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Tape Recorder-style Pitch Shift / Transcription

I have been given hundreds of Voice Memo recordings of piano to transcribe. The piano, being old, has been deliberately tuned a quarter-tone flat. To transcribe the recordings, the first step is to shift the pitch back up. The tempo is irrelevant. I did try the pitch-shift plug-in, but it created distracting artefacts which I don't see are necessary, given my simple requirements.


Having been away from Logic for a few years, there have been some changes — in particular, Flex. As far as I can make out, though, Flex is intended for messing with tempo, or for adjusting the pitch of individual notes. What I think I need is something extremely basic: adjusting the speed of the recordings so that the pitch goes up correspondingly, just as you would get with a tape recorder or turntable speed control. I'm sure this task must be easy to accomplish (no doubt in Flex), but I can't seem to wade through all the stuff about autotuning duff singers to get to it…


So, firstly: how do you pitch-shift a recording in the old-fashioned way, without worrying about tempo or duration? All I'm interested in is pitch. I don't care about tempo or duration.


That's my question; but additionally, if you were presented with the task of transcribing lots of rather poor-quality piano recordings, how would you go about it? I suspect there are new features in Logic which could help, & it would be a shame if I overlooked them through unfamiliarity.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Logic Pro X 10.1.1, Occam's Razor

Posted on May 4, 2015 2:48 AM

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Posted on May 4, 2015 6:56 AM

In the view menu select 'customize controlbar and display'

In the LCD row chose 'custom' and check the 'varispeed' box.

Option click on 'Varispeed' in the display and chose 'Varispeed (speed and pitch)'

Option click below (a little) to the right and chose: 'Detune (semitones and cents)'User uploaded file

5 replies

May 5, 2015 1:08 AM in response to Caramby

I often transcribe material for people/bands...etc.


The best thing I've found is "The Amazing Slow Downer". Ignore the name as it doesn't only change tempo but also does a great job with pitch. I've adjusted pitch +/- a perfect 4th and still found it usable. Plus, having the ability to drop the tempo if needed is a plus.

May 5, 2015 1:14 AM in response to Pancenter

Thanks — I had heard of this before, but never tried it. Since I now know how to varispeed (thanks to Jan Due1), I think I'll just slog away in Logic for a while; but if I get stuck, I'll certainly check this out!


There seem to be pitch detection tools in Logic which I was hoping might be helpful. I don't suppose they will be sophisticated enough to detect all the notes of a chord, but it might be a start (although obviously the human ear can do that much already). Has anyone tried these for this purpose? Maybe I should start a new question…

Tape Recorder-style Pitch Shift / Transcription

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