Pitch correction online, note by note

What pitch correction is

Pitch correction changes how high or low a recorded voice sounds, without changing its speed. It is how a singer's take is brought onto the right notes after the session: a note sung a little flat is lifted, a held note that wanders is steadied, a wrong note is moved to the right one.

Every sung note has a centre, the pitch your ear hears as the note, and a contour around it: the slide into the note, the vibrato, the slow drift as the breath runs out. Good vocal pitch correction moves the centre and decides how much of the contour to keep. Move only the centre and the voice stays human. Flatten the contour too and you get the hard, stepped sound that some genres want on purpose.

Note-by-note or automatic

An automatic pitch corrector listens in real time and pulls whatever it hears to the nearest note of a scale. It is fast and it is the sound of a lot of modern pop and rap, but it decides for you: it treats a slide, a blue note and a wrong note the same way, and it cannot tell which notes you meant.

A note-by-note pitch editor first analyses the whole take, then shows it to you as notes you can see and touch. You decide which notes to correct, by how much, and where a note should go when the scale is not the answer. This tool is the second kind. You can still correct every note at once with one button, and then go back to the two or three that need a human decision.

If you want the automatic sound, our autotune tool is the right page. If you want a vocal that sounds in tune and not tuned, stay here.

How to correct a vocal, step by step

Start with the vocal on its own. A dry take straight from the microphone is best. If the vocal is inside a full song, pull it out first with our acapella extractor, then bring the vocal file here.

Drop the file. In a few seconds you see the notes on a piano roll: the dim line is the pitch that was sung, the bright line is the pitch you will hear, and each rounded bar is a note at the pitch it sounds. Check the key at the top. We detect it from the notes, but a short take can fool any detector, so change it if you know better.

Press Correct all, or set Correct pitch to taste: 100 % puts the centre of every note exactly on the scale, 50 % goes half way. Listen with the Original and Edited switch. If a note goes to the wrong neighbour, select it and drag it to the right one, or use the arrow keys. Use Straighten on long notes that wander. When it sounds right, download the WAV.

Keeping it natural: vibrato, drift and formants

Correct pitch only moves the centre of a note. The vibrato, the scoop into the note and its small wobbles are kept, moved together with it. That is why a vocal can be in tune and still sound like the singer. Most takes need nothing more.

Straighten works on that contour. At 30 to 50 % it calms a wide vibrato or a note that sags at the end. At 100 % the note is held flat, which is clean on a long background note and robotic on a lead line. Use it per note, where you hear the problem.

Formants are the resonances of the mouth and throat that make a voice sound like a person rather than a cartoon. Our render moves the voice one vocal cycle at a time, reusing the original cycles, so the formants stay where they were by construction. Small and medium moves keep the voice's character. Moves of several semitones start to sound less natural, as with any pitch editor that keeps the formants still.

Consonants, breaths and silences are not processed at all: they are the original recording, sample for sample. So are the notes you do not touch.

When to use it

Use it on a lead vocal that is almost there: a great take with three notes that are a little off. Use it on backing vocals and harmonies, where steady pitch matters more than expression. Use it on a demo before you send it, on a voice memo you want to keep, or to tighten a doubled vocal so the two takes agree.

It is also a good way to learn your own voice. The piano roll shows exactly where you go sharp or flat, and the MIDI file gives the melody you sang to a producer or to your DAW.

It is not the tool for a full mix, for a choir or for instruments that play chords. It follows one voice at a time.

Learn more, or get a person on it

Read the mastering guides, comparisons and data, or send your tracks to an engineer with OBRA ULTRA.