how to apply Pitch Correction in Different Keys by Region?

[Dave K]

Hi foks! I'm a relative newbie to Logic, but I think I'm diving into the deep end here. 

The song has a challenging vocal section: in the bridge, 4 bars are sung in D major, 4 in D minor, and 4 in Eb minor. Naturally, it's hard to sing on pitch, and sure enough my recording needs pitch correction. But each of those 4 bars needs to be pitch-corrected in a different key.

So I have:

1. split those bars into Regions

2. enabled the Pitch-Correction plug-in to this track. 

3. enabled Region-based Automation on the track

4. set the Root and Scale and other parameters as needed

The problem I have appears to be with Automation. Whenever I go to set up the NEXT Root/Scale, the old one gets replaced. 

I have read up on Read/Touch/Latch/Write, but I'm clearly not getting it. I tried going into Touch or Write mode at the left edge of the region, setting the Root/Scale; going back to Read mode until I get to the next Region, and then repeating. But it doesn't work. I could explain all the problems and confusion I'm running into, but I'm not sure that would help. If someone could just explain to me the right way to accomplish this, it would be a huge help!

Thanks in advance!

Dave

Edited January 27 by reggoboy
typo

[Dr.Socrates]

Why not use Flex Pitch instead? I think you will get a better result ...

If you want to learn more about automation, there are many threads on this forum. Here is a quite recent one: 

[Dave K]

On 1/27/2024 at 1:10 PM, Dr.Socrates said:

Why not use Flex Pitch instead? I think you will get a better result ...

Thanks so much for the reply.

This doesn't answer my question, but it does suggest an alternative. I originally steered away from Flex Pitch because it was new to me and because Logic didn't appear to load any content there. But with some help from here:

I found the missing FP content. 

And I think you're right that in my case, FP is a better solution than Pitch Correction. For the record, I'll explain why. PC probably works best when you have few or no key changes, when the amount of pitch adjustment is minor, and when you are okay having the entire performance modified.

In my case, I want to leave most of it untouched, but want small phrases adjusted, and sometimes by an entire half-pitch, and the various adjustments don't follow a single key or scale type. FP handled this perfectly, once I learned how it worked. 

So thanks! It's an amazing feature.

I'm still bugged by the fact that I don't know why my effort to automate the PC plugin by region didn't work, and so I also won't mark this as "solved". Maybe even if I do Region based on automation, I still have to mark nodes? Anyway, I thought I did that per "Mix > Creation 2 Automation Points at Region Borders". But alas, I'll have to walk away from this question for now since my immediate problem is solved. 

Thanks again for the tip about Flex Pitch!

Edited February 1 by reggoboy

[Dr.Socrates]

Thank you for a kind and informative response. I’m happy that you found Flex Pitch to work good!

But OK, you also want to try the pitch correction plug-in approach. 🙂 

All parameters of the pitch correction plug-in can be automated, so it should be possible to accomplish that method too, if you are interested. 
 

when you tried the “write” and “latch” modes, did you remember to press play also?

another option than “recording” the automation is to manually edit it. Do you know how to edit automation curves?

[Dr.Socrates]

So, here is a short description on how to manually edit the automation for the pitch correction plug-in. 

First, press the key "A" to open automation, or go to the "Mix" drop-down menu, and choose "Show Automation". 

Then, press where it says "Volume" in yellow, and follow the drop down menus as shown in my first picture below, to choose which parameter to change the automation of:

Then, you can e.g. change the root note and the scale, as shown in my second and third pictures, below:

Use the mouse and click to add a new point, and drag up or down to change the value of the parameter.

That should do it. 🙂

 

 

Edited February 1 by Dr.Socrates

[Mania]

I always go for the simplest solution: if your singing is not far off, then set the pitch correction in flex pitch to 100%. 
 

This will snap the notes to the nearest value. You can then grab a few notes push them up or down in the scale use your ears. Should be simple. 
If too robotic, play with the parameters and percentage of correction. 
 

Even if you go the other way with automation:  just don't bother with that. Duplicate track and use pitch correction on that track too separately. 
 

If you have an older Mac and you have CPU concerns: just bounce in place after you are happy. Put all the bounced regions on one track and delete everything else. Always go for simple. 🙂 

[Dr.Socrates]

I agree, Mania, and that is one of the reasons for why I suggested Flex Pitch in the first place. But I think that the OP wanted to try to do it with the Pitch Correction plug-in as well, for learning, I suppose, which I am all for. 🙂 

Edited February 1 by Dr.Socrates

[Dr.Socrates]

Another solution, @reggoboy, since you have already split the different parts up into different regions, is to place them on different tracks with one instance of the PC plug-in on each track, set to the correct root key and scale. No need to change anything, then. 

But one nice thing about using the automation strategy is that you should not have to split anything up in the first place. 🙂 

[Dave K]

On 2/1/2024 at 4:08 PM, Mania said:

if your singing is not far off, then set the pitch correction in flex pitch to 100%. 

Thanks for this. I was hand-editing individual notes in Flex Pitch. I now see the left sidebar that essentially allows some bulk-editing features. I can select a string of notes and apply a Key/Scale and a Pitch Correction %. This appears to be a middle ground between hand editing notes and going all-out automation using the plugin. This is really great.

I see that this same sidebar also enables bulk edits of time quantization and gain. Handy! I haven't figured out what that little "Q" button is for, but I'll save that for another day 😅

Thanks for making me aware of this!

[Dave K]

On 2/1/2024 at 3:44 PM, Dr.Socrates said:

So, here is a short description on how to manually edit the automation for the pitch correction plug-in. 

Thanks, this was HUGE!

I think my obstacles were that:

1) I didn't see Root and Scale in that dropdown originally, and

2) Oops, I guess I hadn't created enough automation nodes on the curve. Newbie. Sorry!

3) I also didn't realize that each parameter from the same plugin should be on its own curve but duh, that makes sense. 

I think I have it working now, but I have a couple questions.

1) If I'm editing the curves by hand, does it matter what Automation Mode I'm in? Latch vs whatever? And either way, when I'm done I should probably switch to Read to prevent unintended modifications?

2) Is there an automation parameter to turn the plugin completely off/on? Outside of this region, I want to simply have it disabled. Also, I see that in the middle of my automation, it changes key, but the plugin is actually powering off for a bit and then back on. I don't see any "curve" reflecting this behavior. Where is that hiding?

Thanks!

Dave

[David Nahmani]

8 minutes ago, reggoboy said:

1) If I'm editing the curves by hand, does it matter what Automation Mode I'm in? Latch vs whatever?

No. These modes are only for recording live automation (you press play and change the plug-in parameters with your mouse, the changes are recorded in real time on the automation curve). To edit the curves by hand, you don't need to be in any specific mode so you may as well stay in Read mode. 

9 minutes ago, reggoboy said:

2) Is there an automation parameter to turn the plugin completely off/on?

Yes, in the Pitch correction plug-in, you can automate the parameter called "Bypass All".

[Dave K]

4 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

4 hours ago, reggoboy said:

2) Is there an automation parameter to turn the plugin completely off/on?

Yes, in the Pitch correction plug-in, you can automate the parameter called "Bypass All".

Thanks for that tip! That's not the same as powering the plugin off/on, but if it worked I'd be fine with it 🙂 But when I try it, I see that the powering on/off is still happening mysteriously, apart from any visible automation. 

And there's a second oddity going on. The Scale goes to "Chromatic" even though I clearly have it set to Major. And if there's any question about it being set to Major, you can see that the 2nd pass through the Cycle it plays Major correctly. But I even took care to initialize the automation parameters before and after the cycle to prevent surprises. 

Both of these oddities can be seen in the linked screen capture. I'll also paste a screen shot, but that won't show the change over time. I tried deleting the automation and starting over, but it didn't seem to help. 

Thoughts?? Is this a bug or (more likely) am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/74u48u5qhevixv86dmu47/pitch_automation_odd_behavior.mov?rlkey=cphkfzvjpqs8zww5p521aqkdv&dl=0

UPDATE: I just noticed that I have REGION automation underneath the Track automation. There is a "Use B" parameter that I don't really understand (ie, does it override Root/Scale?). But the power off automation I see going on definitely coincides with this automation curve. But even this curve doesn't seem to be respected by Logic, because you can see the current value move between "use" and "off" in a pattern that doesn't match the curve:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mp1yjlidfupess3emqrhj/region_use_automation.mov?rlkey=9jh7bgfjrfjnehxb6b3z22tgi&dl=0

I'm inclined to just delete the Region "Use B" curve and use the Bypass approach. But I'm not sure that will fix the other things, and I'd like to give us a chance to figure out what's going on here before I delete it. I'm certainly learning a lot, but part of what I'm learning is that Automation appears to have a mind of it's own 😅

Edited February 4 by reggoboy
missed screenshot

[Dave K]

UPDATE:

Okay, I appreciate your patience. There was a second Region-based automation curve that wasn't visible until I clicked the dropdown:

I still don't know what "Use B" is for, or why "Bypassed" kicks off at the same time, but "Bypassed" finally explains the power on/off automation I see in the plugin. 

I have done some more experimenting. This "Insert 1 Bypass" does not appear when I don't have the plugin on the track. Once it's there, it can be selected under the Main submenu in the parameter popup.

I probably created this when I was in Latch mode, by pressing buttons in the plugin, and had no idea it was written anywhere because it wasn't visible. This also means I appear to now have a way to fully disable a plugin (power off) when not needed, either by writing automation or doing so manually. 

I'm going to play with it some more, but I have a feeling this will work. This was a very helpful exercise. Skills I needed, and you all were very helpful. Hopefully this will help someone else, too :-) 

[David Nahmani]

10 hours ago, reggoboy said:

Thanks for that tip! That's not the same as powering the plugin off/on, but if it worked I'd be fine with it 🙂 But when I try it, I see that the powering on/off is still happening mysteriously, apart from any visible automation. 

What do you mean by "still happening"? The on/off button should stay on at all times. The reason to avoid automating the on/off button is that this typically creates a click sound. 

10 hours ago, reggoboy said:

And there's a second oddity going on. The Scale goes to "Chromatic" even though I clearly have it set to Major. And if there's any question about it being set to Major, you can see that the 2nd pass through the Cycle it plays Major correctly. But I even took care to initialize the automation parameters before and after the cycle to prevent surprises. 

I would try to add a "Major" automation node right at the beginning of the cycle area on that automation curve, just to make sure. This should normally not be necessary, but give it a try, see if that helps? 

10 hours ago, reggoboy said:

There is a "Use B" parameter that I don't really understand (ie, does it override Root/Scale?)

It means you've recorded automation while clicking the B key on the keyboard in the Pitch Correction plug-in. 

Make sure you never stay in "Touch" or "Latch" mode when tweaking the plug-in or all your tweaks will result in recording undesired automation lanes that will then give you unexpected results. Also choose to work with either region or track automation, one or the other, and stick to it. Much easier to troubleshoot. 

Finally and again, I recommend against automating the on/off button for the Pitch Correction plug-in as that creates click sounds. 

[Dave K]

Thanks for the replies!!

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

17 hours ago, reggoboy said:

Thanks for that tip! That's not the same as powering the plugin off/on, but if it worked I'd be fine with it 🙂 But when I try it, I see that the powering on/off is still happening mysteriously, apart from any visible automation. 

What do you mean by "still happening"? The on/off button should stay on at all times. The reason to avoid automating the on/off button is that this typically creates a click sound. 

The power button was turning on/off automatically and I couldn't figure out how or why. You proposed automating it with the Bypass All feature. When I did that Bypass-All-Automation, the power button continued to go on/off. That's what I meant by "still happening". But per my later comment, I found that "Insert 1 Bypass" automation going on under the Region-based automation. When I got rid of that, the power on/off stopped. Now I understand how it works 🙂

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

17 hours ago, reggoboy said:

And there's a second oddity going on. The Scale goes to "Chromatic" even though I clearly have it set to Major. And if there's any question about it being set to Major, you can see that the 2nd pass through the Cycle it plays Major correctly. But I even took care to initialize the automation parameters before and after the cycle to prevent surprises. 

I would try to add a "Major" automation node right at the beginning of the cycle area on that automation curve, just to make sure. This should normally not be necessary, but give it a try, see if that helps? 

I did set the value to what I want at the beginning to make sure, but that didn't solve the problem. But when I removed the Region-based automation ("Use B" and "Insert 1 Bypass"), this problem with the scale switching to Chromatic went away. 

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

17 hours ago, reggoboy said:

There is a "Use B" parameter that I don't really understand (ie, does it override Root/Scale?)

It means you've recorded automation while clicking the B key on the keyboard in the Pitch Correction plug-in. 

I see. There's very little use for clicking keys in that plugin except for "Bypass Notes". Maybe I had done that by mistake while writing automation. Lesson learned!

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Make sure you never stay in "Touch" or "Latch" mode when tweaking the plug-in or all your tweaks will result in recording undesired automation lanes that will then give you unexpected results.

Yea, for sure! Now that I know, I will be sure to stay in Read mode when I'm doing manual automation edits

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Also choose to work with either region or track automation, one or the other, and stick to it. Much easier to troubleshoot. 

Yes, that's for sure.

7 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Finally and again, I recommend against automating the on/off button for the Pitch Correction plug-in as that creates click sounds. 

Good point. I do not need click sounds! I've worked very hard to get rid of them. I'll go with your Bypass All approach. 

Thanks so much!

[David Nahmani]

You're welcome! 🙂