Hi all
First appolgies for no blog post in February. With FAWM and a trip to Egypt it was a very busy.
During FAWM I started using yet another short cut to making harmonies. So here is a blog post on how I did that. Comments are, as always, appreciated.

The lazy way to make harmonies using Band-in-a-box and Melodyne Studio 4

That's quite a beautiful song you're using for the harmony demonstration. Great article as always.

Very cool. It's amazing what we can do with these wonderful tools.

I really love your blog posts so thank you for always sharing them, and that's so cool that you went to Egypt! I've always wanted to go there. I hope that it was an interesting and fun experience for you.

Yep..... Melodyne rocks.

I have hesitated to use it for harmonies until recently when I used it to expedite the time I had available. Not enough time to record and tweek the harmonies.

So I cloned the one lead vocal in my DAW (Sonar) to 2 more tracks. I captured the chorus in ME and used it to move everything up a few steps in one track and down a few steps in the other. Then I simply listened and moved the notes that were "off" to a better sounding note and printed it.

Missing You is the song. Harmonies on the choruses. On my music page.

The cool thing is that the harmonies are in perfect sync as far as phrasing.

I've heard of folks using other tools as well, besides ME to get this done.

Results may vary.

Great blog Joanne. I use Melodyne Studio 4 in Studio One Pro 3 much like Herb. One thing that I do a little different is to change the format of the harmonies. This makes it sound a little different than the original, thus adding a little variation to the voices. YMMV

Formant

Is there any kind of range limit in Melodyne that you can transpose up before it starts going all chipmunk?

I thought it starts sounding weird if shifting much more than a third.

Thanx. I didn't catch that typo.

Same here.

Hi Eddie
I went up a whole octave in this one
Dancing in the moonlight

It all depends......

on the voice timbre, and how good you are at editing the formants. I have moved a female vocal much further than I ever successfully (without major artifacts) moved a male vocal. nI took a unison vocal and made some nice harmonies that sound crystal. Check out COMING HOME on my music page. First female vocal harmony courtesy of melodyne.

My policy is less is better.

Perhaps a better way to use this is to do the conversion and not worry about the quality of the sound..... BUT.... take the time to actually learn the part note for note and sing it. THEN..... use melodyne to fix the flat stuff..... that way you're only moving part of a step or one step max. Easy thing for ME to do.

Actually, the same thing applies going down too.

Mario and Herb. So glad you are already having success with this approach. I must experiment using the “formant” tool a bit more. The point that Herb made about the harmonies already being perfectly lined up is a huge time saver. I also find that the harmonies generated with this method sound more natural that the BIAB TC-helicon ones.

Just thinking about it. If you use Melodyne as a plug-in then you would not need Melodyne studio 4. You could easily use this technique using the single track version. I have found Melodyne difficult to work with in plugin mode in RealBand but maybe I must try again.

Another excellent tutorial Joanne.

You've really clearly spelled out a fantastic use of the sound engineering products we have.

Thank you for referring to the local forum, which is always interesting. ,

I use Melodyne in both modes (plugin, stand-alone).

Beautiful article and beautiful singing of beautiful songs!

I gave up that frustration in RealBand and Pro Tools long ago. I just take my current tracks from either DAW and just drag them in to full version Melodyne. Too much time wasted trying to make it work well in plugin mode.

Thanks for sharing, Joanne! As always - amazing work on this. Incredibly informative, and very concise. And by the way, hope you had an awesome time in Egypt!

What is interesting is that you say this is the "lazy" way to make harmony vocals. This seems quite ambitious rather than lazy in any way!

I will have to look into this again. I played with it once but didn't like it, but I probably also didn't give it enough time and effort.

When I just need ooh and aah type BV, I use the ROGodyne....

Eddie..... it's much faster then trying to record multiple harmony tracks and get the phrasing and notes exactly right. I heard that Paul McCartney spent several days getting his vocal harmonies and doubling parts perfect. This gets you there instantly when you clone.

Regarding using this stand-alone or as a plug in...... I think if you open it as a plug in the track of a good DAW, you should not have any issues. I have always run this in Sonar without any issues.

Keep in mind that it is a HUGE resource hog so don't try running a dozen instances of this at the same time, and you should be OK. I will run one or two instances..... I use it on the main track and then render it, aka, print the plug...... then open 2 instances in 2 tracks for harmonies..... this seems to run quite stable.