Auto Tune Effect On Talking
Technology has permanently changed the way we listen to music. One of the artists credited (or blamed) for that shift is T-Pain, the perpetually auto-tuned R&B and rap hit-maker.
Some years ago, auto-tune was inescapable. Every rapper seemed to have an auto-tuned hook or run. The tacky technology was originally used by producers to help correct notes that an artist couldn't hit or hold. The hope was that listeners wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
In the mid-2000s, auto-tune broke onto the hip hop and R&B scene with producers and rappers exaggerating the effect to extremes. T-Pain was one of the first of those artists to feel the success and also the inevitable backlash of auto-tune. Critics said the technology was disingenuous and destroyed any need for vocal talent. Auto-tune wasn't just decried by music purists and angry bloggers — celebrated artists such as Jay-Z came out against it, and even released a song on his 2009 album The Blueprint 3, titled 'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune).'
Well T-Pain survived the barbs and is currently riding another wave of auto-tune success with the release of an iPhone app, novelty microphone and a brand new album, rEVOLVEr, released in 2011. The app, I AM T-Pain, lets users auto-tune their voice by singing into an iPhone, whereas the microphone, called the 'I AM T-Pain Mic,' is a stand-alone toy dedicated to auto-tuning.
SpeakPipe voice recorder allows you to create an audio recording directly from a browser by using your microphone. The recording is produced locally on your computer. Imitate voice of a robot with autotune for pitch perfect! Manipulate the options in audio editor with microphone sound effects. Use vocal program and auto tuner for talking or imitating!
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Mashable had a chance to speak with T-Pain about auto-tune, his app and microphone and the future of music in the age of technology.
The Road to the App Store
T-Pain has always had a mind on technology and saw a perfect opportunity to get into the app game when other celebrities, such as Britney Spears, Pink and Lil' Wayne, started releasing their own apps.
'I said, 'Well, I guess I'm so famous for the auto-tune, I guess I should make an app.' And it's just been flying off the shelves,' T-Pain, born Faheem Najm, says. The app was a smart move. It has been downloaded more than 2 million times since its launch in 2009, according to T-Pain's team. That was just the start: 'You know I had pretty good projections with the mic and a lot of adults buy it, like, pretending they're buying it for their kids ... Adults would call me saying they're tired of their kids slobbering all over their phones,' T-Pain says of his decision to create a mic version of his auto-tune app.
T-Pain insists that the mic is all about making music fun. 'I don't do the whole, 'Put my name on it, make me famous' thing,' Pain told us, although there is a video on T-Pain's site in which he says of the mic: 'I mean, we're just, we're milking this thing baby. We're milking it.' Regardless of the intent, T-Pain's mic is selling well.
'Hard & B'
It's hard to stay mad at T-Pain, who swears by a type of music he calls 'Hard & B.' It's more about process than genre. 'Basically it’s the hard way of doing music,' T-Pain says. 'I write my music. I produce my music. I sing it. I damn near record all of it myself and you gotta go out and perform it. It’s a hard way of making music. On the other hand, [some artists] get someone to write and produce it and you just sing it in the middle like a puppet.'
In that sense, auto-tune is less a way for T-Pain to hide his voice but to create music in a different way. 'My dad always told me that anyone's voice is just another instrument added to the music. There was a time when people had seven-minute songs and five minutes of them were just straight instrumental,' T-Pain says. 'I got a lot of influence from [the '60s era] and I thought I might as well just turn my voice into a saxophone.' He credits the core of his music and lyric style to R. Kelly and Cee Lo Green, two R&B artists known for their expressive — and unfiltered — voices.
After years of success, however, T-Pain still enjoys talking about the tech he applies to his voice as a way of educating people on how it works. T-Pain says he studied the technology behind auto-tune to better understand his craft.
Auto-tune, it turns out, is actually sort of hard to pull off: 'You know, because it was made to correct bad notes and stuff, of course people say you just slap it on your voice and anyone who's tone-deaf can make a half-decent song.' It also turns out that T-Pain is a decent singer even without the tech. 'The crazy thing is ... there's always a song [on my albums] with no auto-tune and those are always the songs that go overlooked,' T-Pain says.
Social media has helped alleviate some of that frustration thanks to massive support from T-Pain's followers. Although he has more than 700,000 followers on Twitter, he tries to stay humble: 'I don't know man, because you look at someone like Soulja Boy and all these other people and they have millions of followers and I'm proud to even have two follows; my mom and my dad .... The way that people show me love on Twitter? I don't know man. It's amazing.'
T-Pain has a busy year ahead. After our phone call, T-Pain had a day of interviews with press before heading to Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform 'Drowning Again' on piano and without auto-tune. Through the madness, his iPhone app and auto-tuning microphone continue to sell to legions of would-be crooners and lotharios practicing their Hard & B.
If you like to play in Logic Pro X, one of the most important things you can do is know how to autotune!
Are your vocal performances coming out a little pitchy? Struggling to hit that high note? Maybe you captured the ultimate performance with loads of soul and feeling, but it’s not quite fitting in the mix due to some slight pitch issues.
Or, maybe you just want to be the next T-Pain, and apply some crazy pitch effects to your vocal recordings.
Whatever the case, learning how to auto-tune in Logic Pro X is not only easy, but will become an invaluable tool in perfecting your vocal recordings, and taking your production to the next level!
Let’s continue these logic pro tutorials with an expose on Auto-tune!
What Is Auto-tune?
Technically speaking, Auto-Tune is a piece of software created by Antares, but the effect has become so popularised in mainstream music that the name has kind of stuck. Typically, when producers, artists or listeners use the term auto tune, what they are talking about is pitch correction.
This step is best performed after you have added some plugins to your other tracks, and have started getting the song whipped into shape!
Pitch correction is a program or plugin used to correct off notes in vocals. Depending on the software, this can be done automatically or manually. You’ll learn about some different options for using in auto tune in Logic soon.
It can also be used as a creative effect, such is the case in a lot of modern hip-hop and RnB music, often dubbed the “T-Pain effect”.
After you get the auto-tune nailed, you will be ready to go on and mix your tracks in Logic Pro X!
Alright. Let’s get started…
When And Why To Use Auto-tune
This might seem obvious, but there are actually a few reasons you might want to use auto tune.
To Fix An Out Of Tune Vocal Recording
Probably the most common use for auto-tune is to correct any off notes in a vocal performance. It may seem like cheating to some, but actually this is an incredibly common technique.
Just about every singer you hear on record these days (especially in pop music) has some form of pitch correction applied, and we’ve become so adapted to hearing perfectly sung melodies that it can even sound strange hearing an unprocessed vocalist!
To Create A Specific Vocal Effect
Popular in modern hip-hop and RnB, heavily autotuned vocals have become a regular feature used by rappers and vocalists in these genres.
Popularised by T-Pain in the early 2000s, the sound is often referred to as the “T-Pain Effect”, so much so that iZotope has released a pitch correction tool that is literally called The T-Pain Effect.
The goal here is to apply auto tune to a vocal performance that is far out of pitch (or even monotonous), with the parameters at such extreme settings that the effects of the pitch correction plug-in are exceedingly obvious. You’ll learn just how to do this very soon as well.
To Create A Vocal Harmony
A little known use for pitch correction is to take the original vocal recording (which may already have had auto tune applied), and create a vocal harmony by changing the pitch of each note sung.
This achieves an effect that is not anywhere near as natural as a sung harmony, but natural isn’t always what we are going for!
Use Auto Tune To Level Up Your Music Production Skills
Given the wide variety of situations that pitch correction can be applied to, you can see why it’s an extremely vital skill to master.
Not only will you be able to fix bung notes (or seemingly unsalvageable performances) to deliver a higher quality end result, but you’ll also be able to apply the effect more creatively to diversify the sound of your audio productions, and bang out tunes that sound just like your favourite artists!
Does Logic Pro X Have Pitch Correction?
This is why we love Logic Pro X, and why you should too: the suite of audio processing tools that come with the program as standard cover all the bases, and they are extremely effective. (That means yes, yes it does).
There are actually a couple of different tools in Logic Pro that you can use for vocal pitch correction, depending on your desired outcome.
How Do You Autotune Vocals In Logic?
- Pitch Correction Tool – An intuitive and simple way to bring vocals in-tune
- Flex Pitch – A slightly more manual approach that gives you the ability to fine-tune a performance
- External plug-ins (such as The T-Pain Effect, or Antares Auto-Tune)
We’re going to focus on using the first two options in Logic Pro X, and how you can get using auto-tune to create pro level tracks.
Pitch Correction Plug-In
Step 1:
On the desired audio track, head over to the left hand side and click on a free Audio FX slot. You’ll find Logic’s Pitch Correction plug-in under ‘Pitch’ – funny that.
Step 2:
The plug-in GUI is admittedly a little dated, and kind of looks like something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it does the trick. Rather well in fact.
The first thing you’ll want to do is the key/scale by using the Root and Scale drop down menus.
Step 3:
You’ll then want to select Normal or Low depending on the range of the sources. As a general rule, select Normal for female vocals and Low for male vocals.
But have a play around with the two options and see what sounds best to you!
Step 4:
Now play the track back, and use the Response and Detune sliders to achieve the perfect auto tune effect.
Response is a time based control, the lower the time, the faster the plug-in will react to incorrect pitches, and therefore the more noticeable the effect will be. Too fast, and the effect will be a robotic vocal sound.
Too slow, and Logic may miss some fleeting out of tune notes. Season to taste.
Detune should be adjusted if the track is consistently below or above the the centre of the bottom display. Again, adjust til you find the sweet spot.
Flex Pitch
Flex Pitch is a tool in Logic Pro X that allows you to adjust the pitch of a vocal performance note by note. That means you can select individual off notes to correct, rather than applying an effect over an entire track. This is a great idea if you are trying to get a more natural tone overall.
Step 1:
You’ll want to start by hitting the flex button in the edit window (Command+F).
Step 2:
From the drop down menu, select Flex Pitch. It might take a couple of seconds to initialize.
Step 3:
Zoom in on the vocal track, and you’ll see that Logic Pro has added some little blue boxes to the audio recording. These denote the pitch of each note.
Step 4:
From here, you can literally drag each of the blue boxes in your audio region to the desired pitch!
How Do I Record Auto Tune In Logic Pro X?
Download Auto-tune Effect
The Pitch Correction plug-in in Logic Pro can be used in realtime, if you have a need to auto-tune vocals on the way in.
Unfortunately the Flex Pitch function is a more manual approach, so if you like using correction on the way in, and Logic’s in built tool isn’t doing the trick, try some of these third-party plugins and see if they get you where you want to be.
- Antares Auto-Tune
- iZotope The T-Pain Effect
- Waves Tune
- Celemony Melodyne
Conclusion
Auto Tune Effect On Talking Video
So, now you’ve learned how to use Logic’s Pitch Correction tool to automatically alter a vocal performance, and the Flex Pitch function for a more manual, fine-tuned approach.
Now it’s up to you, get experimenting and start auto-tuning some vocal tracks!