Pitch Fixed Harmony for alternate tunings, missing semitone intervals?

Z

Zemurray

Member
Hi,
New Axe FX user here. I appreciate any insight anyone could give on problem I'm trying to overcome. Another Axe FX guitarist that I play in a cover band with and myself want to use the pitch affect to be able do do some low tuned songs, for example one cover needs a B standard tuning. I've created some patches using the fix pitched harmony to get this effect, however since we are natively tuned in Eb, the 4 semitones required to get to B are not an available option. When adjusting the pitch value, it seems that there are certain intervals that are not available. You can not input a value of 4, it will go only from 3 directly to 5 semitones.

I've found that I can use the master pitch control on the other tab of the affect, and crank it down to approximately 80% to get close, however I was curious if this was necessary, or if there is a limitation within the pitch affect that certain semitone intervals are not available such as 1,4, etc.. Perhaps this is a bug? Or does it not track well so those values are not available ?

Any input from the Axe FX guru's would be appreciated. I've done quite a bit of searching here and haven't found anything related.

Thanks!
 
You can go -24 to +24 in the Fixed Pitch Shifter?

Use the Fixed Harmony shift and the voice 1 parameter. It goes from -24 to +24 semitones.
 
javajunkie said:
You can go -24 to +24 in the Fixed Pitch Shifter?

Use the Fixed Harmony shift and the voice 1 parameter. It goes from -24 to +24 semitones.
Click to expand...

Thats exactly what I would have thought. But there are values that are not available. like 4. If I manually type in a 4, it goes to 24. If I use the knob, it goes straight from 3 to 5. it also goes straight from 0 to 2, which skips 1.

Perhaps it is a bug. I was using the Axe Edit program from the mac. Maybe I'll try do do it on the front panel and see if I get the same results.

I am on FW version 10.11.
 
Just to report back, it was the Axe Edit software. Editing the intervals on the Axe FX front panel worked fine. Thanks.
 
I have a question too, why does the fixed Pitch sound a bit like chorus effect?
I do drop my tones too, about 1 whole or 3 halve notes, when i use the A Whammy effect ( with EXpedal ) the the tone sound pretty real.

I am i doing something wrong with the fixed Pitch shifter?
 
Zemurray said:
Hi,
New Axe FX user here. I appreciate any insight anyone could give on problem I'm trying to overcome. Another Axe FX guitarist that I play in a cover band with and myself want to use the pitch affect to be able do do some low tuned songs, for example one cover needs a B standard tuning.
Click to expand...

how do you handle the latency with such low pitch shift tunings? and what about playing chords? not really possible with the pitch shifter.
 
inbouwer said:
I have a question too, why does the fixed Pitch sound a bit like chorus effect?
I do drop my tones too, about 1 whole or 3 halve notes, when i use the A Whammy effect ( with EXpedal ) the the tone sound pretty real.

I am i doing something wrong with the fixed Pitch shifter?
Click to expand...
You have to turn down the level on the voice you're not using.
 
sure you can reduce the latency but with these low tunings it will never be as stable as normal unpitched tunings.
And playing complex chords with pitch shifter on doesn't really work very well is my experience. Haven't updated updated since FW 5.07 so I don't know if anything has changed regarding latency in the pitch shifter since then?
 
Bodde said:
sure you can reduce the latency but with these low tunings it will never be as stable as normal unpitched tunings.
And playing complex chords with pitch shifter on doesn't really work very well is my experience. Haven't updated updated since FW 5.07 so I don't know if anything has changed regarding latency in the pitch shifter since then?
Click to expand...

Playing complex chords will make the pitch shifter less accurate of course. Simple and basic chords, can be played somewhat (depends on many factors). But it will never substitute any real downtuned guitar if accuracy is what you´re out after, especially when complex chords are involved. Latency can in the future perhaps be reduced to some lower figure, but I´m guessing that would take whole lot of CPU calculations. But still, you can´t really discard the physics involved. There is a pitch analysis needed to be done BEFORE any shifting really can occur. The pitch shifter has been upgraded:

Pitch shifter (block) - Axe-Fx II Wiki

/Mike
 
miketheman said:
Latency can in the future perhaps be reduced to some lower figure, but I´m guessing that would take whole lot of CPU calculations. But still, you can´t really discard the physics involved. There is a pitch analysis needed to be done BEFORE any shifting really can occur. The pitch shifter has been upgraded
Click to expand...

Yes, I knew it was upgraded to a 3 voice pitch shifter. But I don't know if the latency has reduced since 5.07? Also the latency in the synth block and arpeggiator is not really workable for me. You can use it of course but not to full satisfaction (for me). I think if you really want to go that route you have to buy a guitar synth, VG or Variax (for alternate tunings).
 
I've had good luck pitch-shifting chords by a few semitones. Complex chords (by that I mean jazzy, major 7th plus flatted fifth plus diminished, with a twist and a flourish :) ) don't work as well. Latency is well-enough masked by Simeon's trick to suit me.

That said, pitch shifting is no substitute for real alternate tunings, for more reasons than just latency.
 
To the original question someone posted about how well it works, i'm not a huge fan of using a pitch effect to do a lot of alternate tunings, however that being said I play in a working cover band and they were wanting to do a five finger death punch song that happens to be in B standard. It certainly works good enough to do that for a cover song with mostly basic chords and a few fills. The latency is not a huge issue when just trying to get through a song or two like that. It's not worth bringing a 4th guitar LOL. Even if I did want to bring a 4th guitar, I'm not going to dedicate one for a whole new setup and heavy strings to go 2 steps down. I was actually surprised that it worked as well as it did for that scenario. Now if the song had a lot of single note work with pitch bends, it would not work as well.
 
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