• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Off Pitch Songs

RoadRanger

RoadRanger

Supporting Member
Feb 18, 2004
8,664
8,883
NE CT
cacophony.aspinock.com
#1
Just wondering if I'm the only one here that pitch shifts songs to make them in tune with A440 for practicing against?
Some examples:
Rock This Town - Stray Cats (+60 cents)
Can't You See - Marshall Tucker (+20 cents)
Mustang Sally - Wilson Pickett (+20 cents)
Domino - Van Morrison (-35 cents)

Then there are others that were recorded in Eb standard (or some other) tuning so I will often pitch shift them to E standard so I can practice against them, even if the band I'm in tunes down.

I use a Windows program called "Transcribe!" to do the pitch shifting. It can show a frequency spectrum of the audio against an A440 scale so it's not too hard to fine tune the pitch. It can't save to MP3 but it's easy enough to save to WAV and use some other program to encode it to MP3.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MDBass
#2
I do that as well. I use BestPractice which is free but can take some fiddling sometimes to get it right. I play in a trio with my two girls and a lot of their songs are in different keys to the original so most of the time it's simply taking it up or down one or more semi-tones. Sometimes when they do it 3 or more semi-tones different to the original the singing starts to sound like Barry White or a Chipmunk, but at least I can practice in the same key we play it in. It also exports as WAV.
 
#3
I think you have plenty of company. Like you, I'm a Transcribe fan. Lots of older recordings aren't standard pitch and Transcribe allows you to tune the recording easily and without your bass. Key shifts (semi-tones) are handy too. I use the octave feature to either raise the bass line to hear it better or lower a horn line to make it sound more like a bass. Isn't software great?
 
  • Like
Reactions: s0c9 and RoadRanger
#4
There are FX in REAPER that will do this ('superpitch' and 'pitch2'). If I'm working on a set list and the original is not in standard tuning, I'll render a copy with standard tuning. I alternate between songs when I practice ("interleaving") and it's not practical to retune between every song.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sotua
#5
INTP said:
There are FX in REAPER that will do this ('superpitch' and 'pitch2'). If I'm working on a set list and the original is not in standard tuning, I'll render a copy with standard tuning. I alternate between songs when I practice ("interleaving") and it's not practical to retune between every song.
Click to expand...
Yes, even thought my practice MP3 player/headphone amp (Tascam BT-1) can pitch shift it's a time waster to have to do it on some songs when you'd rather blow though a few to keep them fresh.
 
#6
LeeNunn said:
I use the octave feature to [...] raise the bass line to hear it better [...]
Click to expand...
I haven't used that - thanks for the tip :) ! My player/headphone amp only goes +- 6 half steps :( .

BTW there are 127 songs on my "active" list between the four bands I play bass in. Only 13 are common to two or more bands - although a couple of those are in different keys between the bands. I also supply the pitch shifted songs to my bandmates.
 
#12
I keep several basses with different tunings instead :D

all kidding asside, I never thought about pitch shifting as a solution to this problem... thanks for the tip... so far, I either didn't notice it was off, or found a way to play it in standard tuning. Or, sometimes I would find a guitar pro midi file and play with that in standard tuning (ugh!). I never bothered retuning my bass... I think I recall finding songs in different tunings on youtube too (e.g. sometimes a live or a cover version would be E standard vs Eb on the recording).
 
#15
You want Old School? I used to learn stuff (Yes and Pink Floyd mostly) on my turntable picking the needle up and down 1000 frigging times. Lots of chewed up albums. I had a speed control knob on the turntable itself with a strobe gadget and marks on the platter itself so you could get it to exactly 33-1/3 RPM. The knob had enough adjustment that I could match the turntable to most songs instead of re-tuning the bass. I was looking for a good practice setup years back and stupidly bought a Tascam "Bass Trainer". What a piece of junk! The CD cover snapped off the cheap plastic hinges in about three days. What are people using these days that allows the following:

1. Instrument in and headphone out, with a blend or mix knob.
2. Pitch control on a CD or MP3 input.
3. A decent onboard metronome.
4. A few decent digital effects.

The Tascam had all these features, but was so poorly made I gave up on it. I assume there is something that's purely software now. Recommendations?
 
  • Like
Reactions: monsterthompson, BassFishingInAmerica, DavC and 1 other person
#16
RoadRanger said:
Just wondering if I'm the only one here that pitch shifts songs to make them in tune with A440 for practicing against?
Some examples:
Rock This Town - Stray Cats (+60 cents)
Can't You See - Marshall Tucker (+20 cents)
Mustang Sally - Wilson Pickett (+20 cents)
Domino - Van Morrison (-35 cents)

Then there are others that were recorded in Eb standard (or some other) tuning so I will often pitch shift them to E standard so I can practice against them, even if the band I'm in tunes down.

I use a Windows program called "Transcribe!" to do the pitch shifting. It can show a frequency spectrum of the audio against an A440 scale so it's not too hard to fine tune the pitch. It can't save to MP3 but it's easy enough to save to WAV and use some other program to encode it to MP3.
Click to expand...

When I have to learn an off pitch song I use my fretless
 
  • Like
Reactions: ArtechnikA
#18
I use "guitar and drum trainer". It only shifts in semi-tone's, and doesn't have the ability to export the pitch shifted piece. It does however have an adjustable loop feature for isolating sections of interest. It can also change the tempo without changing pitch. And the adjusted song can be saved and played latter with the program.
 
#20
Judged on my ancient turntable experience, it was pretty rare to find any recordings that were exactly to pitch. You had only so much real estate on an LP, so they commonly speeded up or slowed down to make songs "fit" on an album side. All that got faithfully copied when stuff was remastered to CD or MP3. As an old fart, let me just say that the sound quality of most MP3's sucks. They get increasingly distorted when you slow them down digitally.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back