AUDIO
A PRIMER ON LIVE SOUND PITCH CORRECTION ( PART 3 ) | Jeff Hawley
“ As for God , his way is perfect : The Lord ’ s word is flawless ; he shields all who take refuge in him ” ( 2 Samuel 22:31 ). Perfection is an interesting concept . In many areas of life , we strive for perfection , while other domains value uniqueness and randomness and chance . Musical performance usually has a place for both approaches . We don ’ t want to have a worship band drummer who fluctuates from one tempo to another wildly throughout a song . It ’ d be preferable in most cases if the tempo was closer to a perfect metronome . It ’ d get boring rather quickly if the drummer didn ’ t have some measure of a ‘ human ’ touch in his or her playing , though . The same sort of distinction and balance applies when it comes to pitch correction and harmonization tools . Too much of an adherence to pitch and timing in the generated harmony parts and we risk a sort of ‘ uncanny valley ’ where it sounds so right that it is wrong . This last part of our series on live sound pitch correction focuses in on ways to introduce some randomness and inaccuracy in pitch and timing in order to create something that is closer to what most musical scenarios would require — stylistic accuracy rather than mathematical accuracy and precision .
CAUSE AND EFFECT : For a few vocal styles out there , a rapid correction to the scale ‘ grid ’ with no variance becomes an effect in its own right . Think Cher ’ s song Believe or the rap vocal effects used by artists like T-Pain . This sort of hard gridding effect is not very common in contemporary worship band settings but is likely a sound that most of us have heard before . As noted , this gridding effect is caused by locking in pitch correction to a scale with little or no allowance for pitch variation — but the biggest difference ( compared to more traditional pitch correction ) is also setting the time for the effect to kick in as low as possible . If the signal input is a quarter step high , it would very quickly be locked down right on pitch creating an audible ‘ slide ’ or ‘ blip ’ that is not natural . These pitch correction artefacts and extreme settings are great for Cher and T-Pain and might have their place in the occasional section of a worship tune when used sparingly ( and on purpose ) but wouldn ’ t generally be the sort of effect that we ’ re going for in a worship setting .
As noted in Part 2 of this series last month , in most worship settings we would adjust the vocal formant as needed to soften the ‘ chipmunk ’ effect on the vocal tone as a first step . From there , the timing of the pitch correction and the range of allowable variance from the pitch / key should be adjusted . The key here is to think back to the Goldilocks story and aim for the ‘ just right ’ settings that will catch the most extreme pitch offenders and bring them back in line just at the right speed and with the least amount of strange sonic artefacts . We want to be as gentle as possible here to assist the vocals without introducing any pitch correction ‘ tell ’. If we are visited by congregants after the service asking about what sort of
96 October 2024 Subscribe for Free ...