How many people here DON'T use pitch correction in there mixes?

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At the end of it all, it boils down to whether you're producing/engineering an album for someone else or your own material. The goal motivates the decision making process.

As far as I see it, there are completely different dynamics at play between approaches. I see a lot of comments from people saying they don't use pitch correction on their own voice. That's fine, I can understand why; i.e the whole, "if I need it, I suck" thing, but come on guys? Really? You mean to tell me you've NEVER even had the inclining to correct a little passage here and there? Either way, fine, I think it's fair enough to have a philosophy of avoiding pitch correction on your own voice for the mere reason that it could possibly motivate you to sing better. I get it. ;)

The other side of it is that when you're being paid by a client to give him/her a decent sounding product, your hand almost gets forced if they're, shall we say, "not so good" and you're hoping to keep the business. I am YET to meet a band/artist/musician who is AGAINST pitch correction when it comes down to it. Show them how it's done properly and they'll demand it every time. Music production in 2012/13 is now to the point that it's almost expected and if you can't make gold of out turds, "hey, he must not know what he's doing". I have tried to take the path of recording the client how they without pitch correcting and they found it unprofessional. Weird, isn't it? I know, it's weird, but it's the truth. It is part and parcel of most modern production these days.

Cheers :)

I'm not "trolling", am I? I hope my posts are always taken as me speaking my mind instead of attempting to be "inflammatory".
 
Justified IMO. Though, I am 'trolling' this post myself.

Neg repping myself now. :(

Or someone do it for me, as I can't seem to find a way to do it myself.

:)
 
Umm, no. I'm having a hard enough time learning how to program beats in a step sequencer. One project at a time.
 
I prefer to sing in tune.

Although ..... I have heard it used in studio sessions I was only to fix slightly-off background vocals. It was pretty useful there ..... saved a lotta time.
 
I use it all the time. I'm a little tone deaf and sometimes I can nail a melody and sometimes I can't. Problem is that I can't tell until playback. If I'm writing a song I want the demo to be as close to my ideal as I can get and pitch correction/autotune is a tool for that purpose. I recollect David Gilmore once saying that he had no problems contracting musicians in to play parts that he envisaged but was unable to play physically. Same Deal.
 
I use it sparingly on vocals and occasionally bass tracks. As long as you can perform it live, who gives a flying fuck :thumbs up:
 
In my opinion you're providing you're client with a false confidence boost. I recently read an article in tape op about a producer who will be straight up with the musicians he's recording. If they attempt take after take and don't achieve what they want he simply tells them to practice the part more and then come back and lay down the track. With that said, you'll also get the lazy musicians who don't want to do that and expect the guy recording to click his heels three times and bring home a historic album. So IMO it's good to have for those who expect the producer to make everything sound perfect opposed to the guys who strives for a perfect performance from the get go. When it's overused I hate it but it is what it is.
 
RAMI said:
Yeah, it's not as if I'm singing "Subterranean Homesick Blues". There are spaces in the songs I sing. :D If a part needs to be re-done, I just re-do the line.
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Yeah I don't see what the big deal is with just re-doing something. I understand time constraints and stuff, but if you're paying attention during tracking, shouldn't pitch problems show themselves pretty quickly? Have the person redo it, or redo it yourself right then and there. I can't relate to going back to a project some time later and going "oh damn, that line is out of pitch!". If I fuck up a guitar line or a drum fill, it's not gonna slip by me only to rear it's ugly head days later. I'm gonna fix it right there. Perhaps all these pitch correcters are dealing with tracks already recorded by someone else? Then I can see one needing it. If you're doing your own tracking, get it right.
 
I do use pitch correction but not in my final mixes of my own stuff

When writing a song and working on the arrangement, I'll record a vocal and then pitch correct the f@ck out of it until it's perfectly on key, every individual note. I then use this as a guide track for my melody. I may want to change a phrase here or there and so can shift notes around in the vocal until I have the scratch version more or less the way I want it.

I then use this as a guide vocal to rehearse along to so I can hear where I'm off when I'm singing it versus the "perfect" guide track.

Once I've got the singing of the song really committed to memory, I'l usually find a way to play it out live a couple of times to make sure it's really in my bones before I think about recording it. There's nothing like performing in front of a crowd to motivate you to rehearse and get a song right

Come recording time I really know the song inside out and back to front. I'll usually record in sections (verses, choruses, bridge etc) and do three takes of each so If I mess up a note somewhere along the way I can build a comp by pulling a good version of that phrase from one of the other takes

As far as I can I try do do as little as possible in the mix to change vocal sounds. I try as much as possible to get reverb from the space I'm in, I use the low end roll off on the mic if I know it;s a dense mix and I won't want to record it, I'll uses a hardware comp on the way in rather than a plugin after the fact and so on. So I'd rather not use pitch correction in the mix.

I'd rather my own recordings be of me, faults and all. Recording someone else it's up to them. I recorded a friends daughter a couple of weeks ago. She thinks she's the next Adele (she's not) but what we got was a sloppy, under rehearsed, vocal with some pitch problems. I suggested we try again in a couple of weeks after more rehearsal, but she wanted the thing done before Xmas so I had to cut and sift some things around to fix timing errors and pitch correct a lot of errors.
What she got was a cut up, perfectly pitched, sloppy, under rehearsed vocal but she was happy

YMMV
 
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I’m not a fan of auto-tune and don’t use. I appreciate the human imperfections that help define the character and sound of an artist/band. I guess that makes me real old school! I’m not pleased that music has “evolved” to the point of demanding perfection via manipulation, which I view as fakery.
 
I suppose it would be useful when used as some have stated above, that is to correct a few sour notes here and there. Having said that though, there are so many recordings from the 60s-70s where pitch correction would have changed the whole character of the song, and in some cases the entire band. Can you imagine early Rolling Stones with pitch correction? I personally like the rawness, within reason of course...LOL!!
 
I have pitch problems, I freely admit it and I don't really care. I could do the take a thousand times and it wouldn't get any better, it would just be a different pitch problem on a different note every time. No one seems to have any problem listening to me, and I'm not talking about my mom either. Sometimes people make jokes about it, but I totally understand and take it all in stride. I don't use pitch correction software to correct pitch, but I do occasionally use it as an effect. I will record 4 to 8 tracks of bg vocals and pan them, then feed those tracks to pitch correction and pan those in between.
 
go back and listen to the singers that are considered the greatest of all time such as say, Frank Sinatra or any of the jazz greats ..... or any of the rock and roll singers that are considered great (the ones before pitch correction became common) and you'll notice NONE of them sing every note dead-on pitch.
 
I have it on Mixcraft 6 and use it on vocals but generally don't on instruments. It works great.
 
I avoid it like the plague, in general. Hard drive space is so cheap that I can do 20 or 30 takes on a vocal to get it right with no problem. It isn't just about pitch though - - There are "3 P's": Pitch, Pocket & Passion

If any of those 3 are lacking, it's time for another take.

Maybe I'm a bit of a neanderthal in this age of electro-tech dub rap drum-machine noise makers, but I believe if you're making music, you should make the music, not just select a loop or a plugin to do the performance for you. No offense intended if that's what you do... It's just my opinion.
 
Lt. Bob said:
go back and listen to the singers that are considered the greatest of all time such as say, Frank Sinatra or any of the jazz greats ..... or any of the rock and roll singers that are considered great (the ones before pitch correction became common) and you'll notice NONE of them sing every note dead-on pitch.
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This is why also why I do not pitch correct 100% everything, those notes that are not perfectly in pitch brought a sense of realness to they song to their voice and to the performance. Today things are sounding a little robotic too perfect nothing naturally flows.
 
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