Pitch Shifter
Pitch Shifter raises or lowers the pitch of a sound without changing its speed — drop a voice an octave for anonymity, or nudge it up a touch for character, and it still plays at the same tempo. It works in real time by chopping the audio into small overlapping grains and reassembling them at a different pitch, which means very large shifts on sharp, transient-heavy material can sound slightly grainy — a natural side effect of doing this live rather than a bug.
Reach for it when:
- you want to disguise or change the character of a voice without slowing it down or speeding it up;
- you're after a creative pitch effect on an instrument or sample, in real time.
FX inserts can be added and set up on Free, but they only affect the sound with Premium.
Adding it
On a channel's FX tab, click + Node ▾ → Modulation → Pitch Shifter. It drops into the chain just after the selected node. To edit it, pin one of the dock's two panels to it with ⇅, or set a panel to ⟳ Follow FX tab selection and click the node.
In Simple mode, add it from the Effects block's ⚙ instead — see Simple mode.
Where it sits in the chain matters: it works on whatever reaches it, so place it wherever in the chain you want the shifted pitch to apply — before other effects if you want them reacting to the shifted sound, after if you want them acting on the original first.
Reading the panel
The graph shows a direct before/after waveform comparison — the incoming waveform on one side, and the same span re-scaled by the actual pitch ratio your SEMITONES and FINE knobs produce, on the other. A pitch shift is fundamentally a matter of compressing or stretching a waveform in time while keeping the playback speed the same — so this comparison is a genuinely honest picture of what the node is doing, not a stylized stand-in. Its intensity fades with MIX, matching how much of the effect you'll actually hear.
Above the knobs, a live readout shows the total shift — in semitones and as a plain multiplier — combining SEMITONES and FINE together, so you always know exactly what ratio you've dialled in.
This panel is compact enough that it has no ⛶ maximize button; it always shares the dock.
Controls
| Knob | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEMITONES | −12…+12 | 0 | Coarse pitch shift in musical half-steps. 12 = one octave up, −12 = one octave down. |
| FINE | −50…+50 ¢ | 0 | Fine tuning in cents (100 cents = one semitone) — for shifts that don't land on a clean half-step. |
| MIX | 0…100 % | 100 | Blend of shifted sound versus the original. Keep some of the original mixed in for a doubling or harmony feel rather than a full pitch change. |
A good starting point
- Add it and set SEMITONES for the shift you're after — a few semitones for character, a full octave (±12) for a dramatic change.
- Use FINE if you need something between whole semitones.
- Listen for graininess on sharp, transient-heavy sounds (consonants, plosives, percussive hits) — it's most audible on large shifts. If it bothers you, try a smaller shift, or lower MIX to blend in some of the clean original alongside it.
This is a real-time effect, not studio-grade offline processing — the further you push SEMITONES, the more likely you are to hear a slight grainy or robotic quality on sharp transients. A shift of a few semitones is usually clean; a full octave or more will show its work more.
Presets, bypass and reset
- PRESET ▾ in the panel header applies a saved setup, or saves the current one under a name. Once one is applied the header shows Preset: name — see Knowing what preset is applied. Ready-made setups can be found in the Workshop — Workshop ▸ Browse, filter chip Pitch Shifter.
- ON / OFF bypasses just this node — the quickest way to hear whether it's helping.
- RESET returns every knob to its default.
Related
- Effects Rack — adding, ordering and rewiring nodes.