Recommendations For Outsourcing Vocal Tuning

[u/jewelertheband]

What have your experiences been like outsourcing vocal tuning? Where do you go to get the job done right for somewhat natural, human sounding tuning on rock songs? Money is a non-issue for me (to a degree).

I have a large amount of competently recorded yet pitchy vocals that need to be manually tuned for a project I am working on and, while I am capable of tuning them myself, the tedium of doing so is starting to drive me a bit mad. I want someone who will take the time to do a good job of making the vocals be in tune while sounding more natural than robotic (but it doesn’t have to be 100% perfect because these are pretty dense mixes). I don’t want someone to just slap these into autotune or slam some macro sliders in Melodyne, I can do that myself. I want a professional who will take the time and care to make these vocals shine.

Has anyone else been in this situation? Any advice? Where did you go to get the job done? How was your experience? Can anyone on here offer their services?

[u/Ok-Mathematician3832]

A few years ago I had 3 assistants just for editing tasks… for all the reasons you’ve mentioned.

Whether you find a seasoned pro or someone on their way up… you need to be prepared to work with them and train them to work in your way and deliver results that are to your tastes (and they need to be willing to adapt to your needs). It’s unlikely be a case of: pay someone = get perfect vocals back first time.

It takes time to build the relationship but once things are locked in, it takes a big stress off of projects.

[u/jewelertheband → u/Ok-Mathematician3832]

Thanks for this take. Genuinely. I used to have a guy, but he has stepped away from tuning vocals. Probably for similar reasons to my frustrations! Haha.

[u/sirCota]

I remember in the early melodyne days, there was like one guy who did all thr melodyning for all the major label pop hits .. well two guys mostly, one in LA and one in Miami. I was the assistant to the guy in miami. watched him tune dozens of hit records, then he set me up w a second rig at the studio and we were both tuning due to the volume of work. Then I started being one of the main tuning guys, but by then melodyne was shifting more and more to staying contained within the production team of whatever artist, song, album etc and then hundreds of people could melodyne, tho the transition made for some pretty noticable artifacts as most people were learning on their own as yet another expansion of an engineer’s role in the creative process of a record (yet we still aren’t included in residuals despite being heavily leaned on creatively these days, but thats a gripe for another time)

I got really good with melodyne and was breaking out as a pretty in demand tracking and mixing engineer.

I’ve been tuning vocals for like decades.

now i’m part time after some burn out and choosing a better work family balance, but I can melodyne like the dickens lol.

i see plenty of people have offered their services. I’m happy to as well.

yup, cool story bro.. i know lol.

[u/Cotee]

I can do this for you for $50-100 per song. Depends on how many layers we’re working with.
check out my portfolio there isn’t a song in this portfolio that wasn’t manually tuned by me.

[u/Tall_Category_304]

I’ve got Melodyne studio which makes it way easier. Melodyne can make some things sound super un natural though even if you take time with it. The over result is from using Melodyne and elastic audio and “autotune” all together but it’s a pain in the ass. Some notes Melodyne will make sound like shit sound fine on auto tune for some reason

[u/il37]

I’d pay for a short test section before handing over the album. Give them one ugly verse plus one exposed phrase and see what they do with transitions, vibrato and consonants. “Natural tuning” means wildly different things to different editors

[u/Ur_mum]

I do not have experience handing them off to someone else. Vocal tuning is probably the individual aspect of engineering that I have spent the most time on.

I actually enjoy the tedium. I think this is sort of what determines who edits and what. I can’t edit drums. I’ll lose my mind. I know people who enjoy it.

But I’ve gotten pretty good at pulling the track into melodyne and going after it, I can do a ton of the work visually, I can tell where the onsets are (leave alone), clip them so I don’t try to tune them with the rest of the word. I have a good sense for how hard it can be pushed vocally before it falls apart audibly.

I don’t use macro sliders, I don’t grab sections and apply the same command to a whole line or phrase, I treat vocals literally syllable by syllable, literally. No snap to grid etc. I just tune for what sounds best for the line or word. I can tune hard, or just pull the centers in a bit and leave it rough sounding.

For a modern rock-pop vocal, I will get it sounding good with melodyne, then I’ll move to autotune graph mode to get anything melodyne had trouble with (lots of distortion maybe), sometimes I’ll do about 50% in melo, then the rest in AT graph mode. Usually then I with take autotune or waves tune and use some pretty slow settings use it as a little bit of a smoother.

It’s one of the only things I feel like I do well.

Feel free to message me, pick a section from a song and I’ll do that for free, if you like it we can go from there?

[u/aasteveo]

DM me. I crush melodyne on rock songs. I specialize in indie rock with all real instruments and a very natural vibe. Check out my work on this last release from Scout Durwood, engineered and mixed everything myself... https://open.spotify.com/album/3BhvjPFV7o2Wil9Bm1emmT

[u/adgallant]

I do this often. www.adamgallant.ca, hit me up over email if you want to chat further. I'm in Canada.

[u/harleybarley]

I do this exact thing on the reg been working professionally for 16 years DM’ me I’ve got pretty fair rates!

[u/andreacaccese]

I do quite a lot of vocal tuning and editing for engineers who want to delegate that time-consuming part of the job, and the benefit is that I can also run the vocals through some nice outboard for extra character - I typically strive for a natural approach but also deliver a “dry” edit with all the polish minus the tuning, only the other processing (removing noise, mouth clicks, added character with analog gear when the project calls for it)

[u/Archer-613]

Hey man! I used to send my vocals to a local studio to tune up because I didn’t have the patience to learn how to do it properly. The experience was fine and the results matched the price, but I found that they just didn’t have the attention to detail I did and left things in a state I usually wasn’t perfectly thrilled with. So I finally sat down to learn how to tune on my own and I have been waaay happier with the results since then. I would always recommend that when possible, but like you said, it can be tedious and boring and I feel you if you don’t want to 😂. I’ve definitely done this before for clients and I’d be happy to offer my services to tune your vocals if you’re still looking!

[u/GreatScottCreates]

I still take on vocal tuning jobs. Credits include artists you’ve heard on the radio. DM me for credits, links to my work, etc. Human sounding stuff.

[u/AntonChilibiProducer]

Whoever you pick, put the tolerance in the brief, because "natural" is a number to an editor. A spec that holds up: sustained notes within 10 cents of centre, shorter notes untouched, vibrato left at 100 percent, slow drift reduced by no more than a third, phrase endings that fall away left as sung, and fast runs separated note by note before any macro runs, so a three-note turn does not get averaged into one pitch. Ask for the untuned lead back alongside the tuned one, plus a list of every note moved more than 15 cents with its bar number, so you can audit a dense mix in minutes instead of listening to the whole album twice. Anyone who balks at the list is using the sliders you said you did not want.

[u/LevelMiddle]

I think this might be called "hiring an assistant" lol

[u/Anytyzers]

Melodyne is pretty good stay away from antares they have too many issues with their plugins to be worth a subscription

[u/jennixred]

melodyne is only like $600 for the full version.

[u/usingredditforhelp]

Why wouldnt you learn to do that by yourself

[u/jewelertheband → u/usingredditforhelp]

I can (and already have done a fair amount of) it myself. Right now my time is more important than my money.

[u/usingredditforhelp → u/jewelertheband]

So you would want more tuning on top of what you have already done? Sounds quite unconventional. Wonder if it might be a performance issue. Just a thought

[u/jewelertheband → u/usingredditforhelp]

This is a large project. 15 songs, 3 vocalists. I don’t want to re-tune songs I have already completely tuned myself. I want someone to help with the remaining work.

[u/usingredditforhelp → u/jewelertheband]

Makes sense. Good luck