Let's make better music... Together! - Pitching and Formant Shifting
Introduction:
Hello Steemians!
On my last music production post, we went over Sidechaining: what is it, how do we use it and how can we try to experiment with it. So today in the same vein im writing about pitching and formant shifting. Like last time, I hope that anyone who feels like they can add to this post does so, because I want us to get better at making music, together!
So without further ado lets get into the topic.
Note: I use FL Studio for my music production and for the images I use in these articles, but these techniques apply in any DAW.
Pitching and Formant shifting? - What is it and what's the difference.
In music sounds played by instruments, made by vocals and sometimes even those from drums, have a pitch. Pitch is closely related to the notes on a keyboard. If I were to sing something, I could map out the pitch of my voice with notes. The act of pitching something refers to changing the pitch of the sound. So if I sing on the A note and pitch it up by 200 cents(or 2 half steps) the note that you hear is B. Simple, right?
Figure 1: In FL, pitching can be done with the pitch knob under time stretching
Formant shifting, on the other hand, doesn't actually change the pitch of a tone, it changes the timbre (which is a fancy way of saying the character of the sound). Timbre is something separate from pitch, but it is also understandable why people confuse the two, since most formant shifting programs put formant shifting on a knob that goes from -12 to + 12. ( The same scale as if you were pitching something; 1 octave down to 1 octave up) The scale makes sense in context; turn the knob down and the voice is deeper, turn it up and it's higher.
Some formant shifters have this setup with a male/female knob, the male side being deeper and the female side higher.
Figure 2: You can formant shift in FL using pitcher(male/female knob), but MAutoPitch is a free pitch correction VST(shown in this picture) which can also formant shift the sound ( in my opinion much cleaner than pitcher)
Common Uses
Pitching and formant shifting can be used to really spice up a vocal post production. Layer the same vocal on top of each other, but pitch one up or down and you can create vocal harmonies without having to retake the audio.
If you want to just beef up the vocal, you can layer 3 on top of each other, have 2 panned away from each other and use formant shifting to change them up, giving a sort of electronic choir sound.
If you have a section of your song that slows down heavily, Formant shifting the vocal down is a commonly used technique to make the vocal seem more at home in the slowed down version( think G-Eazy vocal modulation)
Experimenting with Pitches and Formants
Now that we got definitions and explanations out of the way, it's time to get into the fun stuff!
I'll go over some of the weirder things you can use pitching and formant shifting for and hope that anyone who knows some cool things others can try out can add to this.
Formant Shifting + pitching is a wombo combo for creating unique sounding voice effects. Consider pitching something up by an octave and subsequently formant shifting it down an 'octave'. This creates a very airy and child like voice effect, which is honestly completely unrecognizable in regards to the original voice. Layer this up with the original recording if you want to thicken it out a bit. I find this works well for more intimate slow R&B style vocals, but I'm sure this can be applied in other genres and styles as well.
You can also try doing the opposite – pitching the voice down and formant shifting it up – to create a very bass-y distorted type of voice.
Formant shifting also has some cool applications for ad-libs and background vocals. For instance, you can automate the formant shift and start a layered vocal or double up out with the same timbre as the main vocal, then as it goes on shift the formant up or down to your liking. This sounds electronic, but can create some cool textures in your vocals you couldn't humanly achieve with your voice.
Closing Up
The voice is a very powerful tool in modern music production. Your voice is the most unique instrument at your disposal and playing around with it can really add a new layer to you production.
I hope this short entry on formant shifting and pitching can help you to create some interesting textures, effects and, most importantly,