Pitching

Zarsla

ENG-JPN UTAU User
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
So we all know about this thing called Pitching. It's basically where we edit the vocal samples to change the gender (eg a more girly sounding voice to a more boyish sounding voice or vice versa) some time during the process of when we make a bank to making it sing a song.
So for the sake of a clear and understandable discussion I've decided to break down the two main types of pitching I know.

1. Pitching the bank-this is done when the each sample of the bank is pitch to a lower or higher note, to change the gender. eg if you took your "a" sound in audacity and made 5 semitones lower.

2.Pitching the vocals- this is done after you've done the work in utau. And you're now in the mixing stage. You edit/alter vocals to make it sound like a different gender. eg you took your UTAU version of the world is mine and made it higher to make it sound like a girl.

So what I want to know are what are you opinions about this two things are they horrible things to do overall or are they acceptable in some cases? As well as why.

Now, Discuss!
 

shinami

Procrastination Queen
Tutor
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Pitching your UTAU vocals outside of UTAUs is, sorry to say, plain stupid. The "g" flag exists for a reason, and if the off vocal is a different key just adjust the UST itself. There is no reason at all to do it in Audacity or such and lower the quality.

Now, for pitching your own samples, it can be done well. Audacity has a very poor pitcher, but REAPER's is very good. You never want to do it too far, as it WILL sound bad/unrealistic/poor quality, and there's always the factor of pronunciation to consider (males and females say things differently). However, there are good UTAUs out there that are pitched (TATARI ahem). If you can voiceact it yourself (Misakura Hayao) that is FAR superior however, less loss of quality and it's more natural.
 

NaughtyPichu

Teto's Territory
Defender of Defoko
I made an entire, lengthy reply to this and I lost it... ;n; I'm going to make a short version of my opinions:

Pitching the bank: Your bank, your choice. There are certain sound characteristics pitching gives the voice that you probably won't be able to replicate by recording on that note. You should tread carefully though, keeping your priorities in check and carefully thinking through how important the "quality" is to you versus the "timbre" you are trying to get, which will undoubtedly be unnatural. I know some people have a problem with pitching because they think of it as "cheating", but it does sound unnatural and people sometimes like unnatural, and besides UTAUs are digital instruments and they should be able to be tweeked however the creator wants... if anything it adds a little more tone colour variety to a world of probably 1000+ utauloids.

Pitching the vocals: Well, g-flag doesn't actually change the pitch of the vocals, it does change the timbre in a way that outside pitching would...so you may be able to get a similar effect to pitching outside UTAU by pitching and using gender flags inside UTAU... if you have a good tool for pitching, it might be easier/more effective to just pitch it, depending on the effect you want. There are many cool things you can do with slight-pitching, such as a vocal fattening method that sweetens the main vocal, or perhaps makes it more "unsettling". And modulation effects sometimes throw the pitch around, but I'm not sure if that counts xD
 
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