We’ve already discussed a number of uses and models of pitch-shift functionalities built into delay plugins, so here we’ll focus on the plugins that provide some of the most novel, best-sounding and otherwise most effective pitch-shift effects for your sound design projects and mixes: The Best Pitchshifter and Harmonizer Plugins For Sound Design: Roundup List It could be used for quite a wide variety of sounds given its relatively simple controls, from chorus-like thickening effects on vocals and drums to pitched, textural delays that could transform any sound into small or large clouds of diffuse ambience. It’s the one producer Tony Visconti got David Bowie and Brian Eno all excited about by telling them it “ *ks with the fabric of time”.
When that effected part of the signal is pitch-shifted to, you get what is referred to as harmonization.Įventide’s H910 Harmonizer hardware unit was the first commercially available digital effects box. The original Eventide H910 Harmonizer hardware unit Modulated Pitchshifting and HarmonizersĪs we previously touched on in the posts on Delay and Classic Modulation FX, many of the best effects for injecting movement, dynamism and “body” into a sound are achieved through mixing a modulated version of the processed sound with the original. Then again, these artifacts might be a beneficial side effect if you’re aiming for glitchy, grainy sounds. Just be aware of artifacts that may be introduced by the time-stretch algorithm when pushed to extreme settings. This can certainly have its uses if the envelope and timing of the sound is important. You could also try experimenting with enabling time-stretching to compensate for the change in pitch, and keep the length of the sound the same as the original.
#ZYNAPTIQ PITCHMAP VS AUTOTUNE PROFESSIONAL#
You may be surprised how much this simple technique is used in professional sound design applications to create new and different sound effects and source material for further processing and layering. Sometimes this will be a desirable side effect of the pitchshifting process, allowing you to create more moody, extended bass drones and rumbles out of short high-pitched source material, for example. Similarly, pitching a sound up will make it play back faster. Generally when you lower the pitch of a sample, it will slow down in time as well. The benefit to using a sampler plugin for the task is that you’ll also have immediate access to a whole bunch of other audio editing, mangling and effects within the sampler, so you can experiment with adjusting pitch, filter and amp envelopes while transposing the sound up and down, adding effects or programming certain parameters to modulate over time. You could do this either directly in your DAW with its built-in tools, in many cases, or with your sampler of choice, such as Kontakt or HALion. One of the key things you should always try when designing your own sounds, is to simply pitch them up or down by quite drastic amounts.
#ZYNAPTIQ PITCHMAP VS AUTOTUNE SERIES#
As for pitching snippets and recordings of the human voice or your own foley recordings, and combining these pitched samples with some of the other techniques we’ve discussed so far in this series - layering, distortion and modulation, for example - well, both your existing sample library and the recorded world around you become a sound designers sonic playground.Ĭatch up on the other parts in the series: Hi hats can become rumbling cinematic Taiko drums kicks can become high-pitched glitchy click percussion hits. Pitch is one of the absolute fundamental components of a sound, so in this post we’re going to take a look at some of the options for creatively messing with the pitch of your sounds.