This lesson is about two pitch effects that were added to the most recent version of Adobe Audition.
They're called the Pitch Bender and the Pitch Shifter.
There are differences between the two.
The Pitch Bender works only here inside the Editor panel and is a process effect or so called destructive effect.
When you make changes, you change the file and you need to be careful when you save it.
Save it to some other file name if you don't want to change the original file.
So that's the destructive or process effect.
The Pitch Shifter is also a process effect that will also change the file, but it is also a real-time effect.
You can use it inside a multitrack session where you don't touch the file and it behaves differently inside the multitrack session.
All right let's take a look at the Pitch Bender effect first.
Go to Effects, Time and Pitch and then Pitch Bender (process)...
And you see it's a process effect there.
A couple of things happen, you get the dialog box and the Editor view suddenly splits into two, it goes into the Preview mode.
Preview mode comes on by default because the Pitch Bender can change the duration of a clip.
I've got my preferences set to that.
If I go to Edit or Adobe Audition, Preferences, Effects..., you'll see that I've got this thing automatically show the Preview Editor when an effect which changes the duration is available for preview.
Let's take a look at how this works.
What you can do is you can change the pitch over time and you use this envelope to do that.
Let's take a look at a couple of presets like over here we'll take a look at Down A Whole Step.
You can see that it goes from there and goes down there.
A whole step is equivalent of 2 semitones.
A semitone goes up a half a step, goes from C to C sharp for example. 2 semitones goes up a whole step, that's like C to D like Do-Re.
We have 2 semitones here a whole step.
When you think 2 semitones that's not very much, If I'm changing pitch I'm changing it only by one whole note.
That seems kind of odd.
But what's going on here is the range.
I can change the range up to 60 semitones.
Here I'll go to let's say 12 which is equal to one octave.
And now I've changed it such that that distance now is no longer 2 semitones now, it's 12.
So that distance hasn't changed, the value there though has.
It's gone from 2 to 12, so you see it's now a whole octave not just a whole step.
And to hear that, I'm going to turn off spline curves.
That little curve there sometimes takes sort of forever to go from one point to the other.
So, I'll switch off Spline curves.
I'm going to pull these guys much closer together now.
You'll notice every time I make a change it refreshes down here in the Preview mode.
We're going to keep on rolling along up here, take my cursor right there and play this.
I hope you think that's remarkable because it is remarkable that the audio quality is so good despite the fact that it was slowed way down it's also gone down a whole octave.
The timbre is exactly the same.
It's just like you put your finger on the turntable and slowed it down but you didn't affect the quality of the audio.
That's really amazing what's going on under the hood here inside this effect.
In fact, there is a turntable slowing down preset.
Let's go over there and take a look at that. it's called the Turntable Losing Power.
What happens is it starts right here.
It starts losing power gradually and then drops off.
That's a long way to lose power from 30 seconds and all the way to the end here at 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
So, let's change that by dragging these little key frames a little closer like that a little more realistic.
Goes way over like that.
That guy a little like that, a little bit faster but still it's going to take too long I think.
It's going to zoom it at the end there like so.
Drag these guys a little bit closer to the end so I can show you how this works.
You'll notice that under this first keyframe there's still some room there.
So, when you have the spline curve it does have this sort of gradual change.
I'm going to add one more keyframe to make sure that happens less slowly.
I'll click there and raise you up to 0 so that means it starts really right there and then drops off.
Takes a while to refresh.
Here we go.
I think that is just so darn cool.
All right, let's turn off that little preset and do some manual work here.
Back to (Default) and we'll just zoom way back out here again like this.
Now to add some keyframes you just click anywhere on the envelope.
That adds a keyframe.
Nothing will change here because we haven't changed the value.
I'll go over here and add another keyframe.
Again, nothing's changed till we pull this thing up or down.
I want to get kind of a semi accurate view here and it's really hard to get a good accurate number and you can't type in a number over here.
So, what I want to do is I want to go let's say up 4 and... well, that's not working very well, right.
So, I want to change it from 48 semitones which it went to when we switched over to the turntable slowing down preset to something like 12 semitones to make it a little more workable there.
Now I want to go over here and change this to 4 and again I can sort of do it accurately but if I get rid of the preview it's a little bit easier, so I drop the preview off there like that.
And now I'll take this thing to 4.
Right about there and it's a little bit easier to find 4 here now than it was before.
So that should work and let's see what that sounds like.
I'll take the Current Time Indicator right about there.
If I wanted to bring that down here I'll click another keyframe and bring it back down like that.
We can also drop it back down if you want it down an octave.
There's one more option here, this little beats per minute versus semitones.
They basically work hand in hand.
If I click over there and you change that it will say beats now instead of semitones.
But they end up working basically the same way.
If I change this like that and then switch back to semitones, then you see that this is now switched over to semitones instead of beats.
One other thing is the quality setting and I'd like to work with Perfect (slowest).
I can wait till I'm done to switch that on.
All right and one more thing before we move on I want to show you what happens with the duration here.
Go back to click on this view so you see the Preview mode.
After we refresh it you'll see that we've gone from an original time of 3 minutes and 20 seconds to 6 minutes and 5 seconds, almost double the length because we dropped the pitch way down.
So, do be aware that when you change the pitch you change the duration when you work with the Pitch Bender.
All right, let's close this.
Switch over to the Pitch Shifter find that over here in Effects as well, Effects, Time and Pitch, Pitch Shifter...
Now it doesn't say process here, but it is in fact the process effect here inside the Editor panel.
It also has real time effect when you work in a multitrack session.
So, I'll click Pitch Shifter there.
There's a dialog box.
Let me go back to use at the (Default) and it says Semi-tones again and Cents.
They're 100 cents per semitones so 200 cents in one whole tone.
The only range you have here is one octave either way.
So, two octaves altogether so it's not anywhere near as much as the Pitch Bender and the audio quality is not that good either.
I'll play this here, so you hear the original.
I'll take it down an octave like that, let's see what it sounds like.
Not so good.
I'll change to High Precision.
Not as good sounding as the Bender.
Let me turn on appropriate default settings.
That's like the best way to go.
High Precision, default settings like that.
Now let's listen to it.
So, it's kind of a warble there.
So, dropping it just one octave compared to the bender it's not as good in terms of the quality, the timbre.
But what's good about it is that it doesn't change the duration of the clip.
You can also work on one segment at a time.
So, I'm going to go back to the (Default) here like so.
I can just take a segment like that and it will affect just that segment.
So, we'll go up let's say 4 semitones and I can type in 4 here so we can get a really accurate reading there.
And now I will apply that by using High Precision and appropriate default settings and apply it.
Now let's listen to it, it would be very abrupt.
So that's how it works.
You hear it's a little bit rough there.
The audio quality is not perfect but name, that's the Pitch Shifter and it does not change the duration.
Let's take a look at how this thing works in a multitrack session.
I'll undo what we just did there.
Ctrl Z or Command Z to undo that.
I'll get rid of that selection, now we'll go to the session here.
That instrumental mix is already here inside the session.
Now to add the Pitch Shifter effect I do it in the rack here but before I do that I want to show you the controls that are not quite there yet but will be shortly.
We access the controls for the Pitch Shifter here in this drop-down arrow and the Envelopes, welcome to Envelopes and you see these various kinds of Envelopes that you can turn on or off.
Right now, Volume is the one that's on.
There's nothing here about the Pitch Shifter.
I'm going to add the Pitch Shifter here by clicking this menu there.
Go to Time and Pitch, Pitch Shifter...
Put this over to the side for the time being.
We'll take it to the (Default) settings for now.
Let's take a look at this now under the Envelopes.
Now we have Pitch Shifter and the only option is Transpose Ratio.
We don't have control over semitones, we have control only over the Ratio here.
Right now, it's set to 1.
So, if I change it from the default to something else like 12 then the Ratio goes up to 2, from 1 to 2.
Now if I put a keyframe there, let's say there, move over here to the right, I want to change this from 12 to let's say 0, it doesn't change it.
It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't.
You need to make the change manually.
So, I click on this, I drag it down to 1.
The Ratio is 1 which means that it's the original pitch 1 to 1 Ratio.
A 2 to 1 Ratio means you've gone up an octave which is the most you can do here.
So, we'll start it off and see what it sounds like.
And it gradually goes back down here to the original pitch and it's hard to get it exact.
It's kind of tricky to be exact here.
That's one little drawback.
But it is a real-time effect that happens right here.
It does not affect the original clip and does not change the duration.
So that's how you work with the Pitch Bender and the Pitch Shifter.
