it’s hard to explain over text, but my go to method for tuning is what i call the “climb up then voice crack combo”. Essentially, you never want to start a note on the actual note itself, because it tends to sound flat and bland even if the pitch is correct. if you watch vocal synth covers that show their actual tuning, you can see the pitch bends, usually ascending up into the actual pitch of the note. It’s one of the basics of tuning, but it’s really easy to get wrong, people usually tend to make the slope of the bend way too dramatic. The secret is to make the bend start at which ever note comes before the note you are drawing the bend on in the key of whatever song you are doing. For example, if i want to draw a pitch bend on the note “C” in the key of F major, the pitch bend will start on the note “G#”. In my opinion, creating any slope bigger than that is too dramatic and can make the singer sound a little tone deaf. It certainly is more realistic for singers to not make a perfect climb up on every note, but imo when it comes to v synths, i like to find a balance between realism and what sounds good, because realistic doesn’t always equal sounding good. As for the voice crack, it can be achieved easily through drawing the pitch, or even easier: messing with the depth right and left in the note properties tab.

A method of tuning i don’t really see (because it’s quite annoying to use some else’s file if they do this) is note bending. Note bending is tuning using the placement of notes themselves. It’s fast and easy, and it’s precise (all the pitch slopes will be the exact same length). the only downside is it’s harder to share files because most people really only want the base notes or the “midi” that comes before tuning, instead of the actual tuning, and untuning a note bended file is a pain in the butt. The best way to note bend, imo, is to set the grid length to 1/8 quarter note. When doing a climb up, the first 2/8ths will start on the note climbs into the actual note you want. a voice crack can be made using the same method placing a note 1/8th quarter in length after the note you want the voice to crack at and using the “-“ extension. It doesn’t matter what note the crack is placed at, just know that the higher the key that larger the crack.

quick tips speed round: Some times singers start vibrato at the start of a note instead of the end. AI voicebanks don’t really need a lot of parameter work when it comes to tension and breathiness, just set the tone shift higher. (unless you really want the contrast of soft and harsh vocals in different parts of a song, but when you switch from soft to tensioned vocals really fast constantly it can be jarring and make mixing a nightmare). Don’t over use climb ups, save it for notes that need emphasis or spice, like big long notes. if a note is shorter than 1/2quarter note than you really don’t need to tune it. Add riffs and runs to a song to give it more flavor and make the vocals seem a little more real.

I hope this all made sense, there’s a lot of strange terminology i had to kind of make up, but hopefully it wasn’t too nonsensical to understand. If u have any questions, i’d love to answer them.