how do u make harmonies outa 1 track

[laboroflove]

been needing to make harmonies out of my vocals.i cant sing harmonies but learning.how do i go about it in pro tools?ive tried it once or twice but gave up bcs it was not on time.also i would like to lower the pitch of snare or kick on certain songs thx b4 hand

[Tarktones]

Do you play an instrument like guitar or keyboard?

[laboroflove]

yes i play everything myself.not very good at the keys though

[michaelhoddy]

been needing to make harmonies out of my vocals.i cant sing harmonies but learning.

I'm going to sound like the dick that several people thing I am, but if you can't sing harmonies, you need to learn. Challenge yourself to step away from the computer and learn a new musical skill. Or get someone on the session who can sing them for you. "Getting" Pro Tools or some plug-in to do it for you is a piss-poor substitute for the real thing. Singing accurately and doing parts is a fundamental, 101-level part of making a record. Or at least a good record. No shortcuts.

[Tarktones]

If you play guitar, then learn the vocal melody on the guitar. Play it and then play those same intervals up a 3rd. Mind you, these aren't fret markers, they're scale position markers (1 = root, 2 = the 2nd note in the scale, 3 = 3rd note, etc...).

For example, if in a minor scale your melody is:

1-2-3, 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 2-3-4

then your harmony would be:

3-4-5, 3-4-5, 4-5-6, 4-5-6.

Play that harmony part on your guitar and record it to make sure the notes sound right with the melody. Then just sing along with the recorded guitar and voila! You've just made a vocal harmony.

Of course, this is only a very basic harmony but it'll sound more natural and teach you more about singing with yourself than any plugin or time/pitch mangling you could do. This puts you on your way to following Michael's advice because you need to learn them and this can be a fun and creative way to do it.

[laboroflove]

na michael yur not a dick u just sound like 1 lololol:scared:

[laboroflove]

im sry i shouldnt of bounced back like that.long day.its just i want to know how to do it with not just vxs but with guitars .u know like when the band packed everything up and heads to mcdonalds type thing they can come back with a surprise.also on kik and snare.what plugins?is it pitch shift?look i can hardly sing at all let alone harmonies but thx tark ill try that

[JeffBarnett]

I was a singer long before I was an audio engineer, so I tend to agree with Michael. Learn to sing the harmonies, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and money trying to get a piece of software to do it for you.

But if you must...

I use Melodyne Studio (http://www.sweetwater.com/melodynestudio/) for this in those instances where I can't sing a part myself (too high, too low, or it's three am and my singer is long gone). It works well, but it takes me much, much, much longer to get it right than if I just sang it myself. And the results are sometimes a little squirrely, but if you want a software solution, it's the best I've found.

[laboroflove]

ya exspecially at that price lol

[JeffBarnett]

Melodyne really pays off if you have high-paid singers that are being paid by the hour. Some large commercial studios find that it's far more cost-effective to have a tech can go off into an editing booth for a few hours to work on a vocal, rather than tying up a studio that rents for hundreds of dollars per hour.

But for most home/project studio guys, it's much faster and cheaper to just sing it yourself.

[5454stevef]

I was a singer long before I was an audio engineer, so I tend to agree with Michael. Learn to sing the harmonies, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and money trying to get a piece of software to do it for you.

But if you must...

I use Melodyne Studio (http://www.sweetwater.com/melodynestudio/) for this in those instances where I can't sing a part myself (too high, too low, or it's three am and my singer is long gone). It works well, but it takes me much, much, much longer to get it right than if I just sang it myself. And the results are sometimes a little squirrely, but if you want a software solution, it's the best I've found.

Ditto on Melodyne - I use Cre8 and find it to be very helpful. The downside to using it to create vocal harmonies is if the singer has a lot of "character" - what some folks would consider flaws, that is... the more pitch shift you apply to these kinds of vocals the less natural it sounds - the formant tuning helps a little, but not a lot. It works best on singers who are trained to produce a very pure tone, you can create very natural sounding harmonies. Same goes for instruments - things like solo guitars work pretty well, I've had good luck with saxophones too. Human voices are so familiar to us that if something's the least bit weird, we notice it immediately.

ditto also on the time it takes to do this with any degree of skill. You don't want your harmonies to be lock-step in time with the original so you want to nudge the notes around in time as well as composing the harmony line.

One other thing I've done to try out guitar harmony parts, on a solo for example, when neither melodyne or a guitar is available, is to copy the melody line, cut it up into individual notes, and use Audiosuite to shift the pitch of each note by the appropriate interval. This turns a task that would take minutes on a guitar and turns it into hours if the phrase is more than a few notes, but if that's what you got, that's what you got.

I also concur, this is a poor substitute for simply playing or singing the part, but it has its place, usually driven by necessity. If you know enough about theory to create a harmony line by this method, though, playing it or singing it should be a snap.

SF

[michaelhoddy]

I guess I just feel that by the time you invest enough time and effort to learn Melodyne or something similar to the point that you can get usable results, you could have put the same time and effort into learning how to sing the parts yourself.

And one of those skills (singing) is eminently portable- you'll have it for the rest of your life, and it's useful in any musical situation.

[5454stevef]

I guess I just feel that by the time you invest enough time and effort to learn Melodyne or something similar to the point that you can get usable results, you could have put the same time and effort into learning how to sing the parts yourself.

And one of those skills (singing) is eminently portable- you'll have it for the rest of your life, and it's useful in any musical situation.

You won't get any argument out of me on either point. I would argue, however, (ok, maybe you will.... ha) that it takes a whole lot longer to learn to be an acceptable singer than it does to learn to operate any piece of software that I've encountered.

I avoided singing for years until I was forced into it in a band context; it has taken me a long time to get to where I can tolerate the sound of my own voice. I have ok pitch, and can sing harmony parts without using pitch correction as long as they are in my range - I just think I sound lame. So it's a work in progress that will probably never end.

I do think programs like Melodyne can be dang handy when you're faced with creating a harmony part for an instrument you can't play (for me that's a lot of them, and I'm too old to learn new ones to an acceptable level before I kick the bucket) or for a female vocalist if you happen to be male.

Oh, and FWIW I didn't realize that some people here think you're a dick. I don't. What would this forum be if everyone had the same point of view?

SF