Transpose to a certain note?

[TheDrop2]

can you change the pitch of a sample so that it hits a certain note and stays in the songs scale? or do you have to just detune it till it sounds decent in your ear?

[simonlb]

I tend to use Spectrum for that, set it to view the musical notes and transpose until the fundamental frequency/biggest peak is at the note you want.

[MPGK]

Using Spectrum can be handy, but in the end you should trust your ears. Often it sounds more interesting if you don't tune everything on the root note, i.e. I often tune my kick, snare and percussion elements so they form a chord rather than just one big unison note.

[Nickswardson]

I often tune my kick, snare and percussion elements so they form a chord rather than just one big unison note.

this sounds cool, could you give me a short example on how this sounds in opposite to the drums being unison note@?

[MPGK]

I often tune my kick, snare and percussion elements so they form a chord rather than just one big unison note.

this sounds cool, could you give me a short example on how this sounds in opposite to the drums being unison note@?

Hard to do a one-to-one (edit: or one-on-one, my English is still imperfect) comparison with the same samples as I tend to choose samples so I don't have to pitch them very much.

Nevertheless, here's a quick groove (don't expect anything great, I just programmed it really quick), 8 bars with the kit elements tuned roughly to a B note, 8 bars with the kit elements tuned to a B minor chord.
The second half is the same, only with a low-end pad playing the root note B, ducked by the kick.

http://uploading.com/files/7cm87f35/drum%2Btuning.wav/

[juanlittledevil]

When I work with audio samples of mixed music or recorded material I usually will analyze it with mixed in key first. So I know what the original key is. Once you know that then is easy to transpose to the key you are In simply by moving along the circle of fifths.


J

[agmoore]

hi - rather than using an effect or a vst i found a really useful way to do repitching by going into the clip (your sample, .wav file or whatever) and using the TRANSPOSE function. If you drop or increase the transpose 12 points, you will change the melody one octave (i.e. your melody will stay the same but the voice will appear to be deeper or higher). If you drop or increase the transpose less or more than 12 points, you will change the melody.

to get a natural sound (i.e. to make a woman's voice into a man's voice or vice versa) it is very important to control your transpose using the Complex Pro function. You will see a little white box to the right of the transpose wheel with the words Beats, Tones, Texture, etc. when you click on the box. Select Complex Pro at the bottom of this list. You will then be given two values called Formants and Envelopes which allow you to control how the voice or sound is transposed. Playing around with different combinations of these two numbers will give you the desired sound you want, whether it's a voice or an instrument you are repitching. you can create harmonies and back up vocals by playing multiple vocal sample clips at the same time, pitched differently.

Additionally, using the ENVELOPE function (the little E in the left hand corner of all clip windows) and selecting the appropriate transpose function in the envelope menu which appears, you can DRAW in a melody using the mouse to basically create whatever melody you want from your .wav sample. this is specifically useful when sampling instruments, and generally the envelope function is a life-saver in a variety of ways.

[Nickswardson]

thanks for the example. I can clearly hear the difference. One question though, when your drum samples. How do you know what note the particulair drum sample is on. Because it's only transposing numbers and not letters. And which kind of chords do you normaly tune them to? like the chord of the root note to the song ?

[MPGK]

thanks for the example. I can clearly hear the difference. One question though, when your drum samples. How do you know what note the particulair drum sample is on. Because it's only transposing numbers and not letters. And which kind of chords do you normaly tune them to? like the chord of the root note to the song ?

I always have an acoustic guitar next to me, and I check and hum the note and compare. There are no golden rules to tuning your set, and kicks and snares rarely actually play certain notes, there's just a dominating frequency which I try to hear to put it in relation to the rest.
Drum sounds should work well with everything in the same frequency range, e.g. the tuning of the kick drum should have a relation to the bass line, whether it's the note it's playing or the resonance it's producing. Intervals that work well and don't clash are mainly octaves and fifths, but sometimes a little dissonance is the key to an otherwise boring beat.
If you use toms/congas/other membrane percussion, those should have a certain tuning in most cases. Toms on drum sets are often tuned as triads.

[juanlittledevil]

the tuning of the kick drum should have a relation to the bass line, whether it's the note it's playing or the resonance it's producing. Intervals that work well and don't clash are mainly octaves and fifths, but sometimes a little dissonance is the key to an otherwise boring beat.
If you use toms/congas/other membrane percussion, those should have a certain tuning in most cases. Toms on drum sets are often tuned as triads.

Greatly put! I think a lot of less experienced producers forget this -- percussive instruments also need to be tuned...

I have to say I'm a little bothered that live doesn't come with a built in tuner. But truth is there are some out there tho which are free. (tho not native)

[MPGK]

I have to say I'm a little bothered that live doesn't come with a built in tuner. But truth is there are some out there tho which are free. (tho not native)

Right, a Live tuning device is long overdue. Would help a lot.

[TheDrop2]

I was thinking more like, if you wanted to tune a sample from its original tone ( example: C1)
to a different notes ,( F sharp ) ... The transpose works okay, but i know that there is something, a plugin out there with a piano roll of some sort where you can just click/drag where you want the note to be.

Any ideas?

[juanlittledevil]

I was thinking more like, if you wanted to tune a sample from its original tone ( example: C1)
to a different notes ,( F sharp ) ... The transpose works okay, but i know that there is something, a plugin out there with a piano roll of some sort where you can just click/drag where you want the note to be.

Any ideas?

1. Drop the sample you are trying to play into sampler or sampler. This only works if they are single tone however. Changing the pitch (transposing) audio samples in sampler/simpler will also change the speed the file plays. Note that while sampler has a piano roll, simpler does not. So if you you'll have to more or less play by ear. you can change the root key setting tho. (by default it will map to c3 I believe tho it might be c1 check the manual)


2. If you want to change the pitch of a loop. you can do it by doing a Midi keymap to a range of keys. Note that you can also assign a range of Midi keys to the track launch button so any clip in your track will have this behavior. To do this:

1. Command-M (for midi map mode)
2. Click on the clip
3. Press say C1 and while still holding down play something like C3 so you have a 2 scale range. The display should look something like [C1-C3]
4. Command-M again to get out of midi map mode.

[yur2die4]

You can edit transposition in Clip Envelopes.

Otherwise there is the Autotune/Melodyne way to go. Those cost money. If your material is polyphonic, autotune might not work as well. Overall, repitching material is a challenge. Learning to find ways to make it work without investing in new software would be a valuable lesson though A free vst that does somewhat of an autotune effect is called Kerovee. I'd personally stick with using Clip Envelopes w/ Transpose (using whichever warping mode works best for the content).