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I recently watched a Pro Tools promotion video where the narrater doubled an audio take and used a pitch shifter to create a vocal harmony. It sounded perfect, however it was very fast and I could not catch any technique used to do it. Also, I use Cubase SX3, not Pro Tools 7.

Does anybody have any experience doing this (particularily using Cubase)? It seems like such a time saver to do this over recording an actual harmony.

Thanks so much!

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anonymous Sun, 10/28/2007 - 21:42

I use Melodyne, though that isn't the same as a pitch shifter, it works great. Puts the vocal line in a piano roll type scenario.

Works beautifully.

In regards to using pitch shift to do that I think it'd be just as easy as duplicating the section you want to shift the pitch of, and then go adjust it by a musical interval.

tzer Fri, 11/02/2007 - 09:07

In my experience, a thing to watch out for when using "pitch shift" to manufacture a harmony line is that the intervals of the original line when shifted, do not always generate the correct interval for the harmony.

The resulting harmony line may initially line up interval-wise (first few notes) but suddenly the 3rd note in the phrase has an augmented or diminished quality where it should have a nice 3rd or 5th...

Sometimes that ends up being interesting and useful - most times it just sounds wrong... But I don't tend to use pitch shifting to make vocal harmonies - I usually get the singers to record them for real - so I have never explored the nuances of manipulating a pitch-shifted harmony line into perfection.