Pitch Shift

The Pitch Shift effect changes the pitch of a sound without changing the duration of a signal. You can use the effect to fix out-of-tune notes or change the key of a song.

What do you want to do?

Change pitch without preserving duration

  1. Open the Sonic Foundry Pitch Shift dialog.

  2. Choose a preset from the Name drop-down list, or adjust the controls as desired:

  3. a. Drag the Semitones to shift pitch by slider (or enter a value in the edit box) to adjust the pitch of the selection.

When the Preserve duration check box is selected, this slider is limited to -12 to 12 semitones.

  1. b. Drag the Cents to shift pitch by slider (or enter a value in the edit box) to adjust the pitch of the selection.

There are 100 cents to a semitone and 12 semitones to an octave. If you are tuning a vocal track, you will most likely have to adjust the Cents slider to get the desired pitch.

  1. c. Drag the Accuracy slider to set the accuracy of the pitch-shifting algorithm. High Accuracy settings result in slower processing.

If your computer has trouble previewing Pitch Shift in real-time, try lowering the Accuracy setting. After you have chosen the settings you wish to use, change the accuracy back to the highest setting for processing.

Apply an anti-alias filter during processing

Select the Apply an anti-alias filter during pitch shift check box to minimize aliasing distortion when raising the pitch of a signal.

When shifting the pitch up, it is very likely that frequencies above one half of the sampling frequency (or Nyquist frequency) will be introduced. The anti-alias filter removes these frequencies, thereby removing any potential aliasing distortion.

This check box is unavailable when shifting pitch down.

Preserve duration while shifting pitch

Select the Preserve duration check box and choose a Mode from the drop-down list.

Pitch Shift provides 19 different modes that are designed to maintain the highest quality for specific types of material. A mode that works great for drums will not work as well for string pads, for example.

The Preserve duration controls are not available when changing pitch by more than 12 semitones.