Karaoke Forums

After searching the archives I see something on this topic has been discussed as far back as 2004 and as recent as February of this year. I also learned that some feel it may not work as well for karaoke as it does for recording.

On another site, I ran across a post which mentioned Auto-Tune; something I’d not heard of before. So I Googled it and found the following article. It's an interesting video explaining the process of pitch changing (worth the view for those who may be interested).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0401/03.html

My curiosity has now been aroused. Has anyone here had any experience using Auto-Tune? Is this strictly for recording applications? Is there a rack-mount unit available that does the same thing? Is it as cost prohibitive as it was five years back?

I don’t envision the software version being used as in a mobile environment; it seems to me the mics would have to be run through the computer first then to the mixer which may not provide an acceptable quality output.

So…, Who Knows What

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

Hi Jr,

I'm waiting for my hardware Auto Tune to show up at the door. I did a lot of research on it and while it is for the studio by and large, people are now starting to use it, sparingly, live. Many people know and like the Cher “Believe” and T-pain use age of the effect. I’m hopeful that with a “little” tweaking, when things get painful… I might be able to sweeten it up for everyone involved.

I already run my guitar though the PC so I wouldn't want to run this effect though it as well.

I bought it from here:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=707156

I’ll post on this site by this weekend what my initial feelings are about this effect.

Mark

Good, I'll look forward to your findings.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

I'd say everyone has heard the device It's well known that most if not all artist are using it in a studio recording and most important, when performing live Yes, I've heard it and it's amazing, if I were to perform live night after night, I would have one in my rack! You'll get all kinds of comments on this in here but you need to keep in mind that it's a karaoke site I've only been reading good things about this when it's well calibrated

Now in a live situation like at karaoke, what happens if a karaoke track's key/pitch is a little sharp or flat -- not in tune to standard A-440. Will the auto-tuner adjust the entire karaoke track's pitch as well as the singer?

Pitch correctors, especially in a live setting, are very complex and I don't think the results for Karaoke are going to be too good. You typically do have to set the key of the song and the amount of correction you use varies greatly as does the attack based on the needs of the singer. Additionally, they're not miracle workers. They work best when small adjustments to a vocal are needed, they are not going to fix someone that is terribly off key.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

As Micky mentioned, this type of pitch correction really wasn't designed or meant to be used in a Karaoke situation. They are far to complex for the average person and for most musicians for that matter. In a live setting, the most accurate of them are actually triggered via "midi" usually by a keyboard player that tells the device what note or notes are desired.
That being said you might want to visit the TC Helicon site and listen to some of the demonstrations of the many different devices they manufacture to enhance vocals. YouTube also has many examples of these types of devices. The YT link is just a place to get you in the ball park. I think perhaps that after watching some of these and learning about what they can do you may come to the conclusion that vocal talent is obviously optional and not really mandatory for a lot of today's recording artists.
http://www.tc-helicon.com/products.asp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNUWUvgy_Mk

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Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

I bought an Antares unit when I was starting out hoping to be able to give singers the "Cher effect". I found it difficult to use as others have mentioned and it sits in my basement today gathering cobwebs. If anybody wants to buy one let me know.

I have the TC helicon voice live 2. . . I bought it for me... with the hope it would cross over to the karaoke field. In my opinion, it would be madness to use it, on the average to poor singer. Whilst it can enhance a good to great singer to make them three times better. . . it will do the opposite to a poor singer making them three times worse.

Fabulous piece of kit though, sadly their may be a lot of truth in the fact you can't polish a ....

Hi,

Well, I got the Auto Tune hardware in and I messed around with it. As many have already posted on this thread, it's amazing tech but, for live, it's not worth it. Each tune has to be set up; correct key, etc. As we all know, many cd-g's don't give you the key, etc. Also, I noticed that no matter how I set up the parameters, when I let loose with the signing volume, the effect really stood out. In short, no matter what I tried I couldn't get the thing to work just underneath, throughout the volume register; whisper to scream.

I have to say, if you have a studio for recording, you might want to go with the software verison, much cheaper. For live, I'll stick with reverb, echo, my harmonizer (compression for sure) and a good sounding set up. To time consuming, slows down the gig to a halt. You can't mess with nature, live, as much as this device does, and not have a huge hassle.

Mark

Im also considering adding pitch correction to the rack. I asked TC Electronics if it could be used in a karaoke environment, only on the singers that would benefit from pitch correction, and if it could be bypassed for the others.
This was their response

"You can use a chromatic scale for pitch correction. That will work with every singer that can more or less sing within a semi-tone - trying to program with specific scales or custom scales is impossible."

So far our core singers are not interested in most of the current pop stuff that would warrant the extreme settings for the "autotune effect"

By the way, if you havent seen it already, check out www.barelypolitical.com and go to the autotune news section. See what this kid did with adding autotune to primetime news reports. Pretty clever stuff and mildy amusing.

Hi,

I looked into that as well. The more I worked with it, the more I went out and saw other working KJ's (I'm not out yet) and the more I looked into ease of use and not pissing off singers, in a general sence, I'm not going to go this route. Better I spend the money on more lightening, songs, etc., than try to make people sound better. They will sing in any event.

I've been using a Digitech Pro Vocalist for about 3 months now. STILL not 100% proficient with it, but it is a great tool.

I'm at the point where I'm gonna do presets for the thing I want on a reg basis. Will make cheat sheet.

Can't do certain things on the fly as easily or as quickly as my DBX Pro Vocal but love the fact that it has an input for guitar or keys ( i use an an audio sig from my mixer) that automatically reads the songs key, so the pitch correction key is one less thing to worry about. It is right on more than 90% of the time. If it doesn't sound right, I can turn off auto tune with the touch of a button. Then I still have
access to everythnig else it does

This unit has so many diff paramaters for so many diff things it is mind boggling.
All in all a great unit but it does have LARGE learning curve.

Can't wait to use it with the band but it is mounted in my gig rig.

L McG

Sounds like you put in the time it takes to us these in the live setting.

Good luck.

I think if you wanted to make a typical karaoke singer sound better, you could do so with a good harmonizer. Stick one of those puppies under your rig and click it on and off during well known harmony parts, and it'll make even T-Pain sound good.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

This device is just now hitting the streets. It sounds like an easier to use, smaller version of the traditional auto-tune devices with other cool effects built in (the "t-pain" vocoder sound, etc).

And unlike the others it claims you don't need to pre-program it with song key info or give it a keyboard input to sync to.

http://www.tc-helicon.com/voicetonesynth.asp



http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=583674

Anyone got $299 burning a hole in their pocket?