Pitchshifter - Intelligent Harmony Question

guitardoc

Experienced
Hi,

This is not so much a technical but rather a music theory question.

I want to use the pitchshifter in order to create some harmonic sound by playing just one note, whereas I play the higher note and want the pitchshifter to create the lower one.
Here is what I play and what the pitchshifter is supposed to do:

What I playWhat the pitchshifter should playSteps down in scale F majLegato notes
FC-4I
CA-3I
EC-3II
CG-4II
A#G-3III
GD-4III
DA#-3IV
CA-3IV
EC-3IV

As you can see, there are two problems:

1. I want the pitchshifter to play different notes to my playing the same notes,
2. When assuming F maj scale there are different steps you have to take down to get to the desired notes.

What i did was attach a modifier to the step value in the pitchshifter and toggle between -3 and -4. However, that is a rather cumbersome solution, since the first two, the second two, the third two and the last three notes (see the last column in the table) are played legato which gives room for a lot of switching possibilities that can go wrong...

Anyway, I could live with switching in between but not while playing the legato notes. I tried to figure out which scale to use, but none the implemented scales seems to fit. Building my own scale in the most convenient way modifier-wise for this song is somewhat out of my depth (lessons in music theory are too far back to really remember in detail)...

Is there anyone out there who could help?
 
If you want different notes for the same input note at different points you're kind of forced to do some type of switching, unless you want to take another approach: use custom shifter mode w/ 2 voices at 100% mix, where you play "wrong" notes that get shifted to certain other notes. For example, you could have a C produce A-C (-3 and 0 shifts for C in the 2 scales) while a B produces G-C (-4 and +1 shifts).
 
just create a custom scale and then you can have the pitchshifter play whatever notes you like

choose the "cust shift" type in the pitch block

hit global on the front panel and page right until you get to the global scales bit

for each note on the left (which are the ones you'll play) select how many semitones you want the harmony note to be away. so find F on the left and dial in -5 on the right

don't leave any zeros or -24's in there. for the notes you're not using, put in a value close to the adjacent values. helps with stability when using vibrato etc

now because you want different harmony notes from the same notes that you play, you may want to create two custom scales, so that all the harmony notes you want are dialled in

then in the cust shift block, select scale 1 for voice one and scale 2 for voice two. you can then swap between them by using a pedal that is inversely attached to the volume levels of the two voices - toe down = voice 1, toe up = voice 2

hope that helps
 
Intelligent harmony set to the key of F would do this: F major = F,G,A,Bb(same as A#),C,D,E shifted a third would be A,Bb(same as A#),C,D,E,F,G. Check me if I'm wrong.
 
Intelligent harmony set to the key of F would do this: F major = F,G,A,Bb(same as A#),C,D,E shifted a third would be A,Bb(same as A#),C,D,E,F,G. Check me if I'm wrong.

That's the key but there's more work to set up what he described, due to the mix of 3rds & 4ths.

BTW, if the Cs needing an A & G are played in different octaves there actually would be a way to set this up without having to do any manual switching or play wrong notes.
 
Thank you guys for the help.

@Simeon: the custom shifting might work but there's still some switching included. I'll check it out tomorrow at which notes the switching is necessary.

@Bakerman: unfortunately, the notes are on the same octave. But I'm nevertheless interested in how you would do it without switching if they were on different octaves?
 
Thank you guys for the help.

@Bakerman: unfortunately, the notes are on the same octave. But I'm nevertheless interested in how you would do it without switching if they were on different octaves?

If you get one block outputting each voice somehow (pan L/R and send to 2 vol/pan blocks w/ input select L & R, or just use 2 pitch blocks) you can set up pitch as a bypass modifier on those blocks in a way that engages the one you want when you're playing notes in a certain range, and mutes the other one.
 
just create a custom scale and then you can have the pitchshifter play whatever notes you like

choose the "cust shift" type in the pitch block

hit global on the front panel and page right until you get to the global scales bit

for each note on the left (which are the ones you'll play) select how many semitones you want the harmony note to be away. so find F on the left and dial in -5 on the right

don't leave any zeros or -24's in there. for the notes you're not using, put in a value close to the adjacent values. helps with stability when using vibrato etc

now because you want different harmony notes from the same notes that you play, you may want to create two custom scales, so that all the harmony notes you want are dialled in

then in the cust shift block, select scale 1 for voice one and scale 2 for voice two. you can then swap between them by using a pedal that is inversely attached to the volume levels of the two voices - toe down = voice 1, toe up = voice 2

hope that helps
If you have say 8 custom scales in the Global scales. When you set up a pitch block with a custom harmony how doesit know what custom scale to use?
 
So if I had a custom scale in #8 in the global scales voice 1 I would change to 8 and leave voice 2 on the same #8 unless its a 3 part harmony #9 is the second harmony

Turn voice 2 level to 0% if you only need 1 shift. 2 voices w/ the same shift will sound kind of weird; one exception is if different detune amounts are used on each voice.
 
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