You hear a lot of high pitched vocals cut up in mixes, pitched up and down and usually it sounds very decent, what I'm wondering though is how the heck do they manage to pitch up the vocal samples without making them sound like absolute shit? Every time I cut up any vocal sample, be it from a decent sample pack etc the vocals just do not allow to be pitched up or down at all, if you pitch them +12 up they sound like crap, if you pitch them -12 down they are barely audible. And yes, I do apply processing to it, I cut the highs out (since when you pitch it up it introduces some useless higher frequencies etc)... I've tried every single warp mode in ableton as well to no avail.

Is this a matter of picking the samples that can be pitched well or what else is going on? Is this a matter of having a good soundcard? How do they pitch their vocal cuts to sound so perfect?

 

I do this on ableton all the time. Complex or Complex pro stretching algos. With complex pro you gotta play with the settings to get it to sound good. You can either load it in a instance of sampler. Or consolidate the clips and use pitch automation. Also a lil touch of saturation and or bit reduction helps. Just google somthing like major lazer vocal chops and youll find a plethora of good vids. Watch a bunch and takes the best tips from all of them.

 

mp3 samples sound worse pitched,

I think it's the amount of processing after pitching, slightly different release times could help also.
a ton of reverb should help also.

U could try pitch-proof or other pitch plugins to mix in a little from a different octave

 

Some dedicated vocal suites have very fine control over vocal modeling/contouring. Melodyne is especially awesome IMO, but quality editors like Izotope Rx have this capability. The biggest trick is proper formant adjustment. That's how you're able to make a male vocal part sound like a convincing female and not like a chipmunk. For example, if you wanted to pitch the part up like 7 semitones, you could bump the per-note formant up in the neighborhood of two, or whatever sounds best. The lower formant setting grounds the voice so it can keep a bit of it's weight, while still allowing it to reach that higher, more feminine register. Like imitation of real throat modeling. Autotune has some neat tools for throat modeling, but I personally have had more inspiration with Melodyne and its all-around sound design potential.

 

Pitching vocals is delicate. An octave is already very much. Consider to stay in +7 range (yields best results) and, as others already pointed out, work with formant preserving pitchers. Also have a look here for an example.

 

great suggestions so far. also if you need something dedicated to vocal processing and are willing to spend money, iZotope VocalSynth or SoniVox Vocalizer is your best bet.

Maybe use a combination of samplers and stretching algorithms or even a synth with resampling capability like Harmor/Alchemy.

 

Oh I agree, I was referring to how to make it sound 'decent'

To add to that 'mp3 'pitfalls there are more things to consider
if one puts a sample on a piano roll and starts playing it will loose it's natural tonal quality.
that is because what you are simply doing is playing the same sample at diffrent speeds.

I think this is even recognizable for untrained ear as sounding unnatural.
Without going in to formant editing, which usually takes longer then it should.

the shortest route for me is to obfuscate these factors, by stacking a decent amount of effects on top of it.

I think output exhale is a good example of this, it actually stacks up around 14 effects

 

You can try resynthesis in an additive synth like Harmor or Loom. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways to manipulate the pitch of a sample with minimal crappiness

 

I recently had to raise the pitch of a vocal by a tone, I tried everything and AB'd the lot..........all crap to my ears......searched the web and found someone on gearslutz advocating Waves Pitch Shift..........I was pretty skeptical but I tried it anyway.

For straight on pitch manipulation it beats the rest easy..........I dunno about octaves, but it works well on smaller moves.

 

to me Melodyne is not so good at pitching more than 2 tones. sounds fake
it excells in all the rest

 

Last edited: Aug 8, 2016

Melodyne 4 is way better than any previous versions.