I have noticed this search coming up a fair bit in my stats, so thought I better write a post on it. I’m gonna grab a vocal line from something I’m writing at the moment, and run through using the Adobe Audition Pitch correction plug-in. I am using version 1.5, but version three is out now hopefully the operation will be reasonably similar.

You can not use the Adobe Audition Pitch Correction in real-time in the multi-track window. You have to select the track you wish to pitch correct, and double click it to go into the edit window. Here is the vocal line in the song without pitch correction.

It is best to pitch correct the vocal track line by line. Select the first line, then go to pitch correction. The Automatic function can be very good if you know the key you’re in, I find it a little unreliable if I use the chromatic scale setting. I am singing in A Major for this piece, but there are some parts of the song where I need to sing a C natural which is not in the key of A major, so I can’t just pitch correct the entire song to A major. However, I can pitch the first line to A major. The next line, I can adjust the pitch manually by selecting the manual tab, finding the note that needs tweaking and then adjust the envelope as shown in the picture. So I can go through the entire song quite quickly line by line either adjusting to the key signature, or manually adjusting any notes that either don’t fit the key signature or are too far off.

Here’s the corrected vocal line, it’s just done roughly because it’s only a rough vocal take for a demo of a song. And no amount of pitch correction could make a rough vocal take sound great.

Extreme pitch correction can be used as an interesting effect… In adobe audition just turn everything up to max and pretend you’re Daft Punk, or Cher, or a robot.

I have just got back from a nice little trip to Melbourne Australia, and while I was there I was lucky enough to stumble across an exhibition called “Game On”.  As I’ve been doing music for computer games here and there I thought I better pop in for a look.  The Exhibition is on the history of computer games, and they have over 100 playable exhibits.  Some are on old computers, some are original arcade games, some groovy old retro hand held games, and plenty of new shiny stuff too.  The neat thing is, the history of computer games is not yet long enough to be dull and boring (like, the history of literature… dare I say it?  I love books… but… yeah…).

You can find more details about Game On at http://www.acmi.net.au/game_on.aspx I really recommend checking it out if you have the chance.  I’m not a ‘gamer’ at all but I still got a lot out of it and found it really interesting and fun.  And yes, they have a computer music section and I spent waaay to long hogging the headphones and listening to all the game music