Lead vocals is often considered to be the most important part of production. This is because, next to drums, the lead vocals is what people listen for and identify with. But what do you do when the vocal performance is sub-par… or a little out of tune? With current audio production, folks really expect to hear a tuned vocal that sounds amazing. If your production doesn’t meet these standards, then most people will not even finish their first listen.

When getting ready to tune vocals, the first consideration has to be about what is expected from the genre. A hard tuned vocal performance where you can hear artifacts would be completely out of place for a jazz performance… likewise, a lot of hiphop productions look for hard tuning. So the first consideration is to know what your client is looking for (client being either the artist for engineers or listener for self-producers). You can have the most amazing production… but if it doesn’t fit the genre… then you’re out of luck.  

“Hit the nail on the head”. I’ve done a lot of woodworking and that is always the advice my Grandpa gave me. I think this is great advice for vocal production too. Regardless of what genre you are producing for… hitting the target notes is priority #1. If there was a test to know if a vocal take should be redone… this would be it. There are other considerations, such as scoop and vibrato, to consider, but the median (or overall sound) of the note should be right on target.  

Now as simple as that seems… there is always a certain amount of grey area. There are some genres where the singer scoops into the note, or there is a lot of vibrato. Scooping the notes happens when the singer slides their notes into each other. Such as going from the A to the C# and back to the A in the above picture. This is where knowing your genre is key… This happens to come from a vocalist in the country genre, where we don’t want to “Hear” any vocal tuning. So for this vocal take we left the scoops in and really focused on just hitting the target notes. This can be tricky if you have little experience or a sub-par vocal tuning program, but it is an essential part of vocal production.  

The above image also ends with a nice sounding vibrato part. You can see the vibrato on the last A note that is sung. It is important to know if vibrato is something that should be kept in or squashed. I’ve worked with some singers who had too much vibrato and we took the vibrato out and I’ve worked with some singers who have no vibrato and we had to add some in. either way knowing the expectation is the most important part of tuning vocals… so make sure you know what your target is.