Perfect Your Vocals with Pitch Edit Video Lecture | Reason Tutorials: The Ultimate Guide - Video & Sound Editing

let's talk today about one of the
coolest new features of reason 9 when it
comes to perfecting your recordings
pitch it in reason sequencer you're
probably already familiar with different
ways we perfect our audio recordings
there's confident where you select the
best recorded takes there's slice edit
where you adjust and perfect the timing
of your performances and now in reason 9
there's pitch at where you craft your
vocals tuning and phrasing and polish it
to perfection let's take a look at one
of Ryan's songs
Ryan's a perfect candidate for pitch at
it
because his voice isn't bad it's just
you know not good no I don't mean that
in a bad way what I mean is that Ryan
can close the gap between an OK vocal
and a great vocal by using pitch at it
so first let's check it out in its final
form look what's on TV
I'd call that a sign
I'll put the
long
and you'll come out
it's a nice song and a nice vocal
ten minutes already and sleeping on my
side but let's go back to the beginning
and listen to the vocal Ryan originally
tracked
what's on TV
I'd call that a sign same performance
same feeling but his small variations in
pitch detract from the songs polish so
let's go in and fix all that using pitch
at it to get into pitch at it we can
select our first vocal clip in the
sequencer and click pitch at it in the
sequencers tool bar right away we see a
whole new view that looks more like a
MIDI clip than the audio waveforms were
used to Reason has analyzed our vocals
pitch timing and phrasing to lay it out
on a familiar piano roll for us to edit
but look closer and you'll notice the
pitch Ryan is singing sometimes lands a
little above or below the note he's
aiming to hit the first step in
correcting his vocal is to automatically
Center his pitch around the correct note
to do that we'll select every note in
this clip and click the correct button
in pitch at its left toolbar as we do
you'll see each note shift some subtly
some not so subtly as each note is now
resented on to the nearest chromatic
note look what's on TV
I'd call that a sign already
his vocal is sounding more polished but
often with untrained vocalists their
pitch drips when they hold notes as you
can see that drift is represented by the
pitch curve the line that tracks the
actual pitch Ryan is singing throughout
the notes duration we can see on words
like now in this lyrical phrase that he
goes a little sharp then a little flat
back sharp again and so on now this
isn't to be confused with vibrato this
is just plain old drift for each note
and reasons pitch at it we can correct
this drift by selecting the note and
dragging its drift handle lower as I
drag it down you can see Ryan's drift
scaling downwards until at the bottom of
the range there's no drift whatsoever
but when it comes to perfecting vocals
perfect isn't usually the goal natural
is far more desirable you'll soon find
that singers tend to have their own
drift range that works well for them for
Ryan ironing out about 50% of his drift
on most notes works well so let's select
the rest of the notes in this phrase and
adjust the drift to the halfway point if
you're someone who likes to work
numerically you can also adjust the
drift in the toolbar and let's check it
out look what's on TV now
I'd call that a side
it still sounds like him still sounds
human but the pitch has all been fixed
and sounds great in the track now in
fact now that we have the process down
let's move on to his next phrase and
you'll see how quick it can be to
getting great sounding takes
here's his raw performance I'll put the
cat along you'll come out in time
it's got the same issues same sharp
notes same flat notes and some extra
drift let's select all the notes click
the correct button to get them on to
their correct pitch and adjust our drift
handles to around 50% for Ryan style
I'll put the catalogue you'll come out
in time
that's it for that one sounds great so
moving on then let's tackle this phrase
in two sections the first part is
straightforward just like we've been
doing
select the notes correct the notes
adjust their drift ten minutes down
already in the second section we've got
more work to do first of all the first
note Ryan sings is just wrong and you're
sleepin it should be an A and he's
singing something between an f-sharp and
a G so clicking the correct button like
we've been doing won't get us to where
we want to be we have to instead
manually correct Ryan's wrong note by
transposing it to the correct one and
that's done by simply dragging the note
to the right pitch we have three
Transpo's modes snap jump and fine
moving from the bottom to the top
fine lets us transpose the note freely
up and down when I click on the note
you'll hear a reference tone to let me
know where I'm at pitch wise
if you don't want to hear that reference
tone you can disable the monitor button
if fine lets us transpose freely jump
does the opposite it jumps up or down
exactly one semi tone as we drag as you
can see from my dragging it really does
jump exactly one semi tone so Ryan's
pitch is somewhere between an F sharp
and a G and when we transpose up it
jumps one semi tone to between G and G
sharp between a G sharp and an a a and a
sharp and so on to change this behavior
we can use the final transpose mode
snap-snap will move our note to the next
chromatic note up or down G but remember
we want Ryan singing an a once snap has
moved you into a chromatic tuning
subsequent moves up and down behave very
much like jump and you sleep that's the
right note let's check out the rest of
the phrase and you sleep on my side
here you can see areas with a pitch
curve and the note objects diverge
that's because in this phrase Ryan is
sliding notes and doing some legato
phrases if we want to clean up and
perfect his take and we do we need to
help reason understand Ryan's personal
sense of phrasing a little better when I
see passages like this I reach for the
razor tool all reason needs to interpret
this correctly is a couple more slice
markers if you look you'll see three
main sections where the pitch curve
deviates from the note objects here here
and here
to correct this I simply place razor
marks on the notes at the point where
the pitch curve deviates from or returns
on to the note object like this
instantly you see the notes in the pitch
curve match it's important to understand
though I'm not cutting the audio
waveform with the razor tool what I'm
actually doing is adding a slice marker
I'm splitting pitch at its node
interpretation so that it can analyze
our pitch curve as separate objects I'll
also put slice markers on the other
points of deviation here here and here
now you can see our pitch curve in our
nodes track nicely if I want to delete
one of these note separations I just
select the note to the right press
backspace on my keyboard and the slice
marker goes away and our two notes
rejoin into one object if instead I want
to adjust the split point I've made
between two notes I can hold down the
option key on a Mac or alt on Windows
and drag the divider between the two
notes but there's an important workflow
distinction here so put on your
listening ears without the option or Alt
key held down dragging these dividers is
like dragging sliced markers and slice
edit mode it stretches your audio and
can be useful in quantizing your
performance with the modifier key down
it simply moves the slice point itself
keeping the audio in place and if you're
wondering if this behavior works and
slice edit mode - you bet it does once
we have our phrase clearly marked out we
can apply the same technique for Ryan's
voice that's been working so far
select the notes correct the notes and
adjust their drift and you sleep on my
side now we're getting there but let's
help Ryan even more the little run he
does at the end of the phrase isn't
clearly defined
but we can enhance that using another
element of pitch edit note transitions
we've already seen the drift slider at
the top of each note that reduces the
pitch variation during a note but
underneath each note is another
adjustment handle that will help us
alter the transition between notes you
can see the transition region marked in
a darker color on our selected notes and
as I click and drag down on the
transition handles the dark regions
become smaller and the vocal run becomes
audibly crisper let's solo the vocal so
you can hear it die at its extreme
transition is non-existant die here that
with an extreme lack of drift and you
get classic tuning effects side but for
Ryan's phrase we won't eliminate the
transition we'll just reduce it and
you're sleeping on my side now on to our
last phrase of the verse I'm watching
the whole damn time
for chariots a fire most of this is
really straightforward let's do our
regular routine select correct D drift
I'm watching the whole damn time on the
back end of the phrase I'll do the same
thing for everything except one word
the word I left alone is chariots a word
that Ryan bends jarred his Bend is
intentional and I don't want to squeeze
the life out of his performance so I'm
not going to slice this up and
autocorrect it the only problem is that
he's a little flat at the top of the
phrase you can even see it in his pitch
curve which is a little south of the
midline for that note which is d if we
apply the techniques we've learned so
far we would select the note and correct
it with the correct button but that's
only made the phrase more flat and if we
use either the jump or snap transpose
mode to move it up well now it's too
sharp
so let's undo that the solution for
phrases like this that are deliberately
sung loose by our performer is to just
nudge them by ear using the fine
transposition mode we can either select
fine mode in our left toolbar or for
one-off uses of fine transposition while
working in snapper jump mode we can hold
down the shift + command on Mac or Shift
+ ctrl on Windows to temporarily drag
notes in fine mode watch in the damn
time for Chariots of Fire and that's it
we're done correcting our vocals you've
learned how to respect the singers
interpretation of pitch and how to do it
naturally or in fact unnaturally still
has its uses if you've seen Ryan's
tutorial on professional vocal mix
techniques the same tricks can apply to
pitch edit in that tutorial you may
remember ryan sets up his double tracked
vocals to have extreme robotic pitch
correction using Neptune we can do the
same thing to double the track vocals in
this song by minimizing the drift and
transition sliders
what's on TV
Oh
I'd call that a side
now you're equipped to go out there and
apply pitch at it to your own vocal
recordings if you want you can
experiment with transposing notes to new
melodies creating synthetic harmonies
shifting formats or many other creative
ways to use pitch edit the choice is
yours
watching the whole damn time
for chariots a fire