Time and Pitch Machine Question

[Music Spirit]

I have often used Time and Pitch Machine to put an entire CD track up or down a semi-tone with quite good results. Being only 100 cents shift there is not much distortion.

 

However I am getting a problem with even just a pitch shift of a semi-tone lower... 1/ There is much popping and distortion on the new pitch shifted audio

 

2/ The instrumental part I have added after beat mapping the entire track is slightly out of sync with the audio. As if the length of the region has shifted slightly and the timing,

Whereas I thought Pitch Shifting didnt interfere with the timing/tempo?

[Music Spirit]

Since asking this question and looking on Youtube there is a video which explains how to change the Pitch of Audio using the Pitch Shifter plug in.

 

This may seem really obvious to many here to use this instead of Time and Pitch Machine - but I have just tried it and it does exactly what I needed - it shifts the entire track down a Semi Tone and then shifting the midi down a semi-tone there is no problem.

 

The other good outcome is that there is no distortion or popping or clipping or degradation in the sound of the audio ( as there was when you changed the whole pitch of the actual audio file).

 

Why would the Pitch Shifter plug in deliver a clean sound when the Pitch and Time Machine does not?

[David Nahmani]

Good to hear. The Pitch Shifter uses a different algorithm (vs the Time and Pitch machine which is an older feature). It's real time (vs the T&P machine which works offline). Really two completely different tools.

 

Another way to achieve this which is likely even better is to use the Transpose parameter in the Region inspector:

 

[Music Spirit]

Very useful explanation thanks David - especially the tip about transposing the Region! I never thought you could do this with audio.

Out of interest I tried it on an Arrangement I had done where I had beatmapped the audio of a song, transcribed the melody. I put the Audio up a tone and then shifted the midi in the part up a tone. It worked pretty well except that the part was slightly out of sync timing was.. but that could be adjust and fixed if necessary

[David Nahmani]

In the arrangement that is beatmapped, is the audio track flexed?

[Music Spirit]

In the arrangement that is beatmapped, is the audio track flexed?

 

No - strange as it may seem I have never used the Flex feature of Logic

[MartinIR]

Hi! 

I am trying to transpose the pitch of a vocal audio file.

I tried using Time and Pitch Machine, Pitch Shifter and Region Inspector.

I need to go from C# to E (3 semitones). In the Time and Pitch Machine this will equal to +300c and in the Pitch Shifter to +3 semitones (I am not sure how to get 3 semitones in Region Inspector).

But no matter what tool I use, I always get an undesired result. The vocal is in tune with the rest of the instruments but when I go to a higher pitch I get like a "helium voice" and when I go to a lower pitch I get a "vaporwave voice"

Is there a way to avoid this? I can share a sample Logic Pro file.

Thanks!

[David Nahmani]

5 minutes ago, MartinIR said:

Is there a way to avoid this?

One thing to try is to first turn on Flex Pitch for the track, then use the Transpose parameter in the Region inspector. The Flex Pitch algorithm sounds better than the (default) polyphonic algo. 

[scg]

Just in case this wasn't mentioned yet, if you don't get the results you want with the other methods, you could also try out Pitch->Vocal Transformer. It includes formant shifting, and has a formant control for fine tuning.

[MartinIR]

11 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

One thing to try is to first turn on Flex Pitch for the track, then use the Transpose parameter in the Region inspector. The Flex Pitch algorithm sounds better than the (default) polyphonic algo. 

Do you know how to transpose 3 semitones using the Region Inspector? I only find a way to transpose whole tones.

[David Nahmani]

Just now, MartinIR said:

I only find a way to transpose whole tones.

Actually the value you're seeing is in semi-tones.

[MartinIR]

11 hours ago, scg said:

Just in case this wasn't mentioned yet, if you don't get the results you want with the other methods, you could also try out Pitch->Vocal Transformer. It includes formant shifting, and has a formant control for fine tuning.

You mean use the Pitch Shifter and then the Vocal Transformer?

[David Nahmani]

Just now, MartinIR said:

You mean use the Pitch Shifter and then the Vocal Transformer?

No @scg means only the Vocal Transformer (which is found in the "Pitch" folder). 

[MartinIR]

Wow! Both recommendations worked much better than what I had achieved.

Not sure why but activating flex Pitch changes a lot the impact of the region inspector transpose. And with the vocal transformer I obtained the same results, but without using flex Pitch.

For what I read the key is changing the pitch but not the formants because this one's define the timbre of the sound, and that's what I don't want to change. And the vocal transformer is suited for that specifically:

Quote

To shift the formants while maintaining—or independently altering—the pitch: Rotate the Formant knob. If you set this parameter to positive values, the singer sounds like Mickey Mouse. By altering the parameter downward, you can achieve vocals reminiscent of Darth Vader.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/logicpro/lgcef28352ca/10.7.5/mac/12.3

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/logicpro/lgcebe59db4a/10.7.5/mac/12.3

That's exactly what I wanted to avoid: the Mickey Mouse voice haaha!

I will try to play with the Extended Parameters of the vocal transformer. Maybe I'll obtain even better results. I'll let you know.

Thanks a lot! 

[scg]

2 hours ago, MartinIR said:

I will try to play with the Extended Parameters of the vocal transformer. Maybe I'll obtain even better results. I'll let you know.

You'll probably discover this for yourself, but you may not be able to improve much upon what you have already via the extended parameters (although you can get some interesting effects by changing the grain size). The 'formants' option ('process always' and 'keep unvoiced'), which is also available as an option for flex pitch, seems like it might be of interest, but out of curiosity I've bounced typical input material with and without that and played them with phase inversion and gotten silence,  so it's not obvious to me under what circumstances that has an effect.

But yes, the key is the formants, which is why Vocal Transformer fares better here than Pitch Shifter.