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how do you guys go about when you want to do the extensive pitching up and down of vocals that we've heard a lot especially in bass music and especially in the last couple of years? throughout my producing "career", i have wanted to include something like that in my tracks but it's more difficult than you might imagine. usually if i pitch down a vocal part it's from a rap acapella or something that's not in any specific key. I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

another thing is for example if a tune is in a certain key and you got the untreated vocals in the same key, where do you pitch down if you want to do it? the best example i can think of right now is ifan dafydd's remix of emeli sande's "daddy", where there's a ton of pitched up and down vocals, how does he do it so that they all remain in key?

topmo3 wrote:I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

You can try using a vocal pitching algorithm that preserves formants.

topmo3 wrote:how does he do it so that they all remain in key?

Well, you just make sure they're pitched to other notes in the same key, obviously.

sburton84 wrote:

topmo3 wrote:I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

You can try using a vocal pitching algorithm that preserves formants.
.

What's this?

topmo3 wrote:

sburton84 wrote:

topmo3 wrote:I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

You can try using a vocal pitching algorithm that preserves formants.
.

What's this?

For example, in Ableton if you pitch-shift using the complex algorithms there's a setting to set how much of the formants are preserved. Other pitch-shifting algorithms should have something similar.

sburton84 wrote:

topmo3 wrote:

sburton84 wrote:

topmo3 wrote:I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

You can try using a vocal pitching algorithm that preserves formants.
.

What's this?

For example, in Ableton if you pitch-shift using the complex algorithms there's a setting to set how much of the formants are preserved. Other pitch-shifting algorithms should have something similar.

Studio One has a formant algorithm as well. If you just repitch it turntable style you end up stretching the sample, losing a bit of definition.

If you mean the choppy repitching Skrillex-style you could use something like melodyne to repitch the chops. Alternatively if you could use something like Image Line's Pitcher - I use this because you can have a chopped vocal playing and re-key it to a midi input and make melodic chops (check the first track in my sig for an example).

As for repitching vocals as a whole (like with trap/hiphop etc.) I find playing around with the fine tune is the best way to go and make sure you use a good algorithm as posted above (FL has a "speech" one which is obv. perfect for speech), whilst the vocals (esp. if they're spoken) aren't in key per-sé, you can tell when they fit or more importantly don't fit. Thich reverb can help sometimes if you wanna go down the weeknd/Drake style of pitched down, drowned out vocals.

One thing to note is a lot of the time in pro tracks the vocals are custom recorded so they're already in key and in terms of pitched stuff it's usually pitched from the start (e.g. in Excisions tracks he uses demonic style vocal clips which he purposefully records in a really deep voice rather than just trying to pitch a normal voice.)

melodyne, autotune, avox throat, ableton pro

topmo3 wrote:how do you guys go about when you want to do the extensive pitching up and down of vocals that we've heard a lot especially in bass music and especially in the last couple of years? throughout my producing "career", i have wanted to include something like that in my tracks but it's more difficult than you might imagine. usually if i pitch down a vocal part it's from a rap acapella or something that's not in any specific key. I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

another thing is for example if a tune is in a certain key and you got the untreated vocals in the same key, where do you pitch down if you want to do it? the best example i can think of right now is ifan dafydd's remix of emeli sande's "daddy", where there's a ton of pitched up and down vocals, how does he do it so that they all remain in key?

I cut it up and use SliceX and Newtone in FL Studio native plugins. That way you can get the right pitches.

If you wanna be like skrillex he just uses the pitch wheel. Sorry I dont have much time to elaborate.

Edit:

One thing to note is a lot of the time in pro tracks the vocals are custom recorded so they're already in key and in terms of pitched stuff it's usually pitched from the start (e.g. in Excisions tracks he uses demonic style vocal clips which he purposefully records in a really deep voice rather than just trying to pitch a normal voice.)

This. If I want some scary and deep I just record it myself. It's really easy actually. Just growl like a monster into your mic. Done.

topmo3 wrote:how do you guys go about when you want to do the extensive pitching up and down of vocals that we've heard a lot especially in bass music and especially in the last couple of years? throughout my producing "career", i have wanted to include something like that in my tracks but it's more difficult than you might imagine. usually if i pitch down a vocal part it's from a rap acapella or something that's not in any specific key. I've also found that if i just transpose the clip down a few semitones (ableton) it becomes all muddy and unintelligible. yet in a lot of "professionally produced" tracks the pitched-down vocal is all nice and clear. why?

another thing is for example if a tune is in a certain key and you got the untreated vocals in the same key, where do you pitch down if you want to do it? the best example i can think of right now is ifan dafydd's remix of emeli sande's "daddy", where there's a ton of pitched up and down vocals, how does he do it so that they all remain in key?