visualize notes for each track

[Byron Dickens]

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I know, right? I get ? when people show up here wanting to use Cakewalk to augment their musical capabilities. A DAW should be nothing but a way to record audio.

Pitch correction? Learn how to sing for heaven's sake. Sonny and Cher didn't need Autotune to sell millions of records.

Overdubs? How about learning some social skills and getting your musical chops together so that  whenever you have a musical idea, musicians who want to play with you will be at your place within minutes? Did Prince have 2 resort 2 such things?

Automatic double tracking? How about learning how to sing well enough that you can record two actual vocal takes? Would John Lennon take shortcuts like that?

Compression? Learn how to control your dynamics when you play and sing. Did the great Motown hits use compression?

EQ? Learn how to set up your instrument and mics, learn how to treat your room. If it needs EQ, you're doing something wrong when you're recording it.

Comping? Learn how to play your instrument or sing so that you can actually get through a 5 minute song without screwing up. Do you think Fleetwood Mac or Boston or the Beach Boys resorted to cutting the best bits out of multiple takes and  stitching them into a single "performance?" Fleetwood Mac had better things to do with their razor blades than cut and splice recording tape.

Staff editing? Capture an egret, pull out a quill, and whittle it down with your pen knife. How much hand-holding do you need?

Piano roll? Scott Joplin didn't need to edit his piano rolls, he just got good enough at playing so that he could play them right into the punching machine without screwing up. Don't get me started on "quantizing."

Virtual instruments? How about getting some good-sounding real instruments?

Mixing? Learn how to play it at the right volume so that it fits with the rest of the instruments in the first place.

Recording itself. If you want people to hear your music, why not pick up an instrument and play it for them?

You are simply ridiculous.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

8 hours ago, bdickens said:

You are simply ridiculous.

That is probably one of the most bizarre posts I've ever read, and it's not from a newbie. 

[Starship Krupa]

It does seem like the OP is going to a lot of trouble.

Irony aside, if the top-level goal is to teach oneself how to sing in tune, it's not necessary to reinvent the wheel. I'm not down on him for trying to find something that works, but as someone who taught myself how to sing in tune, I'll offer another suggestion.

As others have alluded to, it's the feedback circuit between your ears and brain and vocal cords that you need to calibrate. Having a visual graph may be helpful for seeing whether you've hit the note, but it can only tell you after you've sung it. Then what do you do? Tell yourself to sing it a few cents higher or lower next time around? If you had that much precision, you wouldn't need to be training your voice. It's like watching a video of yourself losing a tennis match. You can see what mistakes you made, but the only way to learn how not to make those mistakes is to get out on the court and practice.

For learning how to sing in tune, it's better to sing along with a guide track, then play it back aside the guide track and listen to hear whether you're in tune. Wherever you hear yourself go out of tune, find that note and hold down its key on your MIDI controller. Sing a note along with it, raising and lowering your pitch until you hit it. You can do this even with just a simple scale.

The voice is like other instruments. The way to get good at it is practice. It doesn't have to be drudgery, try what I suggested for 10 minutes (or more) a few days in a row and you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll be able to sing in tune. It trains you to make instant corrections using feedback via the ear-brain-voice circuit.