Pro Tools 11 - #23 - Elastic Pitch pt.2 - Elastic Pitch on Vocals Video Lecture | Pro tools Tutorial: Basics to Expert - Video & Sound Editing

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 23 of my Pro Tools 11
video tutorial series in this episode
we're going to talk about using elastic
pitch with vocals there's two main
things you can do with elastic pitch and
vocals you can make sort of minut tuning
changes if you hear a note that's a
little sharp or a little flat you can
counteract that note note by slightly
pushing it up or slightly pushing it
down or you can create large vocal
changes basically pushing a note up a
whole step or multiple steps so just to
begin let me show you the the excerpt of
a session I have here I basically have
the music bed of a session I've been
working on just rendered down to a clip
and then the vocals separate
so that's that not the whole session
just a little excerpt of it let's listen
to the vocals by themselves and they say
that money can't buy you happiness
you must be spending it now this is very
subtle but one of the first things I'm
hearing is this phrase right here by you
happy you happy buy you happiness she
sounds like she's a little sharp meaning
that she's sung the note a little bit
too high that sounds like it's almost
like a quarter step or a third of a step
third of a half step too high so what
I'm gonna do is I'm gonna break up this
note using my selector tool and hitting
beat just break this out into its own
clip
turn on the polyphonic elastic mode I'm
gonna right-click just on this one clip
go to elastic properties and I'm going
to pitch shift this note down now in the
previous episode we talked about pitch
shifting things down by whole semitones
now if you don't remember there's 12
semitones in an octave so C to C sharp
is 1 semitones a full note upper up or
down ascent is one 100th of a semitone
so this allows us to make fine changes
fine tuning changes to our waveform so
just to sort of show you what this can
do if I pull this all the way down it's
gonna go down to negative 99 which is
almost an entire half step down by can't
buy you happy can't buy you obviously
that's not right look and we can go up
to positive 99 which is almost a half
step higher can't buy you happen to buy
you happy
so she's too high now so what I said
originally was that I think that she's a
slightly sharp I think that the note
she's saying was a little bit too high
so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna roll
this down a bit let's go to like
negative 70 let's see what that sounds
like
I'm onna can't buy you happiness it
seems like it's still a little bit
you flat let's pull it up a bit that
money can't buy you happiness same thing
it's just it seems like it's a little
bit too flat let's go up to like 40 by
the way you can type it in as well
hey that money can't buy you happiness
slightly slightly a little bit too flat
step in like negative 35 I mean can't
buy you happiness all right that sounds
pretty good to me now it in a better
situation if you have the money to do it
you can buy a program like Milla dine or
antara auto-tune and it'll sense how out
of tune a note is so I'm not saying that
this is a way to sort of replace
auto-tune or melody and it's just it's a
way just to quickly correct maybe just
one note that's out of out of tune or
note is noticeably out of tune so for us
the rest of this clip is fine it's just
that one there's one little phrase here
that seems like it's seem that goes a
little bit too sharp so we counteract it
by lowering the pitch just a little bit
so we're gonna do real quick is I am
going to instead of using polyphonic I'm
gonna use X form because X form just
ends up sounding better in the long run
and just like I showed you in the last
video let's turn the formant enable in
that's gonna preserve the quality of her
voice a bit more but we just had to wait
for the note to the waveform to render
here so just wait a wait a minute here
for this to be fully rendered and I
should also mention while this is
rendering that when you turn the formant
on a former enable in its gonna preserve
the quality of her voice a lot better if
you pitch shift things up they sent tend
to sound a little bit chipmunky and if
you tune them down it just tends to
sound a little too darker low sounding
especially for a female voice so let's
listen to this
money can't buy you happiness yeah that
sounds great
so let's just render all this together
shift option 3 I can turn xform off
there we go so let's just listen to that
with the with the music now the next
thing I'm gonna do with this is I'm
going to create some harmonies on the
part that says buy you happiness and
then wrong wrong wrong we're going to
create some artificial harmonies now
this is an example of creating like a
large pitch if not just a fine pitch
shift like we did before so to do this
I'm gonna duplicate her whole track you
right-click on the track name and you go
down to duplicate I'm just gonna say
okay - all of this makes an exact
duplicate down here I'm gonna rename
this harmony but I have to spell harmony
right first harmony there you go harmony
I'm gonna cut out everything except for
the parts that I want to be harmonized
and they say that money can't buy you
happiness
you must be so in my harmony track I
just have the two lines that say buy you
happiness I'm just gonna clean up my
edits a little bit here
add some fades there we go alright so
here's here's my what's gonna be my
harmony track what I'm gonna do is I'm
just going to imma keep this one so load
for now just to sort of work with this
in real time I'm going to choose
polyphonic eventually by the end we'll
switch this over to X form but
polyphonic is gonna be a lot quicker to
work with because it can work in real
time now in songs that are are in minor
keys generally you want to harmonize a
root harmony of a my
above the vocal or a major third major
sixth below the vocal sometimes it'll be
like a minor third below the vocal there
really isn't a hard and fast rule and
there's really no way to tell unless you
know exactly what note you're looking at
so when it comes down to work like this
it's you just sort of have to have a
good ear for it it helps to have some
music theory training and it helps I
mean sometimes this trial and error can
help too
so basically we have here is buy you
happiness it's two notes done oh no no
no I can tell you exactly what the two
notes are because I can hear it the
songs in the key of F sharp minor she's
singing EEE F sharp so what we want to
do is we want to harmonize up a third
above the E and a third up above the F
sharp within the key of F sharp minor
now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to
right click on actually first of all I'm
gonna separate this into two different
Clips by you happiness
where the pitch changes so there's a
pitch change here where she goes up by
you happiness just students the low note
and the high note the low note I'm going
to right click on it and go to elastic
properties and I'm gonna pull pretty
much everything up by three semitones
three semitones is a minor third so I'm
gonna pull the other clip up by a minor
third by you happiness
I know she sounds like a chipmunk right
now we'll fix that later but let's
listen to that with the vocals are you
happiness now this one sounds okay this
one sounds a little weird and the reason
for that is that when you harmonize at
thirds you sort of have to jump back and
forth between major and minor thirds
depending on the key that you're in a
major third believe it or not is four
semitones up so I'm gonna change this to
four instead are you happiness that
sounds a lot better let's listen to that
with the music
cool so let's do the same thing over
here let's play with our major and minor
thirds I'm just going to cut this into
three different clips to start I'm just
gonna pull them all up three semitones a
minor third I can tell you right now
this the original melody is a G sharp F
sharp so it's basically like May Rado in
a F sharp minor scale so only if we
harmonized up in the key it's gonna be a
major third a minor third a minor third
so these two can stay the same this one
I'm gonna shift up to four instead of
three and we play them together that
sounds pretty good to me just clean up
my edits clean up my edits over here as
well let's do that sounds like the whole
thing with the music I'm gonna pull the
harmony down quite a bit to the harmony
doesn't have to be so loud
that sounds pretty good to me
tonally like well the the notes makes
sense to me that tonally though this
one's just start it just sounds like a
chipmunk to me so like I said before
that really the main way we can make
this work for us and make it sound more
NAT like a natural pitch shift is what
we can do is we use X form instead of
polyphonic we use polyphonic to find the
pitches that work and do the pitch
shifting but then we can just switch
over to X form to get the high quality
processing so we're at the way to wait
just a bit here for each of these clips
to to load it should sound better are
you happy now that's still chipmunky
because we haven't turned on the formant
enable in button so we got to do that as
well
and we're gonna have to once again wait
for this to process there we go let's
listen to this this is a little bit less
chipmunky it's it doesn't sound like
just a straight pitch shift is it sounds
like the formants are a little bit more
aligned with her original vocal now one
thing I like to do with backing
harmonies like this is I like to add EQ
to it I'm just gonna use the stock EQ in
Pro Tools I'm gonna turn on the
high-pass filter
turn on the low-pass filter roll the Q
which is essentially the slope all the
way up and then just create like a
little like sort of band pass filter out
of it scooping out the highest most
frequencies and the lowest most
frequencies because the backing harmony
doesn't need to be really present really
and they say that money can't buy you
happiness
you must be spending it wrong I'm gonna
pull the level down quite a bit - money
can't buy you happiness
you must be spending it wrong alright so
let's listen to all of this now with the
music in the back bye
there you go
so you can create artificial harmonies
just using the stock tools and Pro Tools
now it's again it's not quite as strong
of a tool like Mela dine where you can
visually see what you're doing if you
know what's going on in your head it's
it's actually pretty easy to work with
this is the way I used to create vocal
harmonies before I used Melodyne and it
worked just fine it just it took a lot
of time to do this so you know I'm sorry
if I lost you on that last part in terms
of major and minor thirds and
harmonizing but you have to understand
the fundamentals of music and music
theory to create harmonies like this
otherwise you're just sort of you know
you're it's trial and error you know you
sit there and shift things up and down
until it sounds right and if that's what
you have to do to get the job done then
fine you can do that it's it's a matter
of you know you know does the final
result still sound good you know again I
apologize if you didn't quite catch the
tail end of that I just wanted to make
sure that I showed how to harmonize
vocals with xform even if I've half of
my audience was completely confused by
that because they don't have any formal
music training so I hope you enjoyed the
video and thanks for watching