Transcribe only goes in half steps, and Audacity is annoying because of all the trial and error and needing a reference note.
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How to convert songs to 440 A?
- Thread starter Tupac
- Start date
I just raised "Peace Sells", by Megadeth, 7 semi-tones using Audacity just to test out the quality of the process. It works very well.
Transcribe can't tune a song by smaller incremements than a half-step? That's bad.
What do you mean by 'reference note'? Can't you just tell Audacity to raise the pitch by a set amount?
Also, I assume audacity is destructive and non-realtime (you have to modify the whole file before playing it back), is that correct?
On Audacity, there are 5 ways to change the pitch of any song:
1. Input the original key the select which key you want it in.
2. Select how many semi-tones you want to raise (or lower) the song.
3. Select which frequency range you want the song to be in (i.e. between 560hz to 5khz).
4. Select the percent change to lower or raise.
5. Use the "slider" instead to raise or lower the pitch.
You don't even have to do the whole song, just select a small test patch of the song and press "preview" to test the pitch change to see if it's in the right key. It only takes a second. There's even a "Tempo changer" and a "speed changer" tool in Audacity. Audacity is awesome!
1. Input the original key the select which key you want it in.
2. Select how many semi-tones you want to raise (or lower) the song.
3. Select which frequency range you want the song to be in (i.e. between 560hz to 5khz).
4. Select the percent change to lower or raise.
5. Use the "slider" instead to raise or lower the pitch.
You don't even have to do the whole song, just select a small test patch of the song and press "preview" to test the pitch change to see if it's in the right key. It only takes a second. There's even a "Tempo changer" and a "speed changer" tool in Audacity. Audacity is awesome!
How do I change it to 440 A without knowing the original key? And with the methods you listed how would I know it was in the exact correct tunage without a reference note?
Use method #2,
With your bass, tuned to standard, play along with the song and take note where the notes are. Then count how many semi-tones (up or down) you would prefer.
In the "change Pitch" window you'll see a box called "semitone(half steps)". Just input the number of semitones you want the song in. Use a negative sign for lowering the pitch i.e. "-3".
Before you change the pitch for the whole song you can preview it first to make sure it's in the right range. After you change the whole song save the song with another name so that you preserve the original.
With your bass, tuned to standard, play along with the song and take note where the notes are. Then count how many semi-tones (up or down) you would prefer.
In the "change Pitch" window you'll see a box called "semitone(half steps)". Just input the number of semitones you want the song in. Use a negative sign for lowering the pitch i.e. "-3".
Before you change the pitch for the whole song you can preview it first to make sure it's in the right range. After you change the whole song save the song with another name so that you preserve the original.
With amazing slowdowner, you play along and move the slider until it sounds right. That's it, you're done.
My last post was a little misleading. I meant that, say if a song is in E, I don't know if it's between Eb - E or E - E#. Maybe it's not a perfect quarter tone between those notes, so I don't know if I'm exactly on a note in the 440 A scale. See what I mean?
In any program, you have to use your ears. It's like tuning an instrument. You can tune it up 60 cents to E or down 40 cents to Eb, the program can't tell you which is "correct". But either way, you make a guess and tune it a bit, see if it sounds right, tune a bit more, etc. Eventually you blend well with the recording, and you're pretty much in tune at that point.
A fiver does not prevent you from having to transpose when your music and your practice recording are in different keys. It doesn't matter if the recording was made to the A440 standard or not. If your recording is in G and your music is in C you are going to have to transpose no matter how many or how few strings your bass has.
The only thing that can save you the trouble of transposing is a pitch shifter. Several computer or smartphone pitch shifters have been discussed here. But some multi-effects pedals do live pitch shifting on your bass signal too. The Zoom B3 and MS-60B are two examples. They have pitch shifters that do a coarse shift in half tones which is all you need in most cases and they also allow fine shifts on top of the half tone shifts. Undoubtedly other pedals will do the same and if you have one it is an easy option to use because you just dial in the shift that you need by ear.
+1 If the song is a tad bit high, tune your bass up a tad. Or, use the little slider in "change pitch" to tune down the song a tad.
The one thing Audacity doesn't do yet is detect what key a song is in. Maybe "Awesome Slowdowner" does
this?
Speaking for myself, I can generally play along with a song and find the key just by finding a major or minor scale or by finding the chord tones.
Slowdowner doesn't really detect anything about the song. It transposes by whatever number of cents/halfsteps you tell it to, and time expands/compresses by whatever percentage you tell it to.
I prefer it that way. When software like this tries to be too smart, it often does the wrong thing.
I prefer it that way. When software like this tries to be too smart, it often does the wrong thing.
For someone who can't find the key of a song, Transcribe! can provide note and chord 'guesses' for a highlighted section of the song. It could 'conceivably' be of 'some' help.
Download the Winamp media player and the plug-in called Pacemaker. It's a free download and Pacemaker will let you easily shift the pitch. It will also let you slow the song down without changing the pitch if you want to learn a difficult part. There is another plug-in called Loop Master that will let you loop a section of the song. With these 2 plug-ins it's a great practice tool for learning songs.
http://winamp.com
http://winamp.com
+1 for Audacity.
I usually pull up a virtual keyboard (there are several, google) in a web browser and use it for a reference pitch. Saves having to pick up and put down the bass every time I want to compare.
Audacity does a bunch more than just pitch transposing. It's a bit of awesome.
Some practice amps (i.e. Korg Pandora) will change pitch of a secondary audio source (eg. mp3 player) on the fly.
Bearing in mind the OPs original question, it's not so much the key that's wanted as how to deal with the small deviation from the standard tuning.
Audacity can do this. It's not a particularly slick tool for the purpose.
The slickest way to do this, provided your ears can tell you how much out of tune you are, is to use either a standalone piece of hardware like a Korg Pandora PX4B (very reaonably priced 2nd hand on ebay last time I looked) and use the Aux Pitch function to adjust the song to the tuning of your bass. The pandora will go from in tune to (say) +1 semitone in 5 steps, so it will probably get close enough to sound in tune when you play along.
You'll probably get closer matching if you can find a software tool for the same thing. I use 'Vox' on the mac. I don't have experience with the others mentioned.
To do it with Audacity, first, import your song into audacity. Find a bit a of the song where there's one clear note sounding. Select that then choose Analyze, then Plot Spectrum. Then (and this bit is important) Choose Algorithm: spectrum, Size: 8192, Function: Rectangular window, Axis: Log frequency. And then put your cursor over the leftmost high spike in the graph. under the graph you should now see something like 'Peak 91 Hz (F#2) = -22.2 db' . (Ignore the similar bit of text that starts with the word cursor).
So the software has found your note(F#) and the exact frequency (91Hz). Now, you're set for adjusting the song. Finds the frequency F#2 should be from this chart http://www.guitarpitchshifter.com/fig_2_1.png. We want our note to be 92.5 Hz. In Audacity, select the whole song, then from the menu, Effect, then Change Pitch. In 'frequency from' fill in the pitch from the song (91) and in 'frequency to' fill in the pitch you want (92.5) and hit OK. Now export the song as an MP3 and you can play along in tune.
Since Audacity's frequency analysis only gives frequencies in whole Hz, you get better accuracy by picking higher notes. And choose your sample carefully, you don't want to be frequency-analyzing the cymbals, or the bass drum,that won't tell you anything
So, you can do it in Audacity, but if you can do it by ear you'll be much better off.
Agreed. And it's free !
I used to change the speed of my record player to do this. Higher speed = higher pitch, lower speed = lower pitch.
These days I rip a song to a .wav and retune it in Reaper.
http://www.cockos.com/reaper/
These days I rip a song to a .wav and retune it in Reaper.
http://www.cockos.com/reaper/
Transcribe definitely allows you to change the tuning by cents!
Top right hand side of the interface should be a little tag called "EQ". Click that and then a menu with "tuning" should come up. The centage alteration will be the 3rd slider on the right. I'm not sure how much it's used these days but I think there was a trend in the early 90s/late 80s in which songs were always up by 50 cents (Kiss from a Rose, a lot of the Police stuff, Pantera etc...) anyone else noticed it at all?
Top right hand side of the interface should be a little tag called "EQ". Click that and then a menu with "tuning" should come up. The centage alteration will be the 3rd slider on the right. I'm not sure how much it's used these days but I think there was a trend in the early 90s/late 80s in which songs were always up by 50 cents (Kiss from a Rose, a lot of the Police stuff, Pantera etc...) anyone else noticed it at all?
