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Chapter 10 Pitch 117
Using the Pitch Correction Plug-in
You can use the Normal and Low buttons to determine the pitch range that you want
to scan for notes that need correction. Normal is the default range, and works for most
audio material. Low should only be used for audio material that contains extremely low
frequencies (below 100 Hz), which may result in inaccurate pitch detection. These
parameter have no affect on the sound, they are simply optimized tracking options for
the chosen target pitch range.
Defining the Pitch Quantization Grid
The Scale menu allows you to choose different pitch quantization grids. The scale that
is set manually (with the keyboard) is called the User Scale. The default setting is the
chromatic scale. The other scale names are self-explanatory. If you’re unsure of the
intervals used in any given scale, simply choose it in the Scale menu and check out the
values shown on the keyboard. You can alter any note in the scale by clicking on the
keyboard keys. Any such adjustments will overwrite the existing User Scale settings.
There is only one User Scale per project. You can, however, create multiple User Scales,
and save them as Pitch Correction plug-in settings files.
∏ Tip: The Drone scale uses a fifth as a quantization grid, the Single scale defines a single
note. Both of these scales aren’t meant to result in realistic singing voices, so if you’re
after interesting effects, you should give both of them a try.
Click the Root field to choose the root note of the scale from a pop-up menu. there are
two scales that are excluded: the User and Chromatic scales—where there is no root
note (none). You may freely transpose the major and minor scales, and scales named
after chords.
You can use the keyboard to exclude notes from the pitch quantization grid. When you
first open the plug-in, all notes of the chromatic scale are selected. This means that
every incoming note will be altered to fit the next semitone step of the chromatic
scale. If the intonation of the singer is poor, this might lead to notes being incorrectly
identified, and corrected. As an example, the singer might have intended to sing an E,
but the note is actually closer to a D#. If you don’t want the D# in the song, the D# key
can be disabled on the keyboard. Given that the original pitch was sung closer to an E
than D, it will be corrected to an E.
Note: The settings are valid for all octave ranges. Individual settings for different
octaves aren’t provided.