{"id":16120,"date":"2014-05-09T12:08:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T16:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/?p=16120"},"modified":"2014-05-09T12:08:52","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T16:08:52","slug":"creating-vocal-harmonies-with-melodyne-essential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/2014\/05\/09\/creating-vocal-harmonies-with-melodyne-essential\/","title":{"rendered":"Vocal Month: Creating Vocal Harmonies with Melodyne Essential"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can\u2019t quite hit the high or low notes? Melodyne usually can.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

by Craig Anderton<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have a wide vocal range, you have to choose a vocal\u2019s key very carefully\u2014the low parts can\u2019t go below your range, and if you\u2019re going to hit the harmony notes, you have to pay attention to where the highest notes fall as well. Unfortunately the voice sometimes loses power when you start hitting your lower limits, but if you choose the best possible range for your lead vocal then you may have a hard time hitting the harmony\u2019s high notes. What\u2019s a singer to do?<\/p>\n

My solution is to choose the optimum key for the lead vocal, then reach for Melodyne Essential to synthesize the harmonies. Most of the time I can hit the harmonies so I\u2019ll sing them \u201cfor real\u201d and bring in Melodyne as needed, but I\u2019ve also found merit to using Melodyne to generate the harmony even if I can hit the notes\u2014it gives a different character that works well in some musical contexts.<\/p>\n

Creating Harmonies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Generating harmonies requires some manual effort, but it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

1. Clone the lead vocal.<\/p>\n

2. Create a Melodyne Region FX for the clone.<\/p>\n

3. Solo the lead vocal and clone (Dim Solo can be useful for this application so you can hear the vocals in context).<\/p>\n

4. Start adjusting the clone\u2019s blob pitches to create the harmony (Fig. 1<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fig. 1: Thanks to a paint program\u2019s transparent layers, colorization, and cut and paste, this shows the harmony line (blue) superimposed on the lead vocal.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Usually the easiest way to do this is by ear, but if you\u2019re theory-minded, you can always apply those rules to determine which pitches to use for the harmonies.<\/p>\n

Additional Tips<\/strong><\/p>\n

I highly recommend choosing Edit > Pitch Grid > No Snap<\/em> and adjusting the harmony pitch by ear. Snapping doesn\u2019t always produce the most musical results.<\/p>\n

Also, check out my article\u00a0Easy Automatic Double Tracking with Melodyne Essential<\/a>, which describes how to add slight timing and pitch variations to do automatic double tracking. Applying the same technique to the harmony line prevents it from \u201cshadowing\u201d the lead vocal, and helps the harmony establish itself as an independent entity.<\/p>\n

There’s a video on my YouTube channel<\/a> that uses Melodyne Essential for creating both ADT and the harmony effects described in this article. In fact, there’s only one vocal track in the entire song; all the others were derived from it using Melodyne.<\/p>\n

Finally, I demoed this technique during the video I did at Berklee College of Music last March. You can see the video here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Happy harmonizing!<\/p>\n

BETTER TOGETHER: TRY SONAR X3 AND MELODYNE FOR FREE!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can\u2019t quite hit the high or low notes? Melodyne usually can. by Craig Anderton If you don\u2019t have a wide vocal range, you have to choose a vocal\u2019s key very carefully\u2014the low parts can\u2019t go below your range, and if you\u2019re going to hit the harmony notes, you have to pay attention to where the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Vocal Month: Creating Vocal Harmonies with Melodyne Essential”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2251,71,110,111,1,113],"tags":[212,227,2258,2304],"class_list":["post-16120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dsp-101","category-mixing-tips","category-songwriting-tips","category-studio-recording","category-uncategorized","category-vocal-recording-tips","tag-craig-anderton","tag-melodyne","tag-vocal-month","tag-vocal-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}