Pitch Perfect Karaoke

BuffJoe writes "The folks paid to make newer and improved karaoke machines have discovered a way to make even the most tone deaf singers sound great with a new technology for perfect-pitch karaoke!" Make your cracks about Karaoke if you like, but read the article- there are hooks for scoring singing, correcting pitch, and more. Should also make those Karaoke parties a little more tolerable.

Comments

pitch correction is nothing new

[enrico_suave]

The Antares Autotune has been available in rack form for quite a while... You'd be surprised how many rock acts lean a little too heavily on that device to clean up their live vocal performances...

hell Rosie O'donnel thanked the device in her christmas CD (although c'mon... in-tune/key bad music is still bad music)

*Shrug*

E.

Re:pitch correction is nothing new

[clifyt]

Agree'd. It sounded cool the first time, but now it just sucks. I have a good friend that refers to this as Oscilator Vocals...I understand the Kid Rock country song, but mainstream country??? This is about the time I start explaining to clients that they need to seriously consider if they want to use this effect or not.

In moderation, it can helps vocals, but can be done far better manually - ie., non-autotune. On my site, one of our latest interviews, Steve Duda of Nine Inch Nails (or at least the latest album) discribes some of his techniques for doing this:

http://interview.sonikmatter.com/duda/

I personally would use a piece of software called Melodyne. Its not real time, BUT has some of the most natural algorythms around. It is practically a Pitch Word Processor. You can leave in as much vibrato as you want, kill it all together (like most Autotune apps above) or even add it naturally for those that don't know how to articulate it very well. You can shift notes as far as a 5th before they start to sound funny, and it still keeps all the tied notes together so that you can slide between pitches without the sudden note being triggered as is so commonly found in todays image concience talent free musics.

I personally know a lot of folks that make their bread and butter fixing vocals for the stars and I'm not against it at all...I just wish the producers would get a little more credit as they are the ones doing all the work these days. Everyone has a natural desire to express themselves, as noted by the Karaoke main heading, and this sort of thing allows people to focus more on being creative instead of blindly honing a talent that can only go so far (face it, some people are never going to be able to sing naturally no matter how much practice...I'm one of them).

Clif Marsiglio
Editor@sonikmatter.com
Sonikmatter: Mind + Music + Technology