Pitch Shift For Thickening?

Fro

Fro

Experienced
My bass player keeps telling me I should be adding pitch shift to all of my patches for thickening. I think he said it was common practice at one time where everyone would have an Eventide in their rack with just a minor pitch shift of a few cents to thicken the sound, or round things out. I guess it's not as distinct or noticeable as a Chorus effect, but maybe a similar concept? I'm not real familiar with this. Does anyone do this? Is this worth trying?
 
To me personally it can sound out of tune unless you either modulate the pitch shift up and down below the in tune pitch or have two different small fixed shifts panned hard R/L.

To my ears, small delays panned hard sound big and in tune as compared to pitch shifts.
 
This is common and something I used to do on previous effects units. Haven't felt the need to do it on the Axe. It's funny, I spend tons of money on a box with every effect under the sun, and end up using fewer effects!

Anyway, the way I did it was to have a few cents flat panned hard left and a few cents sharp panned hard right. Adjust the amount of cents to taste (but I would always keep the magnitudes the same) and the volume of the shifted signals to taste (but again, keep them the same for the left and right). I would try to do it so that, like you bass player suggested, it "thickened" the signal, but didn't present itself as an actual effect.

It's easy to try and it can be fun in small doses (IMO). No harm in giving it a shot.
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Austin
 
Yup, used to do this with my Eventide, and now with the AxeFX II... Just put a pitch block in with+6-9 on one side and -6-9 on the other, pan them hard L & R... You can also use the Enhancer block to fatten it up... Just be mindful of how it affects the phase...
 
Great tips, thanks! I remember reading some interviews with EVH where from around 5150 on he would run a dry signal hard left with an Eventide signal dropped a bit hard right. It sounds like it all accomplishes the same thing. The real trick I guess is to see how much of it can also be applied to a mono signal with good results. It seems like most everything along these lines takes advantage of the stereo field. I want to be able to do both depending on what FOH has available to me.
 
I use my eventide eclipse to fatten the sound up in this way . It really sounds great and I have it set up on the mfc with an ia switch. I love the sound of adding some detune.
 
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