How to Tune Vocals in Your Mix – A Complete Guide

Tuning vocals in your mix can be a tedious process depending on how much you want to put into it. This complete guide will show you multiple methods on how to tune vocals in your mix while keeping that vocal sounding natural.

How to Tune Vocals In Your Mix

Vocal tuning is very much a get what you give aspect of mixing, and it essentially comes down to two options: automated or manual.

Let’s start with the easier method, or using autotune to automatically get your vocals in tune.

Using Autotune to Tune Vocals

I recently did an overview on how to use autotune in your mix to automatically tune up your vocals via an autotune plugin.

Plugins like Antares’ Auto-Tune Pro or the comparatively FREE Graillon will automatically tune every note it hears to the nearest neighboring in-tune note.

The process is relatively simple:

Step 1 – Specify the Key of the Song

Some autotune plugins like Auto-Tune Pro will allow you to specify the key of the song within the plugin.

This helps the plugin recognize which notes should be included and just importantly which should be excluded when bringing the notes it hears to the nearest note in the key.

The latest instances of Auto-Tune Pro have an Auto Detect feature where you audition part of the vocal for the plugin and it can determine the key from the notes it hears.

Part of why I like Auto-Tune Pro is because it also allows you to specify the scale you want, as well.

Specifying a major key, minor key, or a less conventional scale will even more accurately create the bank of notes the vocal should adhere to.

Step 2 (Auto-Tune Pro Specific) – Specify the Input Type

Another reason I like Auto-Tune Pro is its input type feature which allows you to specify the type of vocal as it relates to the vocal range.

The plugin will yield better (which typically means more transparent) results if you instruct the plugin that you’re applying it to a low male, tenor/alto, or soprano vocal.

There’s also an auto detect (“Learn”) feature for this, as well, which is great for vocals when you’re not certain or which are right on the cusp of two of those groups.

Step 3 – Adjust Your Parameters Accordingly

As I specified in my overview of the best autotune settings as they relate to Auto-Tune Pro, I like moderate settings on key parameters like the Retune Speed, Flex Tune, and Humanize:

Unless your ultimate goal is to instantly snap every note to perfect pitch, a more subtle approach works well with these settings for keeping that humanity and expression in your vocal.

Even the best singers stray (intentionally or unintentionally) from perfect pitch when hitting notes. The above settings help to maintain that humanity while still nudging the odd “sour” note a few cents sharper or flatter as necessary.

If you drive the autotune too hard, having it retune too quickly and holding the perfect pitch too long and consistently makes the vocal sound robotic.

This can make for an interesting effect which you’ll hear on some pop records sparingly for a bit of ear candy, but if the goal is not letting on that you’re using the autotune while still achieving the benefits, the above settings work well.

Don’t set your autotune blindly with the above settings and assume the entire vocal will sound perfect through and through.

You might find the odd note here and there sounds artificial, meaning TOO in tune.

In those cases, you may want to automate the retune speed down for that particular section.

Alternatively, you may hear especially egregious out of tune notes which still require a bit more nudging.

In this case, you can move on to a bit of manual adjustments, so let’s talk manually vocal tuning.

How to Tune Vocals Manually

When it comes to manually retuning your vocals:

Step 1 – Comp Your Vocals Ahead of Time

Let’s begin with an obvious reminder/tip; comp your vocal ahead of time to put together the best version of your lead vocal before you do any other editing, otherwise you’re potentially just wasting your time.

You can check out my guide on vocal comping for more information, but essentially this just means if you’ve done multiple vocal takes for any and all parts of the lead vocal, you can pick and choose the best parts of each take to create the absolute best vocal take.

Sometimes you can address vocal tuning as part of the comping process if one take is sharp or flat on a particular note but another is in tune, you can just grab the in tune clip and move that to your main comped vocal.

In some cases, the BEST vocal part may be the one which is out of tune simply because the delivery was better from an energy or emotional perception. I’ll always take a better delivery even if tuning is an issue on that take, knowing I can fix the vocal tuning as we’re covering here.

But I digress; if you’ve got multiple takes then put together the final take before you do any tuning.

Step 2 – Listen to the Full Vocal for Tuning

Obvious but necessary – you’ve got to LISTEN to the vocal itself to determine if anything is out of tune.

I recommend listening to the vocal in the context of the mix rather than in solo isolation because sometimes the mix will mask an out of tune note and sometimes the mix will make a note sound out of tune when it’s not, it’s actually a sour note on an instrument else which requires your attention.

In case you were wondering, it’s not worth it to drop a tuner on the vocal to show how sharp or flat the vocal is note to note.

This is because, one, virtually every note will be at least a cent or two sharp or flat, and two, even notes which are literally more drastically sharp or flat aren’t necessarily bad. That goes back to the humanity quality we talked about with autotune; we don’t want every note to sound perfect.

People want to connect with that vocal, and a little imperfection actually enhances that vocal.

More than that, some parts of the vocal might intentionally be slightly sharp or flat as part of the performance. This is something to be aware of if you’re using an autotune either as part of the tuning process or exclusively for the tuning process as you don’t want to correct a note which is intentionally off.

But I digress once again, once you find a note which sounds off to you which you KNOW needs attention, make a note for yourself of the time then continue on.

Once you’ve got all the highlighted points which require attention, move on to step 3.

Step 3 – Isolate The Note(s)

This will vary from DAW to DAW, but you’ll almost always want to be in the timeline view or whatever your DAW’s equivalent name for this view is.

In my Ableton Live, the timeline view with the clips showing is referred to as the “Arrangement View”.

You want to zoom in and cut/split the vocal just before the note like I show below to isolate that note (in Ableton this is Ctrl E). This ensures that we’re not affecting the pitch of the surrounding, already in tune notes.

Mind you that you’ll need to do this on either side of that note if it’s in the middle of a line.

Now select that isolated clip which contains the sharp or flat note.

Step 4 – Adjust the Tuning

The location will vary with your DAW, but the “Clip View” in Ableton Live pops up in the bottom left of the display. This will reflect the information for whatever clip you currently have selected.

Before you adjust a clip’s pitch, make sure the clip is set to “Warp” or “Warped” as otherwise this will change its timing/length slightly.

Here we can adjust the start and stop times not to mention the timing of the clip itself, but more importantly for our purposes we can adjust the pitch in this area:

In the above example, the final note for this section of the vocal is a bit sharp. Pitch can manually be adjusted by “Semitones” or “Cents”. There are 12 semitones in an octave and 100 cents to every semitone, so every semitone is a full note difference whereas a cent is simply 1/100th of a full note.

The dial controls the semitones, meaning each “tick” of the dial will lower (turned left) or raise (turned right) the tuning by a full note. Very rarely will you need to adjust the semitones when tuning a vocal in your mix (otherwise you should probably find a new singer!).

Instead, we want to adjust the cents. Typically, if a note is just off by 10 cents or less, it doesn’t need any attention. You can get away with even less if it sounds fine or isn’t noticeable.

If a note sounds off but you can’t quickly identify why, try adjusting it by 25 cents in either direction to see if either sounds better. If one sounds better but it’s still a bit off, try going an extra 15 cents from that point to see if it needs more or less adjustment in that direction (of sharp or flat).

In the above example, as mentioned the note was a bit too sharp. In that note’s case, pulling down the clip by 23 cents smoothed it out and made it sound more natural.

Note you may need to split the out of tune note itself for instances when the vocalist corrected their tuning mid-note.

In using the above example, I might need to isolate the first half for the 23 cents down, then go with a more conservative 10 cents down for the second half.

The listener won’t notice a the pitch shifting happening when we’re talking about a fraction of a second, not to mention just a few cents in adjustments between the split halves.

Step 5 – Adjust the Formant as Necessary

Lastly, just a bit of housekeeping in ensuring everything sounds natural.

First, anytime we change the pitch of a note, it changes the timbre. The more aggressively we adjust the note, particularly when moving more than 100 cents, meaning 1 semitone or more, the notes will sound more foreign compared to the rest, especially with vocals.

In general, adjusting the vocal formant and envelope on a vocal will change the sound of the mouth.

You’ll hear aggressive formant modifying a lot in pop music today to give vocals an artificially sharper/narrower or smoother/wider sound.

For our purposes, we can adjust the formant to correct for timbre changes and get the pitch adjusted note(s) of the vocal sounding just like the rest.

There is no perfect setting for this, you simply adjust it until it sounds as natural as possible. In theory you would need to slightly lower the formant to offset lowering the pitch and vice versa for raising pitch, but this doesn’t always bear out.

You also might not even need to touch the formant control for the clip, particularly with smaller pitch adjustments.

Step 6 – Adjust the Crossfades as Necessary

Lastly, I like to create fresh crossfades between the pitch adjusted clip and its neighboring untouched clips.

Occasionally and especially with more aggressive pitch changes, you’ll hear a small pop when the change between the clips occurs when leaving it as a clean split.

In Ableton, I like to highlight a fraction of a beat on either side of the split and create the crossfade (Ctrl+Alt+F) to help smooth that transition between the pitches to make that adjustment undetectable.

Don’t select TOO much on either side or you’ll preserve some of the original pitch going into the part which you tuned up or down. Less than a 10th of a second works fine.

At this point, simply repeat steps 3-6 as necessary for every remaining off note.

As I referenced in opening, manual vocal tuning can get especially tedious.

With that in mind, I like a combination of pairing some subtle/conservative autotune (like the settings above) with some manual adjustments as necessary.

This saves me time in doing the lion’s share of the work automatically without hearing the autotune working and so that all that’s left to do is to touch up the most offending notes.

Just be aware of accidentally affecting those INTENTIONALLY sharp or flat notes via the autotune as mentioned a moment ago. You can automate the retune speed down in any sections like this or where you just feel like the autotune is doing too much/is too noticeable.

Also, depending on the mix, I typically will just do this on my lead vocal. I’ll typically just leave some moderate autotune on any backup vocals without ever touching them otherwise.

All of this also helps to ensure you don’t get burnt out on any one mix or waste too much time so that you can devote more time to the hundreds of other details to pay attention to like EQ and compression (though you can grab my free EQ cheat sheet and free compression cheat sheet to save yourself a ton of time there, as well!).

Now that you know how to tune vocals, check out my entire guide on how to mix vocals to get every vocal in your mix sounding professional and commercial ready.