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AutoTune Advanced is the new flagship automatic pitch correction plugin from AutoTune (Antares Audio Technologies).

Antares has announced the release of AutoTune Advanced, a new edition of the vocal tuning plugin based on a ground-up rebuild of the Auto-Mode pitch algorithm and equipped with a newly-developed DVA vibrato detection and preservation engine.

The new flagship product in the AutoTune range for producers working in Auto-Mode, AutoTune Advanced promises to address an issue that has plagued producers and engineers working with pitch correction tools since their inception. When applying tuning to a vocal recording – particularly at tighter or more aggressive settings – a singer’s natural vibrato can often be flattened or altered, taking away from the character of the performance.

Advanced tackles this with DVA, a feature that identifies a vocalist’s vibrato and preserves it so that the natural rise and fall of a singer’s pitch remains intact. Not only preserving vibrato, DVA also gives users the ability to cut it, boost it or generate artificial vibrato using a number of different waveshapes in the Creative Vibrato FX panel, with precise control over timing and expression. There’s also a visualiser onboard to track the vibrato-shaping in real time.

Antares tells us that the work the company has done on its updated tuning algorithm represents the “largest engineering investment” since its introduction, producing the most clear and accurate pitch correction found in an AutoTune product to date. This is complemented by a new Live Mode designed for “ultra-fast” real-time monitoring, which is joined by two more latency modes: High Quality is for final mixes and bounces and Low Latency is suitable for general studio work.

AutoTune Advanced also updates a number of features familiar to existing users. The Formant Designer has been given a refresh, there’s a new workflow for inputting custom scales, and a 78-note Visual Keyboard makes dialling in per-note behaviour more intuitive. The plugin’s MIDI Perform feature gives you hands-on control over tuning and Vibrato FX via your MIDI controller.

AutoTune Advanced arrives with a collection of presets designed by Grammy-winning producers, engineers and artists, including Julian Marley, Ann Mincieli, Jess Jackson, David “Yungin” Kim, and more.

“I’ve been using AutoTune for over 15 years, so I know it inside and out,” Kim said in a press release. “Advanced feels like a real upgrade. Live mode is crazy fast and keeps the artist locked into the performance. The formant designer gives me more ways to shape a vocal without losing the person behind it, and the modern UI gives an old friend a much needed fresh look.”

“Since 1997, the complaint about pitch correction has been the same: it takes the singer out of the singing,” adds Jeff Wright, CEO of Antares Audio Technologies. “That’s the problem DVA was built to solve. It can tell the difference between a pitch error and a decision the vocalist made, and it leaves the decision alone.”

AutoTune Advanced runs on macOS 13 or higher and Windows 10 and 11 in AAX, AU and VST3 formats. A perpetual licence is $486 USD or $18.90 a month as part of an AutoTune Unlimited subscription. A free trial is available now.

Visit the Antares website to find out more.

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Stuck in the 4-bar loop?

If you make electronic music, you’ve probably been there: you’ve got a nice little 8-bar loop going, but you’ve had it on repeat for what feels like hours, fruitlessly tweaking with no clue where to go next.

Described by creators Color With Live as a “colouring book for Ableton”, Stencils are empty, colour-coded projects that map out an existing song’s structure in detail.

Try Stencils, arrangement templates for Ableton Live based on tracks by Four Tet, Fred Again, Skrillex and more

The process of arrangement – structuring your loops, sketches and ideas into fully-fledged tracks – is one of the most difficult stages of finishing a song, and it’s something that even the most talented artists struggle with.

If that sounds familiar, music education company Color With Live has something that might help. Stencils are empty, colour-coded arrangement maps for Ableton Live based on existing tracks that the company describes as “like a colouring book for Ableton”.

Open up a Stencil in Live and you have a proven structure to work with while writing your own track: all you need to do is fill it with your own material, and the arrangement takes care of itself.

Every element of a song’s structure is mapped out in detail, from builds and drops through to fills and breakdowns. You provide the melodies and chords, the sound design and the effects, but the Stencil helps you mould this material into a coherent layout based on a track that you love.

Color With Live is keen to emphasize that a Stencil is not a recreation of a song or a way to copy another artist’s work. The raw materials are stripped out and what’s left is the structure, a template that you can use to create something that’s entirely your own.

Color With Live recently released a free Stencil Pack that features the arrangements behind Flip It by Levity, Fisher’s rework of World Hold On by Bob Sinclair and Dimension’s Once In A Lifetime.

Also on offer are more than 250 paid Stencils based on songs from artists like Four Tet, Fred Again, Calvin Harris, DJ Seinfeld, Metro Boomin, Skrillex and many more. Each Stencil is priced at £8, and there are discounted bundles available if you want to buy more.

The folks over at Color With Live are a generous bunch: they also have a number of free Ableton Racks available on their site, and a free Extension that can be used to save and organize YouTube tutorials in Live.

“We realized one of the biggest pain points in learning production is arrangement. The advice is always to pick apart your reference tracks, but there’s nothing visual to check your work,” Color With Live’s co-founder Kevin Rea said in a press release.

“Repetition is what makes learning click. Producers download Serum packs to practice sound design and MIDI packs to practice music theory. We were blown away that nothing like that existed for arrangement. Our mission isn’t for our stencil to be a crutch that you rely on for every song, instead something that you can learn from and then apply to future productions.”

Head over to Color With Live website to download the free Stencil Pack.

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This is Loop, an 8-track Performance Looper.

The Polish brand’s latest is a four-track MIDI-syncable “idea machine” aimed at guitarists and electronic musicians alike.

Polyend Loop is part looper pedal, part drum machine and comes stocked with over 100 effects.

Loop is the latest addition to Polyend’s growing line of stompboxes. In typically self-explanatory fashion for a brand that has previously released a drum machine named Drums and a synth called Synth, Loop is a loop pedal. Like those instruments before it though, Loop aims to put an innovative spin on the looper format that is less utilitarian than its basic nomenclature might imply.

Pitched as an ‘idea machine’ for both guitarists and electronic musicians, Loop has four independent looper tracks that can each be either mono or stereo. It can be used for live looping via its stereo input or load pre-recorded loops via a microSD card.

Each track has a maximum recording time of 52 seconds, and can run in either tempo-synced mode – set either internally or via external MIDI – or be free running. There is also a Varispeed mode, where loop speed and pitch will follow changes to the tempo. Loops can also run in forward, reverse and ping-pong playback directions.

Loop goes further than simple looping though, thanks to the inclusion of effect and percussion engines. On the former front, each loop track can have its own independent effect, drawn from a pool of more than 100 effect types, covering reverbs, delays, distortion, modulation effects and more.

For percussion, Loop features a four-track drum machine pre-loaded with over 500 drum kits and 350+ rhythmic patterns. Users can also record drum samples directly into the hardware and create their own patterns using the pedal’s buttons as a step sequencer.

Loop is able to record from line, instrument and dynamic mic sources. It has a pair of 6.3mm jack outputs that can be used for stereo or mono output. Other connectivity includes a USB-C port for bidirectional MIDI, a TRS MIDI port and an expression pedal input.

The pedal allows for unlimited overdubbing, with a single-level undo function for erasing the most recently overdubbed loop. Loop is also able to save and recall up-to 1000 scenes, which store loops, drum patterns, tempo and effect settings.

Loop is available now priced at $599/599€. Visit the Polyend site for more details.

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