Double Bass Auto-Tune Software for Studio Bass Today

[Chris Fitzgerald]

As someone who regularly posts video content to YouTube over the past 10 years, I have given this subject a lot of thought. In the end, I decided that the best course was to do three takes of any playing excerpt and choose the best one. If none were acceptable, then go back to the woodshed and get it together and then try another 3 takes until one is good enough to release without getting trolled about the intonation. The whole Melodyne perfection thing kind of creeps me out anyway.

One thing that I have used in Logic, though, is the feature where you can tune an entire track one cent at a time. This is useful when stitching together asynchronous recordings where I send out a bass track and a piano or guitar records to it, but they are out of tune to the bass track. It’s pretty good for getting the two into the same basic tuning range. I don’t feel guilty about that at all.

 

[statsc]

As someone who regularly posts video content to YouTube over the past 10 years, I have given this subject a lot of thought. In the end, I decided that the best course was to do three takes of any playing excerpt and choose the best one. If none were acceptable, then go back to the woodshed and get it together and then try another 3 takes until one is good enough to release without getting trolled about the intonation. The whole Melodyne perfection thing kind of creeps me out anyway.

One thing that I have used in Logic, though, is the feature where you can tune an entire track one cent at a time. This is useful when stitching together asynchronous recordings where I send out a bass track and a piano or guitar records to it, but they are out of tune to the bass track. It’s pretty good for getting the two into the same basic tuning range. I don’t feel guilty about that at all.

I like the “3-take” rule; kind of like the 5-second rule for food dropped on the floor (or is it 10 seconds?). If I’m recording at home and not on the clock I’ll punch in out of tune or out of time spots; it’s still me playing it, so that feels OK to me. If there are too many of these, I’ll just re-record the whole track. If I’m in someone else’s studio I’ll try to punch in as much as time allows, but ultimately it’s usually someone else’s project and therefore their call. I don’t like these kinds of artificial tools (slowing the tempo, auto-tune); feels like cheating to me. If I can’t play the part well enough to provide a decent recorded version of it, I’ll change it to something I can play. I also don’t want to listen to mistakes I’ve recorded from now into eternity! I’ve long ago made peace with the idea that a recording is by nature not the same animal as a live performance.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I like the “3-take” rule; kind of like the 5-second rule for food dropped on the floor (or is it 10 seconds?).

In my house it's the "3 second rule", which is scientifically not supported, but we follow it anyway....unless the item dropped, upon further inspection, comes up covered with cat hair. Then the "0 second rule" wins the day.

 

[Don Hergert]

What??? You don't eat cat hair???

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

What??? You don't eat cat hair???

If you live with cats, you totally eat cat hair. We just try not to do it on purpose.

 

[Don Hergert]

We have 7 now, and one little dog. Totally understand, eating cat or dog hair is a measure of dedication. The problem is we feel very limited about who we can invite in the house.

Happily, all the fur people seem to enjoy, or at least tolerate, music.

 

[longfinger]

Melodyne is specifically the reason why I fell out-of-love with being a recording engineer, sold my studio, and vowed not to play that game anymore (commercially). It's liberal use is downright EXPECTED these days. I've tracked where the singer/upright player had absolutely ZERO sense of pitch or time (imagine the worst singer/player you've ever heard). You take these sessions, as painful as they are, and you try to stay nonjudgmental and vanilla and just get it recorded and get paid, right? Well - this one guy in particular I got to hear after it was 'mixed and mastered' by some 'top LA studio guys' and it came back like dude was freakin Sinatra and Ron Carter rolled into one. And then they proceeded to blame my tracking for as to why it didn't sound like that on the front end. It was unbelievable. I want no part of that dark magic and feel gross just talking about it...

Ooops, I posted this without reading the whole thread and only noticed it now, that this was already shared.

 

[longfinger]

Wasn’t it the case of Glenn Gould who stopped doing live performances because he was not happy with the possible quality he could reach with them?
Also I believe he was hold back by the sound quality, not by his insufficient ability to play… Was he the first “victim” of the tech-trap?

Glenn Gould was a proponent, not a victim. He correctly understood that the recordings would live on, while the live performances would not, and went on the focus only on recordings. He spliced as much as the tech of the time would allow. The records sound just the way he wanted them to sound, great, even with the "errors" of his humming along.

In classical, perhaps they edit so much because there is such a pressure on perfection? Little meaningless mistakes are not tolerated. They were back in the older days, but not any more. Tough crowd.

Melodyne is the current King of the pitch correction software. It can work stand alone or integrated with a DAW as a plugin. Most of the DAWs have something basic built-in. You can use it or not. If you use it, you can set the slider for how much, or how little. Less is often better.

Sometimes, string instruments sound better when momentarily off the 12TET grid...other times not so much.

 

[Bruce Calin]

Back in the pre-digital days I was the contractor(hired the players) for a music production company- jingles, soundtracks, etc. The good studio players were amazingly good at instant perfect takes,and they would talk about their old days and players who were even better. There wasn't time to make many corrections or retakes, and to this day I keep one eye on the music and one on the clock in any studio recording situation and try to minimize any wasted time. That said, individual expression and creativity were not the main goals most of the time and if the modern tools for correction had been available I'm quite sure we would have used them when necessary. It would have been some kind of judgement call as far as how much tweaking would have been used, i'm sure, but efficiency was a main goal and getting the job done quickly and well were main objectives.