Plugin for adding realistic vibrato to live flute?
- Thread starter paulwr
- Start date
Living Fossil
Senior Member
Flute vibrato is not a tremolo effect, while tremolos and trills of course also exist for flutes.
Regarding your concern with adding vibrato:
As @Henu mentioned: Melodyne lets you transform a very narrow vibrato in a wide (and therefore more audible) one, if it's there.
If the passage is played without vibrato, you will have a hard time to get a convincing result.
Personally, either would ask the player to play the passages in question again.
If that's not possible I would most likely try to substitute the notes in question by other ones.
If transposition is necessary, Melodyne would be the best suited tool.
OP
OP
paulwr
Member
Thanks for responding, guys. I didn't think this would be easy. Fortunately, the new arrangements are in progress and no flute recorded yet. I'll tinker with the flute parts in the remixes. It isn't a ton of notes, just a few instances on maybe half or a little more of the songs. I may have the player record an number of vibrato notes for me and see what I can accomplish cutting/blending them into those select spots. The chance is small for new complete performances, but we'll see.
OP
OP
paulwr
Member
Flute vibrato is a combination of both vibrato and tremolo effects. Harmonic elements, too, of course. I wrongly thought it would lean a lot to tremolo. I found a study on vibrato of various instruments by analyzing waveform data. To quote a summation of the flute vibrato: "Both vibrato and tremolo played equal parts producing in the wavering effect of the flute."
Interesting.
Flute
Living Fossil
Senior Member
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean.
"Tremolo" (like trills) on flutes is produced by fingerings; vibrato is produced with the mouth.
(Here's a link for some tremolo fingerings)
There are microtonal trills that use additional fingering, but that's not called vibrato.
d.healey
Libre Wave
Tremolo usually means a repetition of a single note. Trill is alternating between two notes. However I recently discovered that tremolo is also used to mean a trill that is greater than a whole tone. Why this should be I don't know. And then on electric guitar it's a pitch bend effect...
Living Fossil
Senior Member
Ok, I get what causes the distraction.
Tremolo in the sense of fast repetitions is used for strings.
And it's used for the electronic effect that modulates the volume.
But for woodwinds, tremolo means trills in bigger intervals.
When "tremolo" is used in the sense of very fast repetitions, it usually refers to "false trills". I.e. different fingerings that produce the same note (as mentioned above, often with microtonal deviations)
(of course, a normal vibrato also can modulate the volume quite a bit; that's probably where the confusion comes from)
OP
OP
paulwr
Member
Ah, multiple meanings...think tremolo on a guitar Amp, or vibes. Sort of on/off but gently. As opposed to pitch fluctuation.
Dom
Active Member
I've just had a very similar requirement: to add vibrato to a recording of live whistling.
My solution, in Logic, was to select "Convert regions to sampler track". Then, in the Sampler (aka EXS24) you can add the modulation you want with the desired LFO waveform (eg sine or sawtooth), and for that LFO to affect pitch as well as amplitude. You can then control the amount of modulation with a modwheel, and the speed of the LFO (vibrato) via another CC for example.
Like this you can add vibrato "live" to the phrases with the modwheel, so the longer notes have a bit more vibrato in the middle, as a player would normally do.
If you're not on Logic, add the region(s) to Kontakt. It's just a bit more labour intensive, as you need to get the start times of the notes correct.
My solution, in Logic, was to select "Convert regions to sampler track". Then, in the Sampler (aka EXS24) you can add the modulation you want with the desired LFO waveform (eg sine or sawtooth), and for that LFO to affect pitch as well as amplitude. You can then control the amount of modulation with a modwheel, and the speed of the LFO (vibrato) via another CC for example.
Like this you can add vibrato "live" to the phrases with the modwheel, so the longer notes have a bit more vibrato in the middle, as a player would normally do.
If you're not on Logic, add the region(s) to Kontakt. It's just a bit more labour intensive, as you need to get the start times of the notes correct.
Living Fossil
Senior Member
Dom
Active Member
I'm not saying this method is better than what others have suggested. All I can say it worked for me in this instance. (Hi again btw, good to chat in Split...).
Living Fossil
Senior Member
Nice to see you around here, it was indeed great to chat in Split!
As for the LFO as a source of vibrato, I'd be genuinely interested to hear your mentioned whistling (even if it's just a very short snippet )!
Achieving a good vibrato with modulators is indeed a topic that follows me quite a while.
The cracy thing is that e.g. with Theremins and the Onde Martenot sometimes the LFO creates a vibrato that fooled me more than once into thinking that I'm hearing a human voice.
However, with woodwinds and solo strings I never heard/reached results that were satisfying.
Maybe the reason is that the periodical deviation of the pitch also reduces (or reinforces) the resonances of the sound – what would also explain the mentioned tremolo of the volume. With flutes I guess this will also result in an increase/decrease of the perceived noise (breath) component.
So basically it would be interesting to emulate that too inside of EXS (or any other sampler, but in EXS the routings are really easy to achieve), in the sense that the LFO also influences the volume of the sound. (maybe I'll give it a try in a free minute
)
