To get the autotune effect for free you need two things: a DAW to work in, and a pitch correction plugin that costs nothing to keep using. This guide sorts out both, then walks through the settings that make a vocal sound tight and natural, or hard and robotic when that's the sound you want.
The plugin here is TUNE, the free autotune plugin we make at The Vocal Market. It runs on Mac and Windows, and it's free for good: no trial period, no time limit, and it never mutes your audio. The steps below work with most tuners, but the control names are TUNE's.
Get a free autotune plugin for Mac or Windows
TUNE comes as AU and VST3 on Mac (macOS 10.13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel) and as VST3 on Windows (Windows 10 or later, 64-bit). It loads in Logic Pro, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig and GarageBand. It doesn't run in Pro Tools, which only loads AAX plugins.
- Add TUNE to your cart on the TUNE page and check out. It's €0 and the checkout doesn't ask for a card.
- Your account now has the Mac and Windows installers, under Plugin downloads.
- Run the installer, open your DAW and put TUNE on the vocal track as an insert. Some DAWs only pick up new plugins after a plugin scan, so run one if TUNE isn't in the list yet.
Mac and Windows, AU and VST3. €0 checkout, no card.
Looking for free autotune online?
TUNE is a plugin, so it runs inside a DAW rather than in a browser. If you don't have a DAW yet, there are cheap ways in. On a Mac, GarageBand is free and loads TUNE as an AU plugin (it also has a simple Pitch Correction slider of its own for audio tracks). On Windows or Mac, Reaper has a cheap licence and loads VST3 plugins. Logic Pro users also have Apple's own Pitch Correction plugin built in.
Step 1: Set the key
This is the setting that matters most. A tuner pulls every note onto the nearest note in the scale you give it, so the wrong key means confident, perfectly tuned wrong notes.
TUNE doesn't guess the key for you. A melody on its own can fit two keys equally well, so you set the key and scale yourself, and the box underneath, TUNES TO, lists the notes it will pull the vocal onto. If a note the singer clearly means to hit isn't in that row, the key is wrong.
Where to find the key:
- You made the beat. Use the key you wrote it in. The scale is Major or Minor for most songs.
- You're working with an acapella. Every acapella in The Vocal Market's catalog lists its key on the product page, so set TUNE to that.
- Neither. Play single notes on a keyboard along with the chorus until you find the one that sounds like home. That's your key. Then try Major and Minor and keep whichever row of notes matches what's being sung.
TUNE also has Harmonic Minor, Dorian, Mixolydian, Pentatonic and Chromatic. Chromatic tunes to all twelve notes, which is handy while you work out the key, but it will happily pull a flat note onto the wrong semitone. Set the real key before you commit.
Step 2: Pick Natural or Hard Tune
The presets sit along the top of the plugin. For most sessions you'll pick between two of them.
Natural tightens the notes and leaves the vibrato alone. A tuner that corrects the vibrato along with the note flattens it. TUNE works out the note underneath the vibrato and corrects that, so on a test vibrato Natural keeps 98 to 103% of it. Start here for anything that shouldn't sound tuned.
Hard Tune is the snap. Notes lock on instantly and the vibrato is flattened. That's the autotune effect everybody means when they say autotune.
The other presets are named after what they're for: Modern Pop (fast and tight, with some vibrato left in), Gentle Polish (for takes that are nearly there), Live Tracking, Expressive Hard, Parallel Blend and Wobble Trill, which is the only one reserved for TUNE Pro. Switching presets never touches your key and scale, so flick through them while the vocal loops.
Step 3: Dial in the Retune knob
Retune sets how quickly TUNE pulls a note onto pitch. At 0 ms, the Hard end, it's instant. Turned towards the Natural end it gets gentler and lets the singer slide into notes. The Natural preset starts at 42 ms.
A quick way to set it: loop a phrase with a few note changes, turn Retune down until you hear the steps between notes, then bring it back up a little until they go smooth again.
Two things TUNE handles on its own. It keeps the formants where they were, so a corrected note still sounds like the same person sang it, and it's on in the free version. And it only works on the parts of the voice that have a pitch, so S's, T's and breaths pass through untouched. If the esses still need taming after that, that's a job for a de-esser, and our guide to de-essing vocals covers it.
