Master Tune... 440Hz Adjustable?

Question

Level 2

271 points

Master Tune... 440Hz Adjustable?

Hi there...

I've just come back from playing a show with our band. We have a Marimba player and for the first time we ran into an unexpected problem. We have to hire the larger instruments where we play for obvious reasons. As a result, for the first time we encountered a Marimba which was tuned to 445Hz instead of 440Hz (apparently this is common in orchestras because they often play sharper). Obviously the whole of the backing tracks are written/recorded at normal tuning. The other players could fortunately tune to match the marimba, however I was a bit stuck.

The only quick fix I could find was to run Logics Pitch Shifter II on the Master output and tune it to +22 cents. This is not desirable for lots of reasons A/ Pitch Shifter II isn't the best pitch shifter and tends to ruin the clarity of sounds, particularly a whole mix! and B/ it meant that anything I played via MIDI keyboard suffered noticable latency.

This was all quite a shock and unpleasant. We did it and got through and it was fine but I wouldn't be too happy about this occuring on a regular basis. Does anyone know if you can somehow adjust the Master Tuning of Logic without resorting to Pitch Shifting in this way? I've done a quick search but can't find anything suitable...

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this one. Thanks, Sidx

G5 Dual 2Ghz & MacBook Dualcore, Mac OS X (10.4.7), Logic 7.2.1

Posted on Sep 9, 2007 3:03 AM

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Answer 1

Bee Jay

Level 6

10,900 points

Sep 9, 2007 3:41 AM in response to siderealxxx

Are you referring to altering Logic's internal pitch reference (which can be done in the song settings), or are you referring to timestretching entire songs, including recorded audio, after the fact?

If the latter, then you'll need a high quality timestretching application, like iZotope's Radius, or Melodyne. This isn't a realtime process though. Pitch shifting will mostly sound like carp.

If the former, this means all Logic instruments will have a pitch reference at the tuning you set, but third party plugins won't know about this so you'd still need to alter their tuning individually. Obviously this has no effect on recorded audio at all.

Or maybe you could run your show in Ableton Live, which can do what you want (pitch everything up in realtime during playback.)

Other thoughts: you might be able to output your tracks as REX files or Apple loops, and then load them back into EXS24 instances or other REX players for "stretchy" playback.

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Answer 2

siderealxxx Author

Level 2

271 points

Sep 9, 2007 3:44 AM in response to Bee Jay

I'm not referring to timestretching at all... and I don't think Logics 'Software Instrument Pitch' will do it as there is recorded audio.

Basically I have a whole load of Audio Tracks (making up the backing track) and a couple of EXS patches (Which I trigger live) for each song. So EVERYTHING needs to be transposed up by about +20 cents, live and on the fly (or to the same ends).

I was hoping that Ableton wasn't the only answer to this! Surely Logic can do something similar?!

Thanks

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Answer 3

noeqplease

Level 4

3,589 points

Sep 9, 2007 3:50 AM in response to siderealxxx

Hi,

Yes, you can change each songs' tuning.

Go to Song preferences/ Tuning...

Then you can slide up or down by cents. In your case, to tune to 445, you would input +19.5 cents.

This then affects all of Logic's internal synths. It does NOT affect audio being recorded, those instruments need to be tuned correctly outside of Logic. Like a guitar for example. But, anything then being tuned by Logic 's tuner, for example would be using the new Song Tuning.

Cheers

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Answer 4

Bee Jay

Level 6

10,900 points

Sep 9, 2007 4:01 AM in response to siderealxxx

I'm not referring to timestretching at all

By timestretching, I'm referring to the process of pitching audio up, without affecting it's playback speed. Any process where the pitch is processed independently of it's speed is a timestretching process.

If you are happy with increasing the playback speed, then you'll need a "good" pitch shifter plugin. I don't know of any, personally - not good ones to use on an entire mix...

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Answer 5

Sep 9, 2007 4:21 AM in response to noeqplease

Yes BUT - E.g. Kontakt2 and other 3rd party synthplugs like all the AAS-stuff, NI and such are not affected by the global Song tuning and must be tuned individually (at least in my system they have to). So the global tuning obviously only affects the Logic soft synths

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Answer 6

noeqplease

Level 4

3,589 points

Sep 9, 2007 4:25 AM in response to Sampleconstruct

Hi,

Thank for that Sampleconstruct. That is a good piece of knowledge to have!

I'll definitely check out my few 3rd party synths and verify.

Cheers

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Answer 7

siderealxxx Author

Level 2

271 points

Sep 9, 2007 5:06 AM in response to siderealxxx

Right, thanks guys.

However, the main issue really is pitch shifting my audio tracks not just my Instruments (which are only Logic instruments when playing live). Can this not be done without a pitch shifter on the Master fader then?

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Answer 8

Bee Jay

Level 6

10,900 points

Sep 9, 2007 5:11 AM in response to siderealxxx

You have to pitch shift somehow. Because most sound cards don't support variable sample rates, you can't just notch up the playback sample rate in Logic without doing a pitch shift procedure.

So, you can either use pitch shifters, render your audio to a stretchable format, or playback from samplers where you can slightly bend the pitch up.

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Answer 9

siderealxxx Author

Level 2

271 points

Sep 9, 2007 5:44 AM in response to siderealxxx

Ok, I see. I wouldn't mind if Logics Pitch Shifter wasn't so crap. Does anyone think the Apple AU Pitch is any better? Obviously none of these solutions are ideal, but you have to work within such limitations sometimes! Thanks everybody for your input.

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