This is, I think, an English usage thing. When Chris says, “should have a key,” I would say, “does have a key.”
In other words, acidized audio loops which do contain metadata including key signature … which also will display Key info if you add the Key category to your MediaBay browser window, will play in project tempo when audited if a project key has been set for the project.
This I know and like.
I want the ability to pitch detect audio files that are not acidized … either some wav loop collections or chopped audio … and then once the pitch detection is complete either automatically enter key metadata or give me an opportunity to enter it.
One place this would really shine is with Loopmash. Loopmash permits pitch stretching … but unless you know the pitches it is not so useful. Sure you can tune them by ear … but it would be a lot better to know them going in.
By the way one handy little pitch detection tool is freeware Analog X Auto Tunehttp://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Audio/autotune/Freeware.htm . It is intended to repitch anything to a desired frequency … but careful, however, because it does it destructively. The cool thing is that in order to repitch it has to read the original pitch … repitching from A to C is different than repitching from B to C.
So the trick is:
- make a copy of the audio you want to pitch detect.
- process the audio in Auto Tune.
- scroll in the program window after you process and you will see something stating converted from xxxx to xxxx.
- take the from value and stick it in Analog X’s other freeware Frequency Converter http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Audio/freq/Freeware.htm, and it will read out the key that value is from.
- now you know your pitch even in complex polyphonic files. Occasionally it will get it wrong … but only harmonically, like the key of the 5th instead of the root.
OK … I can do it … but I still want MediaBay to do it for me instead!
Como
