What I find most fascinating about Antares Auto-Tune is that everyone and their mother knows what it is, despite the fact that it's just another digital audio plugin used in bedroom and professional studios alike. Even people who have no clue what an EQ or compressor does somehow at least know of the word 'Auto-Tune' and even the general effect it has on the human voice.
But even though Auto-Tune has evolved to become this cultural phenomenon, very few artists or producers truly understand how to get it to sound like the way it sounds on major records.
In case you don't know what it is, Auto-Tune, in a nutshell, is a pitch correction software that allows the user to set the key signature of the song so that the pitch of the incoming signal will be corrected to the closest note in that key (and does so in real time). There are other pitch correction programs out there that do similar functions: Waves Tune, Waves Tune Real-Time, and Melodyne (which is pitch correction, but not in real time), but Auto-Tune seems to have won the standard for real-time pitch correction.
Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Meek Mill They have all used auto-tune in their songs, Auto-Tune seems to get a little fashion in rap music. I think it sucks, but what do you think about it? Oct 29, 2016 Short answer: You don’t if you expect it to sound like actual singing. Longer answer: If you want to create music with your vocals, you need to learn to sing or at best it will just be rapping to the beats. The voice is an instrument that requires. If you are into an online recording studio with autotune then today is your day because I’m gonna share 5 great online recording studios with autotune that can make your music career a lot more easier. Grab a piece of paper to take notes and let’s get this rolling! 5 Explosive Online Recording Studio With Autotune Feature! You can either install the App from Google PlayStore inside the emulator or download Autotune For Rap – Singing App APK file from the below link from our site and open the APK file with the emulator or drag the file into the emulator window to install Autotune For Rap.
Auto-Tune traditionally is used on vocals, although in some cases can be used on certain instruments. For the sake of this article we will be discussing Auto-Tune and its effect on the human voice. Listen to this early example from the 'King of Auto-Tune,' the one artist who did more to popularize its effect than any other, T-Pain.
T-Pain - 'Buy U A Drank'
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Working as a full-time engineer here at Studio 11 in Chicago, we deal with Auto-Tune on a daily basis. Whether it's people requesting that we put it on their voice, something we do naturally to correct pitch, or even for a specific creative effect. It's just a part of our arsenal that we use everyday, so over the years we have really gotten to know the ins and outs of the program—from its benefits to limitations.
So let's delve further into what this software really is and can do, and in the process debunk certain myths around what the public or people who are new to Auto-Tune may think. If you were ever wondering why your Auto-Tune at home doesn't sound like the Auto-Tune you hear from your favorite artists, this is the article for you.
To set the record straight, as I do get asked this a lot of times from clients and inquiring home producers, there really are no different 'types' of Auto-Tune. Antares makes many different versions of Auto-Tune—Auto-Tune EFX, Auto-Tune Live, and Auto-Tune Pro—that have various options and different interfaces, but any of those can give you the effect you're after. Auto-Tune Pro does have a lot of cool features and updates, but you don't need 'Pro' to sound pro.
I wanted to debunk this first, as some people come to me asking about the 'the Lil Durk Auto-Tune,' or perhaps that classic 'T-Pain Auto-Tune.' That effect is made from the same plugin—the outcome of the sound that you hear depends on how you set the settings within the program and the pitch of the incoming signal.
So if your Auto-Tune at home sounds different from what you hear on the radio, it's because of these factors, not because they have a magic version of Auto-Tune that works better than yours at home. You can achieve the exact same results.
In modern music Auto-Tune is really used with two different intentions. The first is to use it as a tool in a transparent manner, to correct someone's pitch. In this situation, the artist doesn't want to hear the effect work, they just want to hit the right notes. The second intent is to use it as an audible effect for the robotic vocals you can now hear all over the pop and rap charts.
But regardless of the intent, in order for Auto-Tune to sound its best, there are three main things that need to be set correctly.
So let's say you have all of these set correctly. You have the right key, you choose the right range for the singer, and the retune speed is at its medium default of 20ms. You apply it on the singer expecting it to come out just like the pros. And while their voice does seem to be somewhat corrected, it's still not quite corrected to the right pitch.
Here's why your Auto-Tune doesn't sound like the pros:
The pitch of the vocalist prior to Auto-Tune processing must be close enough to a note in the scale of the key of the song for Auto-Tune to work its best. In other words, the singer has to be at least near the right note for it to sound pleasing to the ears.
Whether you're going for a natural correction or the T-Pain warble, this point still stands. If the note the singer originally sings is nowhere near the correct note in the key, Auto-Tune will try to calculate as best it can and round up or down, depending on what note is closest. And that's when you get undesirable artifacts and hear notes you weren't expecting to hear. (Here is an example of how it sounds when the incoming pitch isn't close enough to the scale, resulting in an oddly corrected pitch.)
So if you put Auto-Tune on a voice and some areas sound good, some sound too robotic and a bit off, those are the areas that the singer needs to work on. Sometimes it can be difficult for non-singers to hear slight sharp or flat notes, or notes that aren't in the scale of the song, so Auto-Tune in many cases can actually help point out the problem areas.
This is why major artists who use Auto-Tune sound really good, because chances are they can sing pretty well before Auto-Tune is even applied. The Weeknd is a great example of this—he is obviously a very talented singer that has no problem hitting notes—and yet his go-to mixer, Illangelo, has said before that he always uses at least a little bit of Auto-Tune on the vocals.
If you or the singer in your studio is no Weeknd, you can correct the pitch manually beforehand with a program like Melodyne, or even with built-in pitch correction tools in your DAW, where you can actually go in and change the pitch of each syllable manually. So if you find yourself in a situation where you or an artist you are working with really want Auto-Tune on their vocals, but it's not sounding right after following all the steps, look into correcting the pitch before you run it through Auto-Tune.
If you get the notes closer to the scale, you'll find the tuning of Auto-Tune to be much more pleasing to the ears. For good reason, T-Pain is brought up a lot when discussing Auto-Tune. Do you want to know why he sounds so good? It's not a special Auto-Tune they are using, its because he can really sing without it. Check it out:
T-Pain's unplugged and Auto-Tune-free medley
Hopefully this helps further assist you in your understanding and use of Antares Auto-Tune, and debunk some of the myths around it. Spend some time learning some basic music theory to help train the ear to identity keys of songs, find which notes are flat and which notes are sharp. Once you do, you'll find you'll want to use Auto-Tune on every song, because let's face it—nearly a decade after Jay-Z declared the death of Auto-Tune on 'D.O.A.'—it still sounds cool.
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If you search online for 'how to mix rap vocals,' you will be scrolling through pages and pages of people telling you all different things. That’s because everyone has a different way to do it. Some are more accurate, some not—you just have to take them with a grain of salt and try them for yourself.
As an engineer who works at Studio 11 here in Chicago, a studio that has specialized in hip-hop and rap for more than 20 years (having worked with a young Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Crucial Conflict, Lil Durk, and more), we pretty much have it down to a science.
Here are just some general rules of thumb when mixing rap vocals that you can try for yourself—coming straight from the horse’s mouth.
Make Room in the Beat
You may ask, 'But what does the beat have to do with mixing rap vocals?' Everything.
If you are working with vocals on top of an instrumental, there are two main ways the beat will look: either with tracked-out stems or as a single stereo file (like a wav or mp3 file). Of course, having the stems—separated kick, 808, bass, clap, hi-hats, etc.—will allow you to have greater control over the music. But either way, there is one thing that remains the same no matter which format your working with: Make room for your vocals.
If I do have the stems, I generally like to mix the entire beat before adding the vocals. Some people like to start with drums, bass, and vocals—that's cool too. But for me, I always end up changing the mix of these instruments once I add the other elements of the beat anyway. While I’m doing this, I keep in mind that the vocal is going to need some of the space that’s occupied by the other instruments. The goal is to keep space open in the low-mids and high frequencies so that the voice has room to sit within the beat, not on top.
If all you have is a stereo instrumental track (what used to be called a 'two-track'), it will be harder to make room for the vocals without affecting a lot of instruments within the beat itself that maybe you don’t want to touch. But you can still use an EQ to carve out some spots that interfere with the vocal’s body and articulation.
The body of a vocal sound, where the warmth and weight resides, will be found in the low- to upper-mids (about 300Hz to 600Hz). Some rappers will have a deep voice, some have a higher voice, so where exactly you should dip the beat’s frequencies will change. A plugin like the FabFilter Pro-Q works great for hearing and visualizing these areas.
A rapper’s bite and the clarity of syllables will come from transients and other high-frequency information. Again, this will depend on the beat and the vocalist, but generally speaking, a dip somewhere around 2.5kHz to 7kHz should be a good starting point. Use your ears—if loud hi-hats at 7k or the claps at 2.5kHz are stepping on the words, scoop around those frequencies. Sometimes, you may need to go even lower, around 1kHz to 1.5kHz, if there is a piano or other instrument that is mixed too loud.
Bring Compression to the Vocals
I like to compress hard, but fool the ear into thinking I’m not. You’ll see people on YouTube compressing very lightly on vocals, because their college professor told them that was the correct way. While over-compressing can be an issue, don’t be afraid to see the meters moving—rap vocals are very percussive and dynamic, so you need to get those peaks under control.
Listen to the vocals without any compression first. Find any words or lines that are noticeably louder than the rest. Spend some time just moving the gain levels down during those spikes.
Once you even out the vocals, bring in the compressor. There are many compressors that can do the job, but my personal go-to compressor for controlling vocal dynamics is the Waves Renaissance Compressor. It’s not super fancy, but it has a unique color, especially once you start turning up the makeup gain.
Start with a low compression ratio, about 1:5 to 2:1. Dial back the threshold. On the input meter of the compressor, you’ll generally want the needle to hover around the peaks of the transients—sometimes right on the line or sometimes a little below, if you're trying to compress a little harder (which is good for really thin/harsh voices that need less high-end and more warmth). Adjust the ratio to taste.
If a rapper has a very percussive delivery, with lots of hard consonants, lower the threshold and use a slightly higher ratio (say, 4:1) to clamp down those harsh transients. If an artist’s volume fluctuates gently up and down, a lower ratio and lower threshold will smooth out the delivery.
Next, play with the attack if the vocals are sounding a little dull after compression—try to see if you can get those initial transients to poke through, then have the compressor clamp down on the decay of the words.
Since rap is fairly quick, you generally want the compressor to release before the next word hits, so keep the release time pretty short. Otherwise, the transients of the next syllable won’t come through, resulting in a duller/softer sound. I like to measure out the time of a 32nd note in Pro Tools and enter that in for a starting point, then move to taste. As you shorten the release even further, you'll start to hear more high-end information come through, and a vocal will begin to have more teeth.
'De-Ess' to Eliminate Hisses
Don’t be afraid to de-ess fairly aggressively. Getting out those sibilant frequencies, or the hard hissing sounds that hurt our ears, is imperative to making a vocal sound smooth. Sometimes I’ll put two or even three de-essers in the chain. Most standard de-essers work here, but I use the stock Digidesign de-esser, the Waves DeEsser, or the Waves Renaissance DeEsser.
The reason you want to de-ess hard, aside from getting rid of those sibilant spikes, is because nine times out of ten, you’re going to be adding some sort of high-shelf with the EQ to give the vocals more presence. If you don’t de-ess, it’ll be harder to get the vocals upfront in the mix without hurting the ears.
Get Rid of Unwanted Frequency BuildupsAutotune For Rapping
There is a whole debate of whether to EQ first or compress first, but it’s honestly whichever sounds better to you. I like to do a little before and a little after, as the compressor will change the frequency response of the vocal anyway.
Start off with wider scoops to get rid of any glaring frequency buildups. I use quite a few EQs for this: Waves Renaissance EQ, Console 1 by Softube, and FabFilter Pro-Q, to name a few, but even stock plug EQs that come with your DAW will work just fine.
Generally, I start by rolling off some low-end (about 130Hz to 275Hz), but not so much that I lose the voice’s warmth and fullness. Dip some low-mid 'boxiness' around 500Hz and some harsh sibilance around 3kHz to 5kHz. Then add a high shelf to taste. (Sometimes, frequencies will build up around 200Hz to 300Hz and also around 1600Hz to 2900hz, so pay attention to these areas as well.)
After creating a general EQ curve, listen for resonations in the voice, which will typically sound like a whistle or a single constant frequency poking through the speakers, which will often remain constant throughout a vocal take.
How To Autotune Rap Vocals
To find them, boost a band of EQ with a rather small Q (not too small, as everything will sound like it's resonating) and a moderate amount of gain. When you hit the area where it sounds like a frequency is significantly louder than the rest around it, dip that down to taste. I like to use the Waves Q series, as the Q can get pretty tight and, to my ears, the EQ is very precise—perfect for small notches.
To finish, listen to the vocal against the music and see if it needs to be boosted anywhere. If the vocal seems a bit buried, a boost around 1kHz to 1500Hz will often help it come through. While I prefer accurate, uncolored EQs for taking away frequencies, I like to have a bit more color (like with an analog unit or analog-emulating plugin) when I boost to add some harmonic excitement.
Add Body and Bite with Saturation
Having a dedicated unit or plugin for saturation works great on vocals (especially really thin-sounding ones). Depending on how you set it, saturation can add thickness and body, as well as a bit more bite in the top-end. Sometimes, saturation can smooth out the top-end, depending on how you set it. .
I'm forever in search of the perfect saturation tool, but I typically will use the Digidesign Lo-Fi, Waves Rennasiance Axx (a compressor, but with a lot of grit), Waves Kramer Tape, and my current favorite for vocals—the overdrive on the Softube Console 1.
Rap vocals don't always need saturation, as sometimes an MC will be coming in hot on the mic and the preamp will naturally overdrive a bit, but if you have a recording with a dull/weak vocal that just needs a little dirty analog vibe, look no further than saturation. You’ll be surprised how far it will take you.
Use a Small Amount of Reverb
Reverb in rap music is actually a little controversial. Historically speaking (and with some exceptions), rap never really used it until fairly recently. Rap vocals have always been an expression of rhythm, and a reverb's decay tends to step on the natural percussiveness and immediacy of an artist’s performance, negating the 'in your face' intensity that rap music often aims to achieve.
Having said this, on a lot modern rap records, because of the accessibility and desire to create new types of vocal sounds, reverb is often used at some point. When I use reverb on a lead verse, it's usually a very small amount—just enough so the listener can feel it more than they can hear it. Sometimes the Wet/Dry is on just 1%.
I hear it more as a 'glue' tool than an intentional effect, as a small amount of reverb does tend to make the vocal sit in the mix a little better to my ears. It also takes me out of the zone of hearing a purely dry vocal that was recorded in a dead-sounding booth, which can seem a little unnatural to our ears. Play around with different reverbs, and see which ones work the best for you.
Add Excitement with Delay
Once, when one of my favorite engineers, Andrew Scheps, was asked what his favorite reverb was, he quickly responded, 'Delay.' While the effect can be used in different ways (and can be tricky to master), what Andrew is saying here is that using delay can be a way to make a lead vocal sound wet or pushed back in a mix, without actually using reverb. (As I mentioned above, reverb can murk up a rapper's performance.)
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Free Rap Studio With Autotune
Experiment with tempo-synced delays. My favorite at the moment is Waves H-Delay, but stock plugins work well too. If set tastefully, a subtle 1/8 note or even 1/16 note delay on a lead vocal can really help fill in those empty spaces, without having the delay step on the unaffected vocals.
When using delay, I like to create an auxiliary channel for a couple reasons. The first reason is so that any delay I add isn’t affecting the original lead. The second is so that I can send multiple channels to the same delay without hogging up CPU. Lastly, using an aux channel lets me process the actual echo differently. After sending a vocal to the aux channel, process it with delay and other plugins to create a more musical echo.
By adding an EQ here and rolling off low and high frequencies, the echo won’t interfere with the body or articulation of the vocals. (One reason I love H-Delay is because it has these EQ filters built right in.)
Another way to make the delay duck out of the way of the vocals is to add a compressor after it, and side-chain the lead vocal to the compressor’s input. This way, whenever the main vocal is active in the mix, the delay is compressed and lower in volume, but as soon as a vocal cuts out, the echo from the delay creeps back in.
Process Additional Vocals
In-and-outs—also known as dubs or stacks—are recorded after the lead is already laid down, when the artist adds a second vocal to certain parts of the verse. These will add emphasis to punch lines and key phrases (usually at the ends of each bar) or help to bring clarity to syllables that may not have been fully pronounced the first time around. Because a rapper will be able to take breaths in between lines, they can really make sure that they nail the parts.
The doubled lines can also help give the verse some sort of movement. Instead of a single vocal track, which can be relatively stagnant in volume (especially after compression), it adds a sort of back-and-forth dynamic. To give them their own character and space in the mix, you can compress these second vocals a little harder than the lead and pan them to add a chorus-type effect or stereo depth.
Auto Tune For Rap Free
Ad-libs, or additional words thrown in between phrases of the verse, will be treated differently, depending on the rapper. A lot of trap artists I record prefer a lot of effects here, but a lot of old-school hip-hop artists don't like any effects at all. But unless the artist specifies that they want the ad-libs dry, I typically put them in some sort of telephone filter created with a bandpass EQ—that is, strip away the lows and highs and isolate the upper-mids.
One of my favorite things to do is to experiment with different effects on top of the telephone filter. Phasers, flangers, distortion, delays, and reverbs all create a unique sound to the ad-libs, and can put them even more in a specific frequency pocket. I personally like the sound of a drastic reverb with a long tail, because it will give the ad-lib its own 3-dimensional space. This creates a cool overall effect—with the dryer lead vocal up front, quieter in-and-outs on the sides, and wet ad-libs in the back. Experiment and see what kind of new effect chains you can come up with.
It's important to remember that if there was a formula that worked every time on mixing rap vocals, everyone would be able to do it. Truth is it really depends on how the vocals sound to begin with. If they sound great without anything on them, chances are you won't have to do as much. And if not, at least you now have a guide of how to fix them.
Follow these steps and you’ll have rap vocals that sound like they were done in a professional studio.
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