AUDIO
PITCH PERFECT : A PRIMER ON LIVE SOUND PITCH CORRECTION - PART 1 | Jeff Hawley
As live sound engineers , we frequently operate in a world where there is no real right and wrong objective standard around things like the overall equalization or compression on a given input signal . A quick perusal of articles in live sound magazines and back issues of Worship Musician will turn up debates about how to achieve the ‘ right ’ bass drum sound or the most effective EQ on a lead vocal signal chain . But these articles general include some sort of caveat or what philosophers might call a ‘ ceteris parabis ’ clause - all things considered or all other things being equal . If the room is really bass-heavy or overly reverberant , the general rule of thumb may in fact change .
This article introduces a realm of audio engineering in which there is a much more standard goal or ‘ right ’ answer as we move from amplitude and timbre ( roughly compression and
EQ ) to the world of fundamental pitch . A pitch of 440Hz to represent the note ‘ A ’ is in tune when the note sounds at 440Hz and is wrong ( out of tune ) when it deviates from 440Hz . What sorts of things do we need to know in order to introduce tools like pitch correction and autoharmonizers in the live sound space given this much more stringent definition of right and wrong or in-tune and out of tune ?
While this article will present a couple basic concepts for engineers who are new to the topic of pitch correction , it makes sense to back up and clarify a bit around the sorts of tools that we are discussing . You may have heard of Auto-Tune , which is somewhat like the Kleenex of pitch correction . There are many different companies that make pitch correction tools , and they are often just referred to colloquially as being some form of Auto-Tune . But Auto-
Tune is a specific software tool created in 1997 by Antares Audio Technologies .
Made famous in a noticeably extreme case of pitch correction ( that became a sort of audio effect in its own right ) with Cher ’ s 1998 song ‘ Believe ’, more subtle applications of the tool are prevalent in studios and live applications across the musical spectrum . Pitch correction tools are available from Antares ( Auto-Tune Pro ), Waves ( Tune Real-Time ), Soundtoys ( Little Alter
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