction help

bsacco

New member
Hi all,

I have a MP.4 video of my band playing at a concert venue decades ago. The vocals in places are way off tune (cringing) but everything else is great. What is the approach to pitch correction in this case where you don't have the individual tracks but just the video file? Is there a way to use a parametric EQ to try to locate the frequency manually and then pitch correct it in the stereo mix? Any suggestions from all you pros out there are welcomed.

-bob
 
nothing you can do to correct it I'm afraid, except perform it again in tune. If you tried to correct it you'd have ambience that was a semitone out from the corrected pitch which would probably sound even worse than doing nothing.
 
Yeah man, I agree. Likely not possible. Too much information in a full band mix file. Melodyne can change say one bad note in a guitar chord, but a whole band? I doubt it.

Might be interesting to try tho. PM me. I'll give it a go at least.
 
Izotope RX7's Music Rebalance feature might work - it can certainly almost completely isolate a vocal although there will be artefacts. Whether these artefacts are a show stopper depends on the recording and your expectations.
 
I haven't used it, but as mentioned above, RX7 might be able to help. Sounds like witchcraft to me... but again, I've never tried it.
 
I haven't used it, but as mentioned above, RX7 might be able to help. Sounds like witchcraft to me... but again, I've never tried it.

It does sound like witchcraft! lol!

I am curious though what the results are in the real world.

RX7 'Try'/demo returns a 404 page. That scares me like witches do...
 
RX7 'Try'/demo returns a 404 page. That scares me like witches do...

Just download the standard RX software and it works in demo mode for 30 days. The Music Rebalance feature works amazingly well on vocals and bass but I was less successful at extracting drums and percussion when I tried it. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they add more instruments and options in future versions.
 
Maybe try recording another vocal along with the original, and then try to blend it in as needed in certain spots....it might help. Or sound like total garbage, but it's free and worth a try. I actually did improve some old things I did on cassette this way, only problem was some of my old 70's cassettes disintegrated when I tried to play them. Good luck.
 
You might be able to fix it in melodyne in polyphonic mode -- it might be able to pull out the vocal line.

I've tried that before with Melodyne in poly mode. It cannot isolate just vocals, there is always something else in it with it, so when you pitch it up or down, other things go with it and makes for a very weird artifact in the song.

CJ
 
You might be able to make adjustments, replacement notes is RX7 spectral editing. I’ve seen a video where a guy replaced missed notes in the bass guitar in a stereo track.
 
You might be able to make adjustments, replacement notes is RX7 spectral editing. I’ve seen a video where a guy replaced missed notes in the bass guitar in a stereo track.

Replacing and changing the pitch of something is a bit different. Replacing is a lot easier and can be done with a stereo wav file with varied results. but changing the pitch of a single vocal track already mixed in a stereo wave file is impossible. Because you will be changing the pitch of everything else in that frequency range and it will sound warped.
 
I believe I have done something like that in the past. There was this weird program ages ago. Almost like an Audacity clone. That had a "Remove Vocals" effect. Then I took the instrumental and did a phase flip in Audacity to get only the vocals. (It basically removes everything that is in one and not in the other) I was then left with the instrumental and the vocal. There were a lot of artifacts though. So it's not super high quality. But you would be able to mess with the vocals without doing any damage to the "Instrumental". Whether it works well with a live performance is up for debate. Would probably depend on the quality of the recording.
 
Removing vocals is very hit and miss - I had a project recently and my success rate with all the tools at my disposal was around 50%. One of the pay for online services had a bit better results, but you take a gamble and it costs, even for failure. I tried to then replace the rempoved tracks and that took me longer than removing the poor one to try and match the original recording. I gave up on lots, and if the client had had the budget Im would have persevered, but three days for a 3 minute track and very slow progress makes it OK for a free time project, but very risky when time has to be paid for. Live recordings rarely have much stereo width because spill gets everywhere and this messes up the spectral purity, giving a great live sound but really messing up potential cancelations and phase shifts.
 
I'm afraid it probably is what it is at this point, but can you post the recording? It's more complicated than just using EQ, as the vocals will still be present at all frequency ranges
 
Back
Top