melodyne mystery vocal

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Hi

I am trying to learn how to use melodyne, a wise move if you have voice as poor as mine, and no one to do vocals for you! Basically what I did was to sing a vocal line, then duplicate the track, introduce melodyne, do a transfer of the vocal line, and raise all the notes by say a third to create a harmony track. sounds okay if somewhat "computerised" With my poor range this makes sense though. But... see screenshot, the odd track is track 7.  Elsewhere in the song the main vocal track jumps up in volume, and I looked at this, it seems to be because the vocal is "doubled up" on the melodyne duplicate track. But I had deleted this bit and just kept the harmony bit from earlier in the song. Looking at the track there is nothing there at all, no waveform, but the vocals can still be heard when I solo it.  I am stuck once again. Perhaps I am using melodyne wrongly? Should I simply open a new track, insert melodyne as a plugin and go from there with a copy and paste of the original vocal line, then dragging this up by a third, harmony instead of using a duplicate track? I wish I was Robert Plant, for more reasons than one!

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

After a few hours I have a work around, just delete the melodyne part where the track looks empty. it must sort of "point" to the original track as a whole. I am doing it wrong so back to the help section for me!

[Glenn Stanton]

are you rendering the region effect or just trying to "bounce to clip"? you need to render the region fx in order to incorporate the changes. one way (i do this) is to copy (clone) the track, do the region fx and render, then mute/archive the original. this way you can always go back to the original.

[paulo]

I'm not quite following what you are saying re the mystery vocal on an empty track that is in solo mode, but looking at your picture track 1 is also in solo mode so presumably that is playing back too. Are there any layers in track 1 that are also playing? It certainly seems that you are going the long way about using melodyne though. The quickest way to work is to select the clip you want to work on (some people keep their original recording hidden/muted as a non molested back up and only work on duplicate tracks, but changes can all be removed up until you have bounced to clip) and then Ctrl+M to open the clip in melodyne and make your edits. Ctrl+B when you're happy with the edit and you're done. If at any point during editing you make changes that you regret, you can either use the undo function within melodyne or remove everything and start over by right clicking on the clip > Region FX > Melodyne > Remove region FX. Out of habit from using CW's somewhat flaky V-vocal in the past I tend to not leave open edits when exiting a project, but TBH I don't think it matters too much with melodyne other than your project will load quicker if it doesn't have lots of melodyne instances to insert. 

HTH.

Edited February 14, 2021 by paulo

[John Vere]

I’m pretty new to using it just started back in November when I got M5 update. 
I spent a good full evening watching videos and reading first. In the past I could not make sense of it and always gave up and use V Vocal. 
I’m glad I spent the time learning about it first and have had no issues as a result 

But from advice given here and in the videos I chop my vocals into short clips. No more than 4 bars and most shorter. 
Once I’ve finished editing I use the Render function as advised and save the project before moving to the next clip. 
So far no issues at all. I like that when I return to the project the clips I’ve done are marked as Melodyne 

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks all, I will try to digest the advice as best I can. As I said to John, I am always in too much of a a hurry, and its a false economy. But to be fair I really only want to play or record, I am not technical at all; and each time I try and sort something it seems to take an hour or more from my day only for another issue to arrive later! but that's the way it is I reckon, as I do everything myself from writing, singing, playing and recording. On a more upbeat note, looking back to when I started with CW I have made huge progress ( with help from the forum) but there's a long way to go before I get to grips with stuff. A VERY long way!

[Glenn Stanton]

yeah, that's the challenge. i think a lot of people who don't want to go down the road of mastering the tech in great detail usually learn enough to get a good recording and then take it to someone for mixing and mastering - including vocal corrections etc. one thing always impressed me is watching the John Lennon and Paul McCartney in a studio setting - how they were fascinated by the tech and learned to use it and expand on it in ways people are still trying to emulate to this day.  it's somewhat amazing when Paul is doing some demo of his recording and he's just operating all the audio inputs and tape machines or laptop to get his recording... he then has his expert assistance doing the looping, rough mix etc in near real-time as well ? 

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

I agree 100%. I did read that Lennon often got a bit bored and left it to McCartney but maybe that's a myth. Their songs were so good if they'd given them to me to engineer, they STILL would sound good!?

[John Vere]

I've been using Cakewalk since 2004 and I still learn new things weekly. It is still the only reason I hang around here. Even answering questions forces you to go try new things or look it up -- something our OP's need to learn how to do :) 

I tend to only use the few features I need which is basically a midi sequencer and a 4 track tape deck. 

Like Ripple editing was added a long time ago and I have no clue how or why I would use it. I did try the new arranger and it's found a use for it as a very spiffy replacement instead of using markers for Verse , chorus etc.

As I said I avoided Melodyne simply because I just never took the time to read ( watch) up on it. As time wears on and life slows down I find I have the time to start learning new tricks. Yesterday I watched "How to DIY Mini Split heat pump" videos for 4 hours. I now feel fully up to the task which will save me probably $1,800. 

Last winter it was watching Cabinet making videos.  You have to be careful as there's some real armature advice floating around the net. You can tell the professionals from the weekend warriors pretty easily. But we re-did our kitchen for under $6,000 including appliances. 

Before 

 

After

Edited February 16, 2021 by John Vere

[Xoo]

Have you got rid of your sink there?

[John Vere]

Ya we wash the dishes in that  That's a reverse Osmosis drinking water sink. Here's the other end of the counter. This was a few months ago it has a lot more junk on the walls and counters now. I made all the cabinets and drawers. The doors we got second hand  the whole kicthen for $100, solid oak, and painted them. Anyhow boy are we off topic...

Edited February 17, 2021 by John Vere

[Larry Jones]

Nice work, Johnny!