Page 1 of 1
bad quality after small key change
Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 11:22 am
by sibealhill
Hey! I'm new to audacity, and have been trying to change the key of a piece of music. I know the quality gets worse the more you key-change it, but already after -1 or -2 semitones it sounds terrible with a really distorted bass. Is this normal? Is there something I can adjust to get rid of that? I don't really know how to use a lot of the the other tweaking possibilities. I've only tried to change speed and key. Thanks!
Re: bad quality after small key change
Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:15 pm
by whomper
... Is this normal?
YES
Is there something I can adjust to get rid of that?
NOT with a mere editor.
*IF* you can play the music into a program that would convert it to midi or written notes then you can use other programs that would change the key and allow you to unconvert back to music without sounding bad.
The convert programs are not perfect and you may have to edit/fix many of the notes yourself before unconverting.
If you are playing the music then transpose it yourself.
If the original is from a score you can fax that then repeat from the midi spot above.
Re: bad quality after small key change
Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:47 pm
by steve
In Audacity 1.3.12 there is an effect called "Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift".
This is a lot slower than the normal Pitch shift effect, but generally produces higher quality results.
If you can cope with the speed changing as well as the pitch, then use the "Change Speed" effect - this gives much higher quality than Change Pitch because it is in effect just causing the signal to be played at a different speed rather than all the complexities of "time stretching".
The perceived quality of the time shift effects ("Change Tempo", "Change Pitch" and "Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift") is very dependant on the type of sounds that you are processing - some sounds can be stretched much more effectively than others.