Free Autotune: How to Tune Vocals for Free (Mac and Windows)
How to get a free autotune plugin for Mac and Windows, set the key, choose between Natural and Hard Tune, and record through it with low latency.
Bas Lefeber
September 29, 20269 min read
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.
The main panel: presets and LIVE along the top, the pitch display, then Retune, Key and Mix. The grey line is what the singer sang, the blue line is what comes out.
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.
Natural on a real lead. The blue line keeps the singer's vibrato and pulls the drift back onto the note.
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.
The Mix knob blends the dry and tuned signal. 100% is fully tuned. Pull it back for a doubled, slightly chorused sound.
Step 4: Record through it with LIVE
Singers often want to hear the tuning while they track, especially the hard sound, because it changes how they sing into it.
For the cleanest result TUNE normally looks a little under 80 ms ahead in the audio. That's fine for mixing, but a singer tracking through it would hear themselves late. Press LIVE, or pick the Live Tracking preset, and it drops to about 3 ms. That's under the 5 ms that Logic allows in Low Latency Mode, so TUNE keeps running while you record. LIVE is in the free version.
With LIVE on, the singer hears the tuning as they sing, about 3 ms behind.
In most DAWs an insert plugin isn't printed to the recording, so you record the dry voice and the tuning stays adjustable afterwards. One thing to know: formant preservation needs the look-ahead, so it's off while LIVE is on. When the take is done, switch LIVE off and you get it back for the mix. If you're setting up to record at home, our guide to recording vocals in a home studio covers the mic and the room.
LIVE on, with the Live Tracking preset. The readout in the corner shows the latency.
Step 5: Get the hard autotune sound
For the full effect, pick Hard Tune, check Retune is at 0 ms and Mix at 100%, and make sure the key is right. With correction this fast, a wrong key turns into a wrong melody.
The effect shows most where the voice moves between notes: slides, runs, the fall at the end of a phrase. Held notes just sound very steady. So the more the melody moves, the more you hear it.
Two presets change the flavour. Expressive Hard snaps the short notes and lets the long ones breathe, which keeps a hard-tuned vocal from sounding stiff on sustained notes. Parallel Blend puts Hard Tune at half mix under the dry vocal, so you hear the snap with the real voice underneath.
Put TUNE first on the vocal, before compression and reverb, so it hears the voice as it was sung. It uses about 1% of one CPU core, so there's room for it on every vocal in the session. And the bounce is identical to what you heard in real time, at any buffer size. For what comes after tuning, see our guide to tuning vocals, which also covers note-by-note editing.
What's in the free version, and what Pro adds
Free TUNE and TUNE Pro sound the same. The free version has the whole correction engine, LIVE, formant preservation and seven of the eight presets, with no time limit and nothing that mutes your audio.
TUNE Pro is €29 and opens the Advanced drawer under the main panel. In the free version those controls follow the preset. In Pro you set them yourself: vibrato, humanize, flex-tune, strength, gate, floor, wobble and voice type, plus transpose, detune, character and a note keyboard for taking notes out of the scale. The Pro licence covers two computers and works offline once activated.
The Advanced drawer in free TUNE. The controls are visible and follow the preset. Pro lets you set each one.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free autotune plugin with no time limit?
Yes. TUNE is free for good. There's no trial period, no time limit, and it never mutes your audio. It runs the same engine as TUNE Pro, so it sounds the same.
Can I use free autotune online, without a DAW?
Not with TUNE. It's an AU and VST3 plugin, so it runs inside a DAW. GarageBand is free on Mac and loads it, and Reaper has a cheap licence on Mac and Windows.
Does TUNE work in FL Studio, Ableton and GarageBand?
Yes. TUNE works in FL Studio, Ableton Live, GarageBand, Logic Pro, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and Bitwig. It doesn't work in Pro Tools, which only loads AAX plugins.
Will it work on a low male voice or a high female voice?
TUNE was measured on male and female leads, from a low male voice around 106 Hz to a high female voice around 382 Hz. If a take is already well sung, Natural leaves it mostly alone.
Can I use TUNE on acapellas I buy?
Yes. Every acapella on The Vocal Market lists its key, which is exactly what you set TUNE to. Try Natural to tighten a take, or Hard Tune for the effect.
Try it on your next vocal
TUNE is free and takes a minute to install. Set the key, pick Natural or Hard Tune, and adjust Retune by ear. Need a vocal to put it on? Browse the acapellas: each one lists its key, so you know what to set TUNE to before you press play.
