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A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:59 am
by waterstrum
I know there are many pitch correction solutions out there.
I use a few of them, but DP's built in thing is excellent.
I love a challenge and recently took on a project with a couple of severely pitch challenged singers.
It is a sweet song and they are lovely people.
It is their dream to make a recording of this song.
They know they suck in the pitch department.
Thanks to DP's pitch editor, I was able to make their song sound very nice.
They were amazed and I was too.
Very subtle and natural.
No evidence of tuning.
I don't usually endorse heavy pitch correction.
In this case, it was very good medicine.
Since this is the Usage, Techniques, Tips forum...
I advise any DP user to fully investigate the Pitch functions available in DP.
Learn the various pitch tools and you will have many solutions at your fingertips.
probably a "duh" for most, but I have to testify!
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:13 am
by kassonica
+ 34709853097832095
I only use it sparingly but when I do it works a treat and can be used on any mono source.
Ps I think it's got better with each version of DP as well.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:33 am
by newrigel
It's as good if not better than an Eventide flagship IMO. It's nice and fat with no quantization artifacts.
The formant works great too in conjunction. Yes, definitely DP's strong point for layering and doubling.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 2:28 am
by jloeb
+1
I bought Melodyne Editor for its polyphonic pitch editing capacity specifically, but I was curious to try the monophonic pitch editing aspect of it. It is nowhere near as convenient to use or globally adjustable as DP's built in pitch editing, and the results are no better. There are so many advantages to having pitch editing integrated into the very DNA of DP's sequence editor that no plugin can even come close. MOTU owned that whole scene, and did it years ago.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:56 am
by scooter
Yes, I was talking to a friend yesterday about the greatness of this feature in D.P. 7.
It's super convenient and incredibly easy to use and I also feel the quality is great.
What more is there to say.
Way to go MOTU!!
scooter
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:36 am
by daniel.sneed
Yes !
It's so powerful that, when it comes to my hand, I must refrain overusage.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 1:32 pm
by Dwetmaster
Yep the engine has been so improved through the years. It used to leave artifacts but now it's pretty solid to me. And the fact that it's built-in makes it a no-brainer. I still use Auto-Tune as a plug in for an overall cleaning but for any precise editing, DP's pitch editing gets my vote. I don't have a use for melodyne.
The only drawback I have to say is that the hand/scissor/lasso tool acts a bit sluggish sometimes. I sometime have a hard time to pop the different tools. I wish it was on a key command/sticky keys basis like the rest of the graphic editing. It would be easier to toggle the different tools.
Kudos to MOTU for improving the stretching algorithm as well.
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:40 pm
by dpdan
I too love DP's pitch automation features.
I also bought Melodyne Editor and it is FANFRICKENTASTIC!
I also posted on the Melodyne forum how DP's built in pitch automation allows the user to draw, copy, and paste vibrato, and how silly it is that Melodyne Editor doesn't. I also mentioned that they need to have the blobs (pitch segments) change color once they have been modified in any way.... like DP.
BTW, DP's pitch automation algorithm still has some graininess issues. It is noticeable with extreme high end stuff like solo violin where Melodyne's is as smooth as silk .. way up there
I love DP's pitch, and am proud of the original poster for bringing this up.
Dan
Re:
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:07 am
by jloeb
dpdan wrote:I also posted on the Melodyne forum how DP's built in pitch automation allows the user to draw, copy, and paste vibrato, and how silly it is that Melodyne Editor doesn't. I also mentioned that they need to have the blobs (pitch segments) change color once they have been modified in any way.... like DP.

Amen to that. But even more bothersome to me is that Melodyne has no equivalent to DP's Adjust Pitch Segmentation slider in monophonic editing. I've lately been working with a particular tenor pop singer who has a pronounced, Tracy Chapmanesque vibrato and a great set of pipes but who needs pitch correction from time to time.
With this singer, Melodyne's pitch detection is, I hate to put it this way, just absolute and total crap relative to DP's. It seems to conjoin adjacent notes about 30% of the time when it shouldn't, and about 60% of the time chop his vibrato into a million little notes all of which has to be dealt with individually, by hand in Melodyne using the note separation tool.
DP does an intrinsically better job at finding the actual sung notes, but wherever it's a problem I can just pull up the Adjust Pitch Segmentation slider and bingo, in two seconds there's almost no work at all left to do regarding note assignment. This seems to me to be such a basic function of a pitch editing tool that I'm literally gobsmacked that Melodyne has nothing functionally equivalent. In this scenario, Melodyne is so inconvenient to use it's all but useless. I should head over to the Celemony forum and mock them appropriately...
Fortunately, for voice I have absolutely zero problems with the quality of DPs pitch processing. It takes a nuanced hand occasionally, but when you treat it like surfing (i.e. work with the natural pitch contours you have instead of manhandling the pitch into right angles), DP's pitch correction on vox is truly undetectable.
I'm glad I have Melodyne for polyphonic pitch tasks (bum guitar intonations, etc), which no other tool out there right now can handle, and if I need to pitch correct violin or other high register instruments it sounds like I'll be glad I have it then as well. But for vocals I can't even compare the ease of using DP to Melodyne's hot mess.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:23 am
by waterstrum
Yeah, another case in point...
I had two very skilled singers in today.
They did amazing performances and there were a few pitch things.
I used DP's built in pitch correction for a few notes and they were very happy.
Looking at the screen, they were asking what plugin I was using.
No plugin necessary!!
I have autotune/wavestune/melodyne, (all great programs) but none of them could have done this as effortlessly.
DP rocks!
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:57 am
by cloudsplitter
I'm ashamed to say I just bought melodyne without even giving DP's pitch correction a chance.....if this thread hade been put up a week earlier I would have saved $350.00.approx.
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:48 pm
by dpdan
here's something I did a while back just for fun...
the video is the San Francisco Symphony, but the sound is all GPO.
Ironically, the GPO bassoon I used does not have vibrato, so I used DP's pitch automation and created my own. None of the original sound is used from the video, all the sounds are from GPO. I used DP's conductor track to alter the tempo in order that the MIDI notes play in sync.
It was fun!
Dan
http://www.dankury.com/videos/firebirdsnippet.mov" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 8:55 pm
by Shooshie
dpdan wrote:here's something I did a while back just for fun...
the video is the San Francisco Symphony, but the sound is all GPO.
Ironically, the GPO bassoon I used does not have vibrato, so I used DP's pitch automation and created my own. None of the original sound is used from the video, all the sounds are from GPO. I used DP's conductor track to alter the tempo in order that the MIDI notes play in sync.
It was fun!
Dan
http://www.dankury.com/videos/firebirdsnippet.mov" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
As usual, excellent work, Dan. Not just blowing hot air at you; I know what it takes to get every bit of that so accurate, and that's just simply great work. You even matched the string vibratos… very cool.
Shoosh
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:01 pm
by dpdan
Shooshie wrote:
As usual, excellent work, Dan. Not just blowing hot air at you; I know what it takes to get every bit of that so accurate, and that's just simply great work. You even matched the string vibratos… very cool.
Shoosh
awe shucks Shooshie, say that ten times real fast

I really should have used Garritan Orchestral Strings instead of GPO's,
but in this context I think they sound good.
You are so kind Shooshie!
Dan
Re: A tip of the hat to DP's pitch mode
Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:27 am
by Kaczinski
Very cool demo, DPdan!I am totally impressed! I had given up on DPs pitch system and used Melodyne for the last 2 years - the quality of DPs pitch correction was not up to scratch for me. This thread has given me a new incentive to give it an other go.

Looks like it could be a very convenient way that might save me time - I shall report back later...
volker