How is the new Pitch Editor in R9?

[mbfrancis]

Currently I am bouncing clips from R8 to WAV, pulling into Melodyne, and manually editing, then pulling back in. Tedious, esp. with my basic Melodyne, and the new version which forces you to Export vs. Save in place.

How transparent is the pitch correction? For vocals (pretty much all I use it for) how is it? Can it tame wavering notes? Does it detect sibilance and ignore it? Or it like the awful Neptune, which mangles my voice, and can't deal w/ sibilance. The marketing says "it's Reason time stretch good"...which for me means I'm staying w/ Melodyne ha (Reason time stretch is really good...for some things).

Any experiences appreciated, thanks!

[guitfnky]

it's as transparent as you want it to be, really. it's great at identifying the pitch sections and separating them from the non-pitched portions of the sounds. as long as the track isn't so far off you're doing drastic changes, it works perfectly and is flexible enough that you can massage a track to sound just right, without being at all noticeably changed.

[ilikestargazing]

Honestly I'm rather positively surprised. Before R9 I was using the same method as you described with going back and forth between Reason and Melodyne, which is indeed very tedious.
When I heard about the new feature in R9 I definitely had some hopes it could replace that workflow and entirely eliminate Melodyne from my process. Now after about a month of using the new Reason and making 5 or 6 vocal songs so far, I gotta say I'm pretty much happy with it. I'm no expert and I haven't done any in-depth analysis of any kind besides just listening for what I think sounds good.

I'd say it handles really well and does what I expected it to. Some room for improvement, but I'm still at a point where I'm just so happy I can do this inside of Reason.

[guitfnky]

the best analysis is really just to use it and see if you like it. to me, it's extremely transparent; making changes with the track soloed doesn't become unnatural-sounding unless I'm doing something extreme, and when you put that into a mix with other stuff going on, no one is ever going to notice.

so much better than Neptune for correcting pitch. but I want to use it in conjunction with Neptune now to get even better results using the voice-synth.

[mbfrancis]

Honestly I'm rather positively surprised. Before R9 I was using the same method as you described with going back and forth between Reason and Melodyne, which is indeed very tedious.
When I heard about the new feature in R9 I definitely had some hopes it could replace that workflow and entirely eliminate Melodyne from my process. Now after about a month of using the new Reason and making 5 or 6 vocal songs so far, I gotta say I'm pretty much happy with it. I'm no expert and I haven't done any in-depth analysis of any kind besides just listening for what I think sounds good.

I'd say it handles really well and does what I expected it to. Some room for improvement, but I'm still at a point where I'm just so happy I can do this inside of Reason.

Thanks, this is the feedback I was looking for.

@guitfunky- thanks...I would expect it to be 100% transparent on naked, intimate vocals....like Melodyne. Not for crazy stuff, but just general pitch fine-tuning of a vocal performance. Nothing heroic, but it has be good.

[sinusfiction]

Same here, used to work with the Melodyne loop, but switched entirely. The workflow is so much easier now! The quality is great (in my view) and the only thing I'm missing is the view where you can see other vocal parts as a reference. But that's not a big deal.

[ilikestargazing]

You're welcome! I gotta say Reason does definitely not handle over-all as well as melodyne, particularly when it comes to anything else than a really clean vocal recording. I do a lot of "breathy" vocal tracks for some of my stuff, and Reason has a bit of a hard time picking up on the tonality of those clips when shifted, regardless of mixing and recording settings.
I expect a bunch of improvements in 9.3/9.5/10 whatever it's gonna be next time, as there is certainly room for that.
A few small artefacts here and there, but generally really good control and openness in editing. I was slightly surprised to find that some features I had grown accustomed to in Melodyne, were now also in Reason. Like stretching and moving individual notes, transition between notes, how much to let the tone-variance shift etc.

I really like that it's just right there and open, so I don't have to settle on one particular setting and just roll with it the whole way through.

[Purpleb]

Like it! Like previous posters I use to use melodyne, but it completely replaces it for me. Really smooths up workflow.

[Dante]

I've used Reason 9 pitch edit 2 or 3 times now, and I can say its way better than Vari-Audio in Cubase, which I have used extensively.

To get the kind of accuracy I'm getting in Reason 9 in Vari-Audio takes longer. So I can say Reason Pitch Editor has superior accuracy and workflow.

In Cubase Vari-Audio, I was constantly switching between two modes. But Reason opens the pitch editor with the analysis already done.

So far I'm impressed.

[Ahornberg]

I love it ... R9 for monophonic material, Melodyne for polyphonic tracks.

[Captain Boyfriend]

I'm really liking it so far. I haven't spent much time with pitch correction in the past, but it only took me about 5-10 minutes to figure out how it works in Reason, then I fixed up the vox. I made a correction with some overzealous vibrato and it sounded very natural to me.

I noticed for a bass audio track I was editing the other day, it was having a hard time identifying the lower notes, making it tough to correct them, since it was pitch shifting from an erroneous guess on what the note was.

[mcatalao]

Check the stream. It is a good example of what you can do.

[joeyluck]

It's fantastic! I've been getting amazing results with minor adjustments.

I suppose it depends on the singer, but for major adjustments it doesn't work so well for my voice. Which is to be expected or hit or miss with most any pitch editing software.

But this demo I just saw, an entire octave shift is made, which still sounds quite natural. And sounds great IMO.
@12:31

So I guess for major adjustments, it depends on the voice and vocal style. And some of it is probably the song and how it sits in the mix.