Been Messing Around with Auto-Tune and Guitar

[Anderton]

...and finding some interesting stuff. Of course, one option is hard correction on pitch bends, so bends are quantized into semitones. But I've found two other interesting techniques. These work with Antares Auto-Tune and Waves Tune Real-Time, which deal with monophonic signals.

 

• If you select a scale and slide along a string, the pitch correction will ignore the notes that aren't part of the scale. This is quite cool when you want to have a little fill or transition.
• With slide guitar, as you slide along the string, it picks up the scale notes and ignores the other ones. Again, this has a variety of uses. 
• Both Waves Tune Real-Time and Auto-Tune don't misbehave if you play chords. But, often the pitch correction will grab one note out of the chord. Note that even in any low-latency mode, there will still be a little latency. So if you choose a mix of dry and pitch-corrected sound, you get some interesting chorusing effects.

 

I'm sure ther are other cool tricks, but those are what I've found so far.

[Anderton]

Okay, here's another one: Auto-Tune can create vibrato, as long as the transport is running (playback or record).  The capabilities are very much like a synth, with Delay, Rate, Waveform, and Oneset Rate. You can also set depth separately for pitch, amplitude, and formant, which is fun. 

 

Waves Real-Tune doesn't create vibrato, but it has options for deciding how natural vibrato will be handled during the pitch correction process.

[RABid]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

• If you select a scale and slide along a string, the pitch correction will ignore the notes that aren't part of the scale. This is quite cool when you want to have a little fill or transition.
• With slide guitar, as you slide along the string, it picks up the scale notes and ignores the other ones. Again, this has a variety of uses. 

Just looking for confirmation here. Is it leaving a gap in the audio when it ignores a note, or does it jump to the nearest note in the scale?

[Anderton]

9 hours ago, RABid said:

Just looking for confirmation here. Is it leaving a gap in the audio when it ignores a note, or does it jump to the nearest note in the scale?

 

The latter. It holds the pitch for a note until it crosses over into the pitch of the next note.

[Bill Heins]

Sounds like a lot of fun!

[Philbo King]

I use a lot of quarter-tone bends in my playing, both guitar and keyboard leads.  Autotune would not be a good fit, although it might be interesting to play with a bit.

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, Philbo King said:

I use a lot of quarter-tone bends in my playing, both guitar and keyboard leads.  Autotune would not be a good fit, although it might be interesting to play with a bit.

 

I see it as a separate kind of effect. It's something you'd choose deliberately for that specific sound, not as a general way to "enhance" bending. The sound is so different from what we normally expect from a guitar that it makes you sit up and take notice, which is what intrigued me.

 

Waves Tune Real-Time has a "tolerance" parameter which you can set to ignore bends up to a certain point. For example, in your case, you could set it so you'd have to bend more than a quarter-note to trigger the next semitone. Both of these real-time pitch correction devices also have "ignore vibrato" functions...you could probably set that to ignore quarter-tone bends. "Hey, I'm just doing vibrato, leave me alone."