Hi, new to Live, and question on auto-tune...

[A Funky Rhythm]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and to ableton, having tried the demo last weekend. A week of minimal sleep later and I am a happy live 8 owner...
Anyhow, I am a hobby/project studio owner like I'm sure many here are and can't see me doing music for a living any time soon, however that doesn't mean I don't take it seriously! I'm looking forward to picking up tips and ideas from all of you in time.

My setup consists of a Mac, Live 8, Logic, Maschine, several vsts, iPad (touchAble- good god, how cool is this....!?) some hardware boards (Fantom X8, V-Synth, Tyros 3) and various other bits and bobs. I am really enjoying how live allows me to improvise and just generally be creative, especially if I don't have a track fully mapped out in my head before I start. I intend to create ideas in live, then move them into logic to finalise the arrangement and mix, however as I get more familiar with Live's arrangement view this may change. I will probably use Logic for vocals though until Live has comparable track comping features, but thats by the by.

The only thing I feel i need to complete the setup now is something to tweak my admittedly sometimes pitchy vocal tracks. And I mean TWEAK, I'm not trying to be T-Pain, thanks very much... I have looked around and it seems Melodyne is the tool for the job, however I am unsure as to which version to get. I don't think I need the DNA features as most of my work is midi based, with the possible exception of guitars. I can just tweak the midi in a track if I want to tweak individual notes in a recording. That leaves me between 'assistant- €200' and 'essential- €100'. The essential will restrict me to adjusting pitch and timing only, whereas assistant allows formant, and more advanced voice character and 'warping'esque features.

Do you think Live's audio warp would make a good stand-in for the extra features in Melodyne Assistant, or should I just pony up the extra €100 for it? Surely Essential will do the job and I can spend the rest of the money on beer? Also, how stable is melodyne in Live in your experience?

Many thanks for your help,

Andrew

[ark]

Do you think Live's audio warp would make a good stand-in for the extra features in Melodyne Assistant, or should I just pony up the extra €100 for it?

I can't comment on Melodyne, but Live's warping is not intended as a pitch adjustment: It lets you change the rhythmic structure of one track to fit another. It's not a pitch corrector or vocal processor.

[A Funky Rhythm]

Do you think Live's audio warp would make a good stand-in for the extra features in Melodyne Assistant, or should I just pony up the extra €100 for it?

I can't comment on Melodyne, but Live's warping is not intended as a pitch adjustment: It lets you change the rhythmic structure of one track to fit another. It's not a pitch corrector or vocal processor.

Oh bugger, my first post on here and I come across as a bit of an idiot! Oh well. Thank you for the reply

It seems I misunderstood the extra features of assistant. It seems that the time aspect of both versions is identical (and useless as I will be doing all of my time-stretching etc in ableton), it the modulation/formant type effects that are different or missing in essential.

I will probably just get essential and upgrade if I find I need more flexibility. I'll put the rest of the money towards singing lessons.....

And beer.

[Participants]

Is there any reason why you wouldn't want to use Logic for vocals, fine-tune them within Logic and then either:

1) Use Live as a rewire device with Logic?
2) Export your correct vocal track to audio for use in Ableton?

[theophilus]

i think if all you want to do is auto-tune pitch, and you're at least close, essential would be enough (i only have essential, though honestly have barely used it).

and though live's warping doesn't do melodyne-style pitching, there's no reason it couldn't really - hoping they add that in for live 9.

[Monchai]

How about Antares Auto-tune? I'm not sure if you are looking for pitch correction or not but if you are, might want to consider Auto-tune. I don't use Melodyne so no comment on that one.

[agent314]

That's not entirely true, about Live not being good for pitch adjustment

I've used transpose envelopes a bunch of times to tweak vocal and guitar parts that were slightly out of tune, and it's worked perfectly for what I needed

Granted it's painstaking compared to something like Autotune or Melodyne, but for the few spots I needed to work on, it was just fine

[hacktheplanet]

I used a demo of Izotope Nectar on the vocals for my last project. The pitch correction worked pretty damn well as an "it just works" sorta thing. A little pricey though. Currently waiting to see if a used license pops up somewhere.

(Personally, I try to use pitch correction as little as possible. I think it sounds better just to retake/resample until it sounds good.)