Make Your Voice Sound Like Daft Punk with Melodyne Editor and SONAR X3 Producer

Certain effects have defined generations of music. The decade of the 80’s for example was a major era for reverb. In today’s pop music, the use of pitch correction software seems to be an effect that many artists and producers are utilizing creatively. Daft Punk has been using this effect for a number of years now, making them one of the first to bring this vocal style to the level of popularity it is today.

SONAR X3 & Melodyne

To create a Daft Punk inspired vocal effect using Melodyne Editor and SONAR X3:

Open your project
Solo your vocal take
Right-click on it
Select Region FX > Melodyne > Create Region FX

Allow ARA integration to finish analyzing and transferring the audio into the Mutli-Dock

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Once Melodyne Editor appears, make sure to to go to View > Show Intended Notes. This will display the notes that Melodyne has decided are the notes your vocal melody is following. Next, make sure to activate Snap to Scale. Do this by going to Edit > Pitch Grid > Scale Snap. After this, select the Pitch Tool. You can select it in the toolbar or right-click anywhere in the interface which will allow the tool bar to appear.

Go ahead and select the entire section that you would to like to pitch correct. You can select using the Pitch Tool.

Now simply double-click on one of the blobs and all the notes will snap to the desired locations. You can go through and manually modify each note one by one as well.

Before and after Snap to Scale Tool — Before & after Pitch snapping to scale

Next, select the Pitch Modulation Tool. The Pitch Modulation Tool is used mainly to flatten or exaggerate the vibrato, bending, and overall curve of pitch.

Double-click the middle of your blobs. This will flatten the selected blobs and constrict the notes so that they do not vary in pitch at all. This gives off somewhat of a robotic effect.

Before & after Pitch Mod Tool — Before & after flattening pitch modulation tool

Notice the difference?

Within Melodyne you can adjust the slide from note to note. This can be very smooth, or be very rigid. For the Daft Punk Vocal Effect to take place you must make the amount of slide between all of the selected blobs very rigid. Select the Pitch Tool again and hover over the tail of each blob. The cursor will change shape. Simply click, hold, and drag downwards to square off all the selected blobs.

Before and After Transition — Before & after adjusting the slide of each blob

Once this is done, you can use the Note Separate tool to separate blobs into smaller parts. This will allow you to move the notes around on the scale and virtually create a melody out of the existing vocal takes.