In this day and age of even great singers undergoing pitch manipulation I found this article a good read. I have a decent ear for pitch but apparently not keen enough after reading this. We have three pitch editors (all included free with packages) including Melodyne and Logic Pro X’s editor but I’ve never used one on a vocal - due to my lack of pitch acuity I suppose I do find them helpful to change a RT note here and there mostly to improve segues into vocals.

But I can’t help but wonder what my perspective would be, if say, I was sensitive to +10 / -10 cents. In the spirit of full disclosure I’ll state that from some videos I’ve watched I feel that the soul of a vocal can be sucked out via some examples I’ve seen over the years.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Interesting discussion here

Bud

I have very good 'ears' for intonation. This comes from long practice on the sax. The sax is not in tune with itself, each note requires a little more or less pressure on the reed to play it in tune. No two saxes, even the same make and model have the same intonation 'signature' and changing temperature changes the tuning of the horn.

This means my ear is always 'on the job'.

Does that mean I always play/sing in tune? Definitely not.

Sometimes a little sharp adds brightness and a little flat adds tension.

Example: When Otis Redding on "I've Been Loving You Too Long" sings the lyrics "You Walked Out" he hits the word Out flat and gradually pulls it up towards in tune. This adds the pain to the song. Auto-tune would be a great disservice there.

Sometimes the tuning should be more like 'just intonation' with another instrument or voice to blend better. In the equal temperament system, that would be considered out of tune.

Whether your vibrato is mostly above pitch, below pitch or centered around pitch is another decision to make in the context of the song you are playing, and the relation of that note to the rest of the song.

In the end, IMO the question should not be whether the note I'm playing should be in tune or not, but how my manipulation of that note influences the emotion I am trying to express while playing.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob, that makes a lot of sense. We’ve always loved the sax and thought it to be much like the human voice. Janice bends notes around so much singing that she might cause an editor to crash

Yeah.... my sense of intonation is a curse. I can hear things out of tune that others can't.

There was a show on TV Saturday night honoring Mac Davis as a writer and I swear that every singer in the place was either sharp or flat from the band. I don't know which was more of an affront to my ears.... the sharp ones or the flat ones. Of course also in consideration, many of those singers on the show were stars 30 years ago and probably haven't sang much in the last decade or so...... cutting slack where it's probably due.

The cool thing about melodyne is that you don't have top rely on your ability to hear things that are off. It will show you the slightest deviation from the mean. I can look ahead and see things coming that I know are going to need fixing.

Used correctly, melodyne can actually help you become a better singer because it shows you what you're actually doing. Holding back, forcing, drifting.... etc.

Perfect intonation often removes feel if you are only talking that +/- 10 cents Notes spoke of. However, when you get into Britney Spears levels of tone deafness, it is a must-have.

Musically, I will never forget what Victor Wooten once said at a clinic. "You are never more than a fret away from being on the right note. You can always slide your hand up or down and make it look intentional."

Oh, 432 again.

I’ve worked in the studio doing mixes of my work with many great engineers. They consistently do not believe me at first when I identify notes that are out. They claim no one can distinguish pitch differences less than six cents. I can, and I’ve proven it to them.

Having said that, I rarely adjust a pitch of my own playing. As mentioned above, that can suck the life out of a performance. I play two instruments known for being very ‘out’ with themselves, flugelhorn and soprano sax (Notes is right). My general approach is to only adjust a note if it is at the end of a phrase and makes the start of the next phrase sound wrong.

I am pretty sensitive to pitch. I am a horrible vocalist. Because of that I have tried to adjust things in Melodyne for example. Sometimes it helps but more often it causes more problems than it solves.

With such ready access to electronics that can read frequency values very accurately, perhaps more people are aware of things being off pitch.

Intonation is consistently problematic with guitars and I assume is a problem in all string instruments. It can be solved for the most part but that only normally happens in high quality guitars. My Tom Anderson guitars play pretty true all the way up the neck but they are pretty pricey.

I find a lot of pitch issues in real tracks across the range of instruments I have listen too.

Minor pitch issues plus or minus 10 cents don't bother me in vocals. They are readily apparent in brass and woodwinds to me. Also guitars. Lower frequency notes on bass guitar are hard for me to distinguish. Perhaps that is a result of some hearing loss....not sure.

On time and on pitch...more than a little important.

I have never listen to anything Janice has done that stood out as off pitch. She is a skilled vocalist with a very pleasant voice. If it ain't broke, don't fix it...lol

Cheers,

Billy

I used to think I could sing until I got Melodyne and saw a visual representation of how close to the notes I wasn't. Very eye-opening.

Having said that.. I do sing. It has been my experience that some genres are more forgiving to a poor vocalist than others. I can't sing any James Taylor song, no matter how I transpose it... but my efforts on some rock and blues (if I get the key centered on my range) are passable to my ears.

And as Matt said, I think we tend to judge passing notes less critically than certain critical notes, such as the first note in a passage.

The possibility of sucking the life out of a performance with pitch correction is a real possibility... but it's equally possible (and I think quite common) to ruin a vocal by singing off pitch. I know people who pride themselves on never using pitch correction... but.. .I've heard them sing and IMO if they used a little help the performance would be less painful.

We tend to judge ourselves on the best we can do, but others tend to judge us on the worst they've seen/heard us do. Considering the fact that the same person might sing great on one day but badly on another day muddies the water in discussions like this.

And at the crux of this topic is that even if you can hear pitch so purely that you can tell that +/- 10 cents, that doesn't necessarily mean you can sing better to overcome it. I am flat about 20 cents on any held note, but the passing tones to get to the flat part are pretty good.

I've been experimenting since my original post with Logic Pro X's Flex Pitch. I can readily hear a +/- 10 cent change in a note when modifying it with the editor. And if I play a note with a 5 cent change against the original I can hear the beats or "wavering"...guess that's why I've never had an issue tuning a guitar. However, when I play a modified note vs original in the context of a full mix I cannot hear the difference. I suppose some of that is due to having one of the oldest set of ears on the forum

Bud