That said, Melodyne is probably overkill solely for creative pitch shifting effects. It’s the most powerful editing tool for creating those pitch-perfect pop style vocals, but it does so as transparently as possible. Melodyne is professional vocal editing software. You can also use Graph Mode for fine tuning vocals, or dragging pitches all over the place for some serious shifting.
The Transpose parameter gives you a full octave up or down, and enabling formant allows you to change the overall timbre. This can be done subtly with slower Retune Speed times, or it can be its own effect with faster Retune Speed times (0 = T-Pain, Cher, Travis Scott, etc.).Īuto-Tune is also a pitch shifter, however. It’s best known for its realtime pitch correction, which allows a vocalist to stay in key by tracking errant pitches and pulling them up or down to the correct note. Antares Auto-Tune ProĪuto-Tune Pro is the gold standard. The moment we’ve all been waiting for…let’s take a look at some popular pitch shifting (and correcting!) plugins. Finally, formant emulates the human vocal tract.
Cents are the tiny frequencies in between semitones and will help you set the appropriate pitch to stay in key with the music. Pitch shifters usually run from -12 to +12 semitones, with 12 designating a full octave down or up. Semitones are also called half-steps in music theory and let you raise or lower the signal’s pitch by a chosen interval. Most pitch shifter VSTs will have some sort of control for changing semitones, cents, and formant. You can alter the pitch of any signal by time stretching or consolidating a clip, but that also changes the length of the audio.
That’s what really sets these plugins apart from manual pitch shifting.
All of this happens instantly with realtime pitch shifters, and with no change in the duration of the recorded signal. When you pitch up, it shortens the waveform. When you pitch down, it extends the waveform. What it essentially does behind the scenes is chop up the recorded waveform into dozens and dozens of small parts. They’re used on vocals, instruments, and anything else you could think of that would make something sound cool or exciting. These types of plugins are a staple of modern production in genres like pop, hip hop, EDM, and more.