As someone who makes these sorts of sausages regularly... one thing I can say is that many of the common assumptions around this are erroneous.johnnysomersett wrote: ↑Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:13 amI enjoy the idiosyncrasies of a natural human voice, warts & all. I would rather hear a note sung a few cents off and with emotion than a perfectly in tune one with no soul.
I've rarely seen pitch correction make a strong vocal into an insipid one. Very often a hair of Melodyne lets me choose an impassioned, rough-edged take over something that was performed perfectly, but carefully.
Just knocking a few of the rougher edges a couple cents closer to center (in an invisible, "I was never there" sort of way) can be transformative. Many records people think are "so loose and rough and human" have probably had this judiciously done.
There's "characterful" pitch and then there's just plain old distractingly flat, and as long as the producer is good and has a "first do no harm" mindset, they can protect what's charming and touch up the things that aren't really working.
On the other hand, someone who's got a dogma about pitch correction is more likely to end up trying harder to sing well as opposed to really going for it (and I'm here to tell you... few things are more detrimental to a good vocal than a singer trying to sing well).
Sometimes (rarely) a singer really has no ego about their pitch, and letting them be a little wild just works. I think Courtney Love was fantastic in this way. Tuning those vocals (even a little) probably would have ruined them.
So it's all 1000% dependent on the performer, the specific piece of music, the target audience... there's nothing that's true in every situation.