How to Set Up Live Auto-Tune for Worship Vocals 

I didn't know Harry Kane is a musician too

I’ve done this using Mainstage only so I could have individual patches with the correct key for correction on each song. Then I just had my Ableton computer running tracks queuing program changes wirelessly for each Patch or “song”. Using Dante can be tricky though with Latency being your biggest block, we have up to 6 computers on our Dante networks a time so I had to switch to using a dedicated Interface connected to Mainstage for the Autotune. It works!

Great software solution. I’ve been using a Mic Mechanic as a hardware solution for a while now. Little bit of tuning makes a huge difference.

Hey, greetings from Cuba! Finally somebody talks about this process on live performance...excellent video!!! Saludos

Great stuff Jake, thanks much for taking the time to show in very clear terms and instructions how this is set up and how it actually works in real time.

Great video! Thanks for keeping the church “in the loop” when it comes to live sound tech!

I've into Facebook groups asking how to do this and they all say that because if the delay in processing is not worth using autotune live. but this gives me hope and an idea of how to do it! is just what I needed! I can't thank you enough!!

If only I could auto-tune the congregation. JK

Thanks man!! Gotta convince my leaders we need this, haha! Already got a X32 desk.

Thank you for this video. I have an important question: If I have a song that's already fully recorded and mixed, can I run the Bus channel that all of my FX are on (for my vocals), directly into the sound board and basically use the same exact vocal setup I have on my already mixed track, for live performances? (Using this same setup you have with the Dante Expansion Card of course)

thanks bro, i learned so much from you, now my church have grow so much in tech. thanks a lot.

I recommend if you have sound enginner for more accurate pitch correction you can save presets for each song with the correct key to speed up the configs...with this you can avoid some "wrong hard tuned notes" but of course as you say...it take time anyway

Hey Jake what about latency from the Dante to ableton and back how do you compensate that?

Hey jake - Thanks for sharing this video. We are working on setting autotune for our praise and worship teams and found this video super helpful. Question for you regarding Dante. You mentioned you would not need dante in order to have the autotune plugin in order to get get autotune applied to the vocals or this technique to work. However, will you still be able be able to send each microphone as separate tracks into protools / computer for the recording without dante? Or is dante a part of getting individual tracks from each mic recorded and with their own autotune attached to the track. I hope this makes sense. I am still learning the language to speak is technical terms. Essentially the goal it to have 3 separate vocals, each with autotune adjusting the vocals coming into the computer for recording and out to the speakers for the congregation to hear the pitch corrected vocals. thanks so much and look forward to hearing back

IF you don’t have extra channels, IF you don’t have a computer, IF you’re using an analog mixer, IF your sound person can’t figure it out, IF you’re traveling to different venues weekly and using their board...and you still need tuning...use something like the TC Helicon Voicetone...plug it in between the main snake XLR and your VOX mic XLR, set your parameters/sensitivity, and your good to go.

Thank you sir for the video..routing part helps me alot.. God bless you

I am blown away by this video. Thanks. But I am 50/50 on this. Authenticity vs excellence.

What a great and helpful video, thanks man!

Very cool! I always thought that one must have the Waves WSG card to take advantage of Waves plugin processing. Never really realized that you can use a Dante card to get the job done as well. Do you have any idea about the latency differences between these two methods? Or would you say that the Dante way is pretty much a (almost) zero latency solution as well? :)

In My Opinion, I would totally have this as dry/wet channels like the way you have it. The autotune is very noticable when speaking, certain words or phrases sound modulated. For sure you wouldnt want your online viewers to hear that (only if you live stream) during service. When vocalists want to speak, mute the wet channel and turn on the dry vocal channel. when its time to sing, it would be the opposite. You could create snippets on the console to automate this for you and it would take out the steps of having to mute and unmute the channels. Great stuff Jake.

Hi, I use backing tracks for a solo vocal gig... so all I need is a good vocal... can you advise me how I can do this? Thanks so much

Interesting setup. 2 Questions: How are you interfacing the Dante (Cat6) into the MacBook? 2) What sort of round trip latency are you incurring going A/D>protools>plugins>D/A?

Clear and concise video. Nice job, thank you

hey man thanks so mutch for this video this really helped me out at my own church exactly what a wanted tips on ...

Thank you so so much for this detailed explanation!

This was very helpful... we are looking into this now.. does this help with singers on live streaming?? We are really struggling with our vocals sounding pitchy on livestream.

Excellent. Thanks. Could you do a similar video for setting up a stereo IEM mix on the X32 please?

Hi, thanks so much for share your knowledge, in my church we recently buy an X32 but don't come whit a Dante, came whit X-UBS, do you can make a video in the same process whit X-usb?

If I'm running from M32 to DAW through USB, do you have tips to reduce latency? Currently it's a little too noticeable, even in the house, for it to be viable.

I have Wavestune on my macbook, running it with logic pro x. How can i route this to live performance on stage the best way? Let's say i have 8 songs that i will perform and i want autotune to be in key for each song. and how do i get around latency? appreciate answers!!

Super dope intro video jake !!!!!

would this work with Studio One 4? I guess this is the DAW my church uses

Can i use Focusrite 2i4 if i dont have a digital mixer ?

Hi Jake, Do you have a round trip latency measurement for this setup? While it’s great to have this flexibility, you can create a lot of problems by adding >12ms of latency. It’s also important to mention that if you have a lot of stage volume then this won’t work very well because your vocals will be tuned with everything else going into those vocal mics too. So if I have a loud amp behind my vocal mic, the pitch correction will affect that too, making it sound like my guitar is out of tune/phase-y.

Could you do a similar setting where you run the microphone into the computer, and then make an output from the computer into the mixer? or would that cause too much latency? My mixer don't support dante, so i'm looking for other ways to make this work

@churchfront with Jake Gosselin, do you guys just leave waves RT on chromatic?, or set midi cues for each song to change the Key?

during this year, I plan to upgrade from Reason 11 intro to FULL; - meanwhile I have a big collection of vst plugins + rack extensions ...if I miraculously come into a blob of extra money then I will get this also...

Jake man, it's uncanny, but I'm running Ableton Live 10 and was just this week asking my Sweetwater Rep about Waves Tune and comparability as a VST - you literally just demo'd the setup I was considering! What kind of CPU load have you noticed when running 3 channels, and any noticable latency? I'm already pushing tracks and Midi out of Session View, and I hover around 15-20% CPU... Want to add this as well without breaking everything. Sweet idea having a redundant analogue vocal channel to fall back on in the event of a crash :). Great stuff as always.

Hi ! Your video is so helpful ☺️ l am trying out the Waves with a Focusrite Scarlett and there is a lot of latency, any clue about how to reduce it?

From your videos, I’m assuming you are the WL of the same band every service? Or do you have other leaders that use the same gear? We have 5 different leaders with 2 services each Sunday. Implementing new gear is an obstacle with different generations having to deal with it. Different learning curves, etc.

Jake - can/does Ableton Live on a separate computer negate the need for a WAVES server (because you're running the plug-in within Ableton Live, instead of running it on SoundGrid)? I'm trying to understand why you're using Ableton Live. Thanks!

How do you deal with delays? My Church in Nigeria does not have digital mixer. But I tried sending the Master mix to my Behringer Audio Interface, and processing to the input track and it plays back through the audio interface. But the delay is quite noticeable even after reducing my buffer size. Any advice on what you think I can do?

Whelp, you got a subscriber! Can't wait to see whatcha got to show!

Just started using this and wow!

Het Jake! quick question, is this possible using an analog console using an interface?

This was awesome! What’s the smallest board the this would work like for a solo performer that doesn’t need 32 channels?

if use dante card.. do you have less latency enough compare to the usb connection

Not sure if this would work too well but, if you had a gate on the raw vocals with it's key source set to the autotuned vocals then you wouldn't have to worry if ableton crashes all of your raw vocals will automatically go through. With a very low threshold and short hold+release ofc

What the latency that comes realtime fx when run through computer

What's wrong with yall? Am I really the only one who doesn't find anything bad at enhancing a voice a bit? Come on auto tune is an amazing effect, this kinda electronic sound cannot be achieved without editing and that's not bad..

We use a X32 rack for a broadcast mixer. We use the Wing for our front of house and go out of the wing using the AES 50 outfit to go into the x30 to broadcast make sure Most of the channels are spoken for so I cannot just come back from the computer into a separate channel. How would I insert the signal coming out of the computer into channel on the X 32 much like I would insert efx signal? Or could I route it into the auxiliary input and then route the auxiliary input into the channel for mixing for the broadcast?

Can you link the hardware you use to get the signal from the board to Dante? Just an Ethernet router or is it a special piece of equipment

Jake, good stuff, but we don't have Dante or Ableton. Just an X32 with USB connection to an HP Laptop doing multitrack recording on Cakewalk. Is there a way to use this setup without all the middle man software?? I need to keep things super simple for my not-so-techie tech team.

Hi I cant download the toolkit that you are offering. I have tried several times but says that needs the administration permission. Please send me this would be great for the church

THANK YOU ALOT FOR THIS TUTORIAL COULD I ALSO GET THIS WORK WITH AN AUDIO INTERFACE LIKE FOCUSRITE SCARLETT IF I ONLY NEED ONE MIC AND MY PC ? I WOULD TAKE THE SPEAKERS WHO ARE available THERE

Do you have any issues with it trying to tune bleed?

Did you have any significant latency issues? Waves reports about a 600ms latency at 96khz. I was able set up pitch correction in MainStage (talk about a cheap solution-free) through our digital board as the interface. I noticed about a half second delay. I guess I’m wondering if you get the same thing and if it really matters for vocals.

I use this same set-up at my church (sending from my SQ6 board with USB to Ableton for processing--and then back into the board on a different channel), but I get quite a bit of latency. I am surprised he did not address this in the video! Anyone have any thoughts on how to reduce the latency that inevitably results from this set-up? Thanks!

Such a quality vid my dude

Here's my biggest problem, I try to do live tune in post production and always run in to phasing with the room mics/live mics. Any helpful hints with that?

Question. If you assign the 8 channels to Ableton do you lose 8 extra channels on your board?

Can this tune real time be used with Logic Pro instead of ableton Live? And in case it must be be ableton live? Can I use Ableton Live beta?

Do I need a digital mixer or would an analogue be able to process this without latency issues?

You could automate per each track so you tune to the songs key

Hello Jake, I know this is probably a simple solution, but given that I'm not using local INs, I feel like I'm missing a step in translating your set up to my set up. How did you send the signal of channel one over to channel two? For example, our board is set for my vocal to be on 25, but we want to route the tuned vocal to 14.

What version of Ableton live do you suggest? Or must you have Ableton live and Pro Tools? Can you run this off of a DCA? I have men and women split on separate DCAs.

@churchfront great video. I'm just confused... why it you're showing both ableton and then protocols as well?

Does anyone know if you have to use Waves MultiRack Plug-in Host, for the Waves realtime auto tune to work in a Live FOH M32 mixer? I know the Waves Card has a lower latency than the Dante Card.

I have a Roland m5000 and Dante sound card. Would I be able to do this with those pieces of equipment?

This is awesome! I am a solo artist in be need of some vocal assistance, 32 channels is a bit pricey for me. Can I use a 16 track or less to save money? Thank you for all this information God bless

can you do this with a analog board or is that a dumb question?

we use waves tracks software, can we use that for the waves real tune or do you HAVE to have Ableton or Pro Tools?

Hi please make a video on tuning the vocals with midi in waves tune on FL studio and if you can monitor live while midi tuning.

Newb question, can I run pitch correction software using a XR18 mixer?

Actually it sounds to aggressive for me and some times I can hear the „hard tuned notes“ clearly. I would definitely turn that 100% to an 60 or so😬😉 But thanks for the impressions 💪🏻 We have a DLive from Allen and heath in our church and it works well with it.

Hey Jake, hoping you see this. I’m stuck at ableton seeing the Waves plug-in... what were your steps to have the waves auto-tune recognized under the plug-ins tab in ableton? We already owned ableton so I went and got waves auto tune last night. I can not get ableton to see it. Any help would be appreciated!

Can you use apple's MainStage instead of Ableton Live? Just curious...

Can you add a compressor plugin and reverb or delay as well on Ableton Live on your vocal?

GOD BLESS YOURE ALL

Hey I use waves tune too. Really great plugin for the price.

Can this be done with analog mixers?

Excellent Video!

What's lowest version of Ableton will this run on? The $79 version?

Hey Jake, What's the case that you guys are using with the M32r? Thanks

For those running your own sound, without the luxury of a sound engineer, the best way I have found to run auto tune in real time is as follows. Create a saved preset for your desired settings in autotune such as (re-tune speed, humanize, etc.) Change your recording settings to (record automation). Then youre going to want to play your set and also hit record on your vocal channel. You can then change keys in real time for each song, turn on and off auto tune such as parts where you are talking to crowd, and also even change you re-tune speeds and settings as needed if some some require more or less tuning. This avoids you having to create multiple vocal channels and allow you to cleanly keep your channels to a minimum while having the keys for each song and settings for each song change automatically through the recorded automation. The ONLY thing that you will have to do each time you open up your session, is load your pre-saved setting, and then simply change the key and scale to what the first song should be to trigger the automation correctly when the set starts. You also will have to change the style vocal such a low male, or tenor. Everything else saves as a preset in auto tune except those two or so settings. Once you do that and hit play, the auto tune settings will change automatically to exactly how you recorded it. It’s time sensitive, but literally the most effective way to run it on your own without relying on multiple channels or a sound guy. Make sure your vocal channel has input monitoring turned on or you won’t get any vocal sound.

Is it possible to record your tracks from the mixer and use waves tune live at the same time?

thanks for the advise. God bless you

How can I Switch die Key just with one click for example on the korg nano control. So all vocal waves real Time tune key change automatically in Logic Pro x.

this is a great help...can i request another type of plug-in like for an example in drums channel..thanks..

Im a drummer so I do not understand the whole (Chromatic, Major, Minor) scale options IN WAVES TUNE. If the song is in the key of "A", how different it would it sound if I select "Chromatic" instead of "A Major" in waves tune?

Hey Jake, is it possible to add these vocal tracks into an Ableton setlist with multitracks or do you think that it needs to be run on separate machines?

Would I be able to do this with a yamaha analog mixer that has usb to laptop connection capability?

Great video, thank you!

I can totally hear the affect to your speaking voice. It isn’t totally distracting but is it easy necessary or easy to disengage it for speaking portions? Wish this was more plug and play but that would mean more $

Will this plug in work with a behringer x32

are you coming out USB or Dante from the M32?

You should've change to Waves Tune to a Major key that you were playing in with your demo at the end for us to also hear that difference. And also show how to with the built in usb interface.

Can I use like a scarlet interface instead of a mixer (or Dante)

With Waves Tune, is it necessary to have a different plug-in license for each channel I am pitch correcting?

What I need is something going out over live feed to RU-vid, which come from 2 channels that used to be for IEMs but I redid them for live feed, which comes out of the back of the board up to the balcony (crow's nest) and through our Atem mini pro and out to RU-vid. I use a computer to adjust the sound separate from the auditorium. It really needs some help