Basic VOCALOID Tuning Tip (But A Little Bit More Advanced Than Usual)

  Notebending VS Pitch bending (and what that means)

Have you ever seen people tune something like either of these two examples?

A) Notebending

B) Pitch Bending

Allow me to explain the reasoning behind the methods.

"Notebending" is when you move the notes to alter the pitch by splitting one note into several and moving the start or end of it around, you can get SUPER creative with this and there are a lot of examples of super unique sounding tuning that's not *quite* realistic and not *quite* robotic by pretty much only doing this for the whole track. when people notebend they usually either use it alongside a vibrato Job Plugin like Expressive Vibrato, or they just use it to stabilize the VOCALOID pitch. more on that some other time.
You don't have to use the [-] phoneme for this technique, honestly I avoid using it most of the time. it works if you double up on vowels, too, like this. This is my usual process:

you can also "notebend" consonants! (sort of, it's more like separating the consonant and vowel into separate notes so you can control where the pitch goes before and after a lyric)

If you right click a note and go to note properties, you can change the phonetic to a singular consonant phoneme. vocaloid's dictionary doesn't work like other programs, so if you put an "s" for example into the lyrics, it won't show up as anything. 

"Pitch Bending" is when you use VOCALOID's "Pit" parameter to control the pitch of the song, but a lot of users find this extremely difficult since in most versions of VOCALOID, the pitch won't be visible to you while you're doing it

If you want my honest opinion, don't JUST do this for the entirety of a song, even if your pitch bends are perfectly placed and ultra clean (which they probably won't be without years of practice), certain VOCALOIDs have very particular ways of responding to being pitch bended, and some don't really sound like they've been affected by it at all. I wish I learned this sooner honestly (sigh)

 

When you pitch bend, if your version of VOCALOID allows it, you should put the "VEL" parameter on the bottom underneath "PIT" so you can see exactly where you're placing the pitch. 

 

The "PBS" parameter controls the sensitivity of the "PIT" parameter directly according to the number it's set to, I usually set mine to 5 across the entire track specifically, because it saves me from having to constantly change the sensitivity when something needs to be more precise/broad.

So in conclusion, which should I be using? Notebending or Pitch Bending? The answer, if you want to be nonspecific, is that it's entirely up to your discretion.


But in my opinion, and for the kind of tuning I like to go for, the answer is

 BOTH 

(but it's up to you to figure out how to apply it properly)

It gives you the utmost control over the pitch, and because of some weird process I don't understand, it makes VOCALOIDs sound fuller and more lively. It's how tuners like Mitchie M, Cillia, Cheesum, Creuzer and many other successful VOCALOID users do what they do.

for example if I notebend like this, to map out the big pitch bends I want and where they go

and then I add some pitch to make some very subtle changes, it suddenly becomes more emotional.

 

I hope this helps! Keep in mind that these are mostly just tools and ideas and you'll have to learn how/where to apply them with practice.