MELODYNE 5

In the eyes (and ears) of the general public, vocal pitch manipulation is often regarded as cheating and symptomatic of modern mass-produced pop – but that kind of criticism is lazy and often ill-informed.

Like with CGI in movies, people only get up in arms about vocal pitch correction that they notice – pitch correction done well should sound totally natural, and not bring any real attention to itself.

Thanks to incredibly powerful programs such as Celemony’s Melodyne, pitch correction doesn’t have to be in the stylized Auto-Tune fashion – instead it can be a subtle tweak of the pitch or timing of occasional rogue notes.

Vocal pitch correction is now a technique used by almost all producers working today. Of course there are purist artists out there who deride pitch correction as cheating, but they are very much in the minority. Though it may be a questionable practice to present someone with no singing talent as the next Mariah Carey, polishing the performance of a person with a decent voice isn’t really a huge sin. We fine tune and tweak every element of our track to an infinitesimal level, why should the vocal part be any different?

Pitch correction also isn’t only restricted to monophonic audio sources such as vocals, Melodyne lets you tweak and repitch individual notes within polyphonous audio recordings. This means that not only can Melodyne be used as a technical tool for (literally) fine tuning vocal performances, it can also be a creative tool allowing you to totally rewrite chord progressions, orchestral arrangements, choir performances and more.