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Old 09-27-2020, 10:39 AM   #1
superblonde.org
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Default ReaTune can be used for learning how to sing

I had a lengthy thread on another music forum about using ReaTune for improving singing ability. ReaTune is used as a measurement device in this case, not as a pitch correction tool. It is very helpful in this.

I found ReaTune very useful because ReaTune can be used as visual feedback on pitch and it is easy to record many takes then watch ReaTune while flipping through takes, using all the power of the DAW to effectively & efficiently use practice time.

That is the gist of it but there are many more details, like using it for scale practice and sustaining pitch across long practice phrases, etc.

It is so useful that I would bet the author of ReaTune could make a separate UI specifically for singing practice and tailored to easy visual feedback on a chosen diatonic or other scale (+user customizable chromatic notes). There are many small apps (ie ios apps) which help with acappela singing nowadays, often these have UI formatted like a chromatic tuner, but of course those are all missing the linear-time component.

Don't believe the hype about "go get a private vocal instructor" when direct & measurable auditory feedback of one's own vocals is the primary tool used to improve singing anyways.
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Old 09-27-2020, 10:59 AM   #2
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Yes!
I have used ReaTune to help me improve my "singing" in exactly this way; looking at the note reported by ReaTune while singing. It works great, and has helped me to be much better on-key.

I am not sure what is needed to make it more specific to singing... once you have found settings (window size) that work for your voice, just record arm, set the track to monitor while recording, sing into the mic and watch the ReaTune tuner tab. But of course, if there is a way to make it easier for the singer, then by all means, I am not against it
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Old 09-27-2020, 11:36 AM   #3
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Most easily I think the display can be improved, the color choices, drawing line width, etc.. I find that I need to zoom-in and zoom-out a lot. Smoothing of the line for drawing purposes could be improved, or overlaying various pitch fitting curves to the actual measurement.

Or an additional view, considering how a physical tuner, like a korg tuner, has a needle which shows pitch. This would make it easier to see which notes go outside certain number of cents, based on the chosen scale.
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Old 09-27-2020, 01:22 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
Most easily I think the display can be improved, the color choices, drawing line width, etc.. I find that I need to zoom-in and zoom-out a lot. Smoothing of the line for drawing purposes could be improved, or overlaying various pitch fitting curves to the actual measurement.

Or an additional view, considering how a physical tuner, like a korg tuner, has a needle which shows pitch. This would make it easier to see which notes go outside certain number of cents, based on the chosen scale.
OK, I understand what you mean now. I only use the tuner tab, where it shows the currently detected note in text form (like "A#") and the cent offsets at the bottom. For me, that is even better than having a tuner needle showing the pitch.
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Old 09-27-2020, 03:23 PM   #5
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It would be interesting if the devs could add some gamification aspects to ReaTune, the similar/closer you get to the ideal the higher score you should get. Then printing your highscore somewhere, logging into a text file maybe.

Text file could contain following columns:
date, time, length of melody in seconds, melody reference as midi file (saved also as .mid), sang melody (saved as .mid), score (calculated from similarity between both .mid files, especially pitch, but also timing, note start and note end for example, loudness maybe also, if reference is an audio file).

In short measuring timing, tempo, pitch and loudness. Could be fun.
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Old 09-27-2020, 04:26 PM   #6
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As a quick aSIDE, MOST PEOPLE WHO STRUGGLE TO SING IN TUNE DO SO BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT GETTING ENOUGH AIR IN THEIR LUNGS TO GENERATE A STEADY NOTE, USUALLY BECAUSE THEY ARE BREATHING IN THE WRONG PLACE.

Oh dear, sorry about capslock being missed.
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Old 09-28-2020, 05:36 AM   #7
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Oh...
I though you took a DEEP BREATH! lol


Robert
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Old 09-28-2020, 05:51 AM   #8
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One idea is to sing as best you can. Tune it with Reatune.
Then use the tuned track as a reference as you record yourself singing on another track.
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Old 09-28-2020, 06:31 AM   #9
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Another very useful tool is a simple level meter.
If you adjust mouth-to-mic distance in real time, during the performance, to keep the level meter between -18 and -6 dB, without ever hitting red, you're doing it right.

It is a basic element of mic technique that a lot of singers could benefit from.
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Old 10-03-2020, 09:54 PM   #10
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The idea is not to use reatune as autotune and then sing along with an autotuned track because the autotuned track will have perceptual flaws which will then be learned, which is bad. Reatune is used as a measurement device in parallel with a MIDI Piano track since the piano track will have the correct pitch. (If singing in acappela group then piano won't be perfectly correct pitch but should still be used as the reference to hit) So using autotune at all, I believe is not the answer. It is best to use piano. Published research also shows that people attempting to sing hear pitch better from a piano instrument than from other instruments (such as stringed, i.e. guitar).


No, the problem of pitch is NOT a breath issue. Breath does not determine pitch (except at edges of range). Pitch is determined by the ear-brain-throat-muscles feedback loop.


Metronome is also useful, and BPM adjustment. Singing a passage at a very slow tempo is challenging as practice and singing it at very fast tempo is also challenging as practice. If singing is practiced at both 80% of target tempo and 120% of target tempo then the normal tempo becomes very solid. The slow tempo works to stretch breath control, the fast tempo seems to really stress phrase memory, the rapid recall. Especially since live performance has more pressure and kind of "feels" like everything is running at 120%, practicing like that is very solid work.


I hope some plugin authors take a look at this area. A phrase-looping repeat mode of "playback to listen - record a take - listen to the take - record again" would be a very good workflow to nail songs fast in daily practice.

It could also be interesting to have an option to place the pitch along the X axis. Currently it is on the Y axis because of the piano-roll style view. There is a problem with vocal instructors where they continually re-enforce the higher pitches are physically high, and a piano-roll view reenforces this. Relating a high pitch to a physically high place creates various physical problems (i.e. singers physically trying to "stretch" to reach a higher note). If the pitches were on the X axis like an instrument chromatic tuner then this could be avoided.
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Old 10-03-2020, 09:58 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TonE View Post
It would be interesting if the devs could add some gamification aspects to ReaTune
Yes that would be amazing. Very simply, the score is the number of cents sung off from each note's allowed variance, and lower score is better.


Also, solfege viewing mode would be excellent. ReaTune already allows choice of scale and tone center.
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Old 10-04-2020, 02:14 AM   #12
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Interesting thoughts superblonde.

Before I tried the sing along with a tuned vocal method, I sometimes used to record the melody on guitar and sing along with it and that used to be quite effective (in the days before I discovered you could do several takes). I will try out your piano trick.

On a slightly different tack, do people have any ideas about keeping your vocals in good health as you get older?
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Old 10-04-2020, 01:31 PM   #13
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This thread is basically about pitch, (which is a learned perceptual thing), but for keeping vocals in good shape over time, you need to keep throat as relaxed as possible, and use the abdominals and lung capacity to do the work, keeping lung capacity in shape means exercising and doing ab work. the throat should not be putting in any strain, ever. warmups always work for all instruments including voice and are especially important if rusty. don't start practicing at the extremes of range, only do that after warmed up (could take 30+ mins of other singing first).

Being dedicated to vocals means changing lifestyle and diet, avoid all dairy (creates mucus), dont smoke, dont drink alcohol, take vitamins, eat your veggies, do yoga, etc.

One of the top jazz vocalists in the world told the audience of a master class I attended that she does arpeggios every day in all keys and various modes across entire range. I think she's in her 40s?
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Old 10-04-2020, 01:56 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
One of the top jazz vocalists in the world told the audience of a master class I attended that she does arpeggios every day in all keys and various modes across entire range. I think she's in her 40s?
It would be cool, if she could record one days exercise, others could train against, or their own variant of it.
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Old 10-04-2020, 02:45 PM   #15
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Thanks for replying and for your advice Superblonde.
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Old 10-08-2020, 12:08 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TonE View Post
It would be cool, if she could record one days exercise, others could train against, or their own variant of it.
Yes I definitely agree. The lack of such practice recordings could be excused in the era before recording technology, or with some 1980's excuse like "Well if we record it on tape, the audio quality won't be good enough." But music instructors today are just plain lazy. The way music is taught today, when exceptional music technology has been widely available since late 90s and definitely 2000s, that's decades now, it is just dumb, plain dumb. But it makes the music instructors money - because they are paid by the hour - and the longer students are strung along without really improving, the more financial rewards a vocal instructor pockets. The best thing to do for that type of corruption as well as to help aspiring and practicing musicians is to replace their industry wholesale with software and not feel any pity for eliminating their jobs. This new pandemic lockdown era shows the laziness is even getting worse, with everything moved to a sloppy ad-hoc livestreams, "let's just do a livestream, it's too much time to setup prerecorded material with concise instructional material" being the excuse.

Using a DAW is definitely the way to go for practicing. Looping, slowing tempo, speeding tempo, recording takes, playing back the practiced take, practicing along to a perfect instructional track, monitoring and measuring the recorded performance, a video window, markers and regions, the capabilities are all there. I've used all of these to huge benefit.

Essentially the arpeggios she was referring to could be written in MIDI, copy&pasted to various keys, and used for practice with a piano VST. Along with a plugin like ReaTune's graph, it would be a great set of DAW vocal exercises for everyday practice.(*)


(* By everyday practice I mean for normal people. Highly trained vocalists don't really care about normal people's practice routines such as looping a song many times to "sing along and learn by ear" because the trained vocalists learn to sight sing and then sing a part on-the-spot without any rehearsal just by looking at the staff and complete a studio recording in only a few takes. So they never have to use a DAW to "learn by loop" at all.)

Last edited by superblonde.org; 10-08-2020 at 12:13 AM.
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Old 10-08-2020, 01:10 AM   #17
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Thanks, if you want interesting practice material, regarding arpeggios or czerny or hanon in midi format, see:
arpeggios: https://www.synthesiagame.com/forum/...php?f=7&t=3673
czerny and hanon: https://www.synthesiagame.com/forum/...php?f=7&t=1794


Maybe someone has a great do re mi fa sol la si do, sample pack as voice, over the entire midi range, or vocal range, so those midi files could be played with RS5k? That would finish the practice set, I guess. Have fun my friend.

In this context there is also Practice Coach, see https://forums.cockos.com/showthread...90#post2205190

Last edited by TonE; 10-08-2020 at 01:46 AM. Reason: added link to practice coach
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