Pitch adjustment tips and tricks

With Neptune you can use the pitch adjustment effects separately or in various combinations to generate different types of pitch effects. In this section a number of useful setups are described.

Using automation for temporary pitch correction

To get the most natural-sounding results from Neptune you can use automation in the sequencer to momentarily apply pitch correction only where it’s necessary on the audio track. The example below shows a lead vocal track which sounds great most of the time, but has a few flat passages that we want to correct.

1.	Use Neptune as an Insert Effect on the lead vocal track.

Between the middle of bar 13 and bar 15 there are a couple of flat notes that need to be corrected slightly. Between the middle of bar 23 and bar 27 there are some notes that we want to change several semitones.

2.	Create a sequencer track for the Neptune device.

3.	Set the Pitch Adjust button parameter to “Off” and create an automation lane for the parameter.

This will allow you to switch on and off pitch correction automatically.

4.	Set the desired Scale or click the notes you want to use on the virtual keyboard.

5.	Adjust the Correction Speed and Preserve Expression parameters to values that will make the pitch correction sound natural.

6.	Activate the Formant section so that any adjusted pitches will have the original formants preserved.

7.	Create an automation clip and change the Pitch Adjust button parameter to “On” between the middle of bar 13 and 15.

This will switch on pitch correction only in these bars.

In bar 23-27 we want to change some pitches several semitones. We can’t use the automatic pitch correction here because this would correct the pitches to the closest notes in our scale and that is not what we want here. We could create a new custom scale in another Scale Memory slot and use here, but the easiest would be to just override our scale with MIDI notes.

8.	Change the Pitch Adjust parameter to “On” in bars 23-27.

This will switch on pitch correction again in these bars.

9.	Next, make sure that the MIDI Input in Neptune is set to “Pitch Adjust”.

This ensures that any incoming MIDI notes will control the Pitch Adjust section (and not the Voice Synth).

10.	Place the sequencer Song Position Pointer at bar 23 and start recording on the Neptune note lane.

Record the new notes from your MIDI master keyboard at bar 23 through bar 26.

Now, pitch correction has been applied only where necessary on the audio track. In bar 13-15 pitch correction was automatically applied using a defined scale, and in bar 23-27 the automatic pitch correction was overridden by MIDI notes.

If you like, you could freeze your pitch processed track with the effects - see “About “freezing” pitch adjustments on audio tracks”.

Hard pitch correction of a vocal track

1.	Use Neptune as an Insert Effect on the vocal audio track.

2.	Use a suitable scale setting and set the Correction Speed parameter to max and Preserve Expression to minimum in the Pitch Adjust section.

If needed, adjust the Scale to fit the song key. If necessary, override certain passages manually with MIDI (see “Using automation for temporary pitch correction” above for a practical example).

If you want to control the pitch adjustment via your MIDI keyboard, create a sequencer track for the Neptune device and select the Neptune track in the Track List.

If you like, you could freeze your pitch processed track with the effects - see “About “freezing” pitch adjustments on audio tracks”.

Pitch correction with changed voice character

If you want to pitch-correct your lead vocal but make is sound like another person is singing, you can easily do that:

1.	Set up the Pitch Adjust section for automatic pitch correction as desired (see “Using automatic pitch correction”).

2.	Activate the Formant section.

3.	Adjust the Shift parameter up or down to change the voice character of the output.

Adjust down to generate a deeper (male) character and up to create a more soprano-like female character.

Octave dub

1.	Use Neptune as a Send Effect in the Main Mixer Master Section.

2.	Turn off the Pitch Adjust section and activate the Transpose section.

3.	Set the Semi parameter to +12 to transpose up 1 octave.

4.	Play back, or input audio in real-time on your mixer channel.

5.	Use the Send FX control on the mixer channel strip to balance the level of the octave-shifted voice.

Use the Formant Shift control to make the transposed voice sound more natural (or unnatural, if that's what you want).

Pitch-shifting drums (non-pitched input)

1.	Route the drum sound to the audio input(s) of Neptune.

2.	Turn off the Pitch Adjust section and activate the Transpose section.

3.	Set Semi and Cent parameters to desired values.

Use the Pitch Bend control for special bend effects.

Activate the Formant section and experiment by shifting the formants if you like.

Speech effects

To create various types of atonal speech effects you can use the Transpose section, alone or together with the Formant section:

1.	Make sure the Pitch Adjust section is deactivated (off).

2.	Activate the Transpose section.

3.	Set desired transposition ratio with the Semi and Cent spin controls in the Transpose section.

Adjust down to generate a darker voice and up to create a brighter voice.

To lock the formants and thus preserve more of your voice’s original character, activate the Formant section and set the Shift parameter to the 12 o’clock position.

To change the voice character, adjust the Shift parameter down to generate a bassier (male) character and up to create a more soprano-like female character.

Experiment with different combinations of Transpose values and Formant Shift values to create different “characters”.

About “freezing” pitch adjustments on audio tracks

In all examples below that describe pitch adjustments of recorded audio tracks, you can choose to “freeze” the tracks afterwards. By using the Bounce Mixer Channels function you can have your pitch processed audio track rendered to a new track in the sequencer, complete with pitch adjustment effects and all. Just be sure to use the following settings in the “Bounce Mixer Channels” dialog:

•	Range to Bounce: “Song” (to get the entire track rendered, if that’s what you want)

•	Bounce to: “New Tracks in Song”

•	Apply Mixer Settings: “All” or “All except fader section” (to include the pitch adjustment effects)

Refer to “Bouncing Mixer Channels” for more details.