Vocal Intonation-Mixing Lack Of

[Alanfc]

Hello-
I had a question for anyone who may know about Effects and vocal intonation.

Not specifically the auto-tuning type software/fx, but really just a "How'd they do that?" question.

I was listening to a recent Chili Peppers song and the recent Queens of the Stone Age song and noticed something I never had before. The intonation of the lead vocal.

I could hear the intonation go good & bad on the lead vocal, but I couldn't hear any obvious processing on it (not that I could anyways). But the bad spots didn't wash out everything or jump out at you . Its almost like the nanosenconds of sharpness or flatness was masked or blended somehow, without affecting the volume of the voice. But I HEAR the bad tones !! This makes me crazy. Not the intonation itself but "HOW did they do that !?"

I read somewhere that you can cut the EQ at 3,000 hz to mask some aspects of bad intonation, is that close? Or could that be it?

Or is it some AUTOTUNE device which my ears have just caught on to ? I mean I really heard the flat/sharp in those voices, but they never created that real dissonance that makes your skin crawl.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Am I out of my mind? Do you hear this too?

This is important to me because I am doing vocals on my songs now and intonation is 90% there, but when I do blow the intonation, even just a little, it washes out everything. I don't mind singing a part 50 times to get it right, but I am incredibly curious. Maybe if I learned what they're doing on these recordings I can get it in 30 takes instead of 50.

Thanks

 

[vomortis]

bump - I'd like to know too

 

[pipelineaudio]

for one thing, autotune is NOT instant, so there will be wavering on intonation. For another thing, since the dawn of time the RHCP has used things like tape flangers and phasers on their vocals...maybe that could be it

 

[apush]

I think it's both EQ and Autotune. I once got a mix of my band and the vocals sounded great. In tune, good balance, nice placement in the mix with no use of Autotune. I wanted a re-mix with the kick a little louder. The engineer remixed the whole thing because it was analogue with no automation. What I got back was terrible. The vocals were noticably louder and horribly out of tune the whole way through. In that case, it was obviously an EQ/Mixing trick in the first mix we got that hid the out-of-tune vox. My guess is you're probably hearing Autotune working though.

 

[Kryogh]

I had the same feel about Queens of the stone age. Antares autotune... maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, but this is what came first in my mind.

great album uh?

...some glitsh but, good music, good album

 

[TexRoadkill]

A good double track of the vocals can help cover small pitch problems without being too obvious. There are also tricks with heavy EQ and compression on one of the double tracks so they don't really stand out as being there.

 

[mjbee]

Hello-
I was listening to a recent Chili Peppers song

You were listening to some form of retuning technology then.

By The Way, Zephyr Song, and the latest one that sounds like one of the previous ones are all plastered with Shania Twain levels of retuning, and there's quite a few artefacts creeping through.

The 2nd "All the world can pass me by" (toward the end of song) has a huge one in the word "all". Sounds like a wopping great lump of dirt went under the capstan and yanked the tape through

I was most annoyed and disappointed to listen to Brian May "Driven By You" intro/outro -- only to now notice that it's a generated harmony part. I never picked up on that when it first came out. I feel cheated

Mike.

 

[Alanfc]

fascinating

These variations in the voices did indeed seem to have a certain unnatural character to them, aside from garden variety FX. (I don't necessarily mean that in a PURIST way,);
SO I'm glad it wasn't just me hearin' things