In the Dev Beta. DropWave Tune comes with DropWave 3.4.4 and later, on the Dev Beta channel, for Mac. What Dev Beta is →
What it does
DropWave Tune is pitch correction for one vocal, in real time. It hears the pitch and pulls each note to the nearest note of the key you pick, as fast as you tell it to: from a natural touch nobody notices to the hard-tuned sound. It keeps the voice's character and leaves breaths and consonants alone, and its latency is 5 to 10 ms, low enough to sing through.
Install it
- Get a Dev Beta build of DropWave. Enter your Dev Beta code in DropWave's Settings → Updates; the newest Dev Beta build downloads by itself. Codes come from the team, in the Discord.
- In DropWave, choose DropWave → Install DropWave Tune… It puts the plugin in your plug-in folders as AU, VST3 and CLAP.
- Quit and reopen your DAW, then insert DropWave Tune on the vocal track. In Logic Pro: Audio FX → Audio Units → DropWave → DropWave Tune.
Used Tune in a Logic project before 3.4.4? Insert it again: Logic now lists it as a MIDI-controlled effect, so it can take MIDI notes.
Set it up on a vocal
- Voice: the range the singer sings in. See Voice.
- Key and Scale: the song's key. Not sure? Press Detect.
- A preset, or the knobs: Natural for a light touch, Hard tune for the effect.
- Sing, or play the take. To hear it while you record, record-arm the track.
The tuner in the middle shows the note Tune is pulling to, where the voice is sung against it on a ±50 cent arc, and where it comes out. Its corner says what it's correcting to: a key, MIDI notes, or no key.
Key and scale
Pick the Key (the tonic) and the Scale: major, minor, chromatic, harmonic minor, melodic minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, blues, Dorian or Mixolydian. A key and its relative are the same notes, so D minor and F major correct alike.
With no key picked, Tune corrects gently: only notes already close to a semitone are pulled in, and the status line asks you to pick a key for full correction. To go back to that, choose No key in the Key menu.
Detect
Press Detect and its panel opens. It listens to the vocal all the time, so after one pass through the song the answer is already there.
- Sounds like: the keys that fit best, each with how sure Detect is (High or Medium). Click one to use it.
- Fits equally: when the vocal never sings the note that tells two keys apart, Detect offers both side by side and names that note, rather than guessing. Pick the one the song is in.
- Tuning: when the track isn't tuned to A = 440, Detect offers its tuning as a Reference A. Use sets it, so notes aren't pulled towards the wrong semitone.
- Listen again forgets what it heard and starts over, for a new song or section.
Nothing changes until you pick. Detect only suggests.
Let Detect hear the beat
Send the beat to Tune's side chain (in Logic Pro, the Side Chain menu at the top of the plugin window). Detect then listens to the beat's notes as well as the vocal, and takes the track's tuning from the beat, which settles keys the melody alone can't. The beat is only listened to: it never reaches the output and adds no latency.
The controls
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Retune speed | 0 to 400 ms | How fast a note is pulled into tune. 0 ms is the hard-tuned sound |
| Note transition | 0 to 400 ms | How fast it moves to the next note. 0 ms steps at once; longer glides between notes |
| Humanize | 0 to 100 % | Slower on held notes, so their vibrato stays |
| Expression | 0 to 100 % | Leaves slides, scoops and bends alone: notes far from the target stay as sung. 0 % corrects every note |
| Natural Vibrato | −100 to +100 % | On held notes, the singer's vibrato shallower or deeper |
| Amount | 0 to 100 % | How much of the way to the note it goes |
| Formant | On or off | On keeps the voice's character; off lets it follow the pitch |
| Reference A | 430 to 450 Hz | The tuning the notes are measured against |
| Mix | 0 to 100 % | The corrected voice against the dry one |
Presets
Each preset sets the main five controls at once.
| Preset | Retune speed | Note transition | Humanize | Amount | Expression |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural | 60 ms | 80 ms | 50 % | 100 % | 40 % |
| Pop | 15 ms | 30 ms | 25 % | 100 % | 15 % |
| Hard tune | 0 ms | 0 ms | 0 % | 100 % | 0 % |
| Hard tune (keep vibrato) | 0 ms | 0 ms | 100 % | 100 % | 0 % |
MIDI notes
Hold MIDI notes and they become the target notes for as long as they're held, whatever the key says. In Logic Pro, choose the MIDI track in the plugin window's MIDI side chain menu. The status line names the notes it's using.
The keyboard
Along the bottom, a keyboard from C2 to C6. Lit keys are the notes Tune may pull to, the one it's pulling to now glows, and keys outside the Voice range are dimmed. Click a key to block or allow that note in every octave; the scale becomes Custom notes.
Voice
Set Voice to the range the singer sings in. A narrower range is surer and needs less latency, which Tune reports to your DAW so it can compensate. A singer a little under the range is still followed.
| Voice | Listens for | Latency |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | 160–1100 Hz | 5 ms |
| Alto | 120–800 Hz | 6 ms |
| Tenor | 90–600 Hz | 6 ms |
| Low | 60–400 Hz | 10 ms |
| Wide | 60–1100 Hz | 10 ms |
Compare
Compare plays the voice as it came in, in time and crossfaded, so you hear exactly what Tune is doing. It isn't saved with the project.
Tips
- One raw vocal per insert. Tune follows one voice at a time; a full mix, a doubled vocal or a choir gives it nothing clear to follow.
- Bends sound wrong? Raise Expression before you slow Retune speed down.
- Vocal sounds thin or chipmunked when it moves? Check that Formant is on.
- The status line says what Tune is doing: waiting for audio, listening for a voice, or correcting, and to what.