Macros and Capturing Audio

RePitch features a small library of task-orientated Macros (Initial Processing Settings) covering a few common usage scenarios. 

It's often entirely possible to get most of your desired tuning results by applying a Macro when you capture the audio, with relatively little further adjustment required.

After capturing a signal in RePitch, you can choose to:

• Manually make all adjustments yourself, OR…
  
• Let RePitch automatically apply specified adjustments to the whole signal, or a section of the audio.  
  • Then make further adjustments manually if required,
  • Or use RePitch's further automatic processing.

Which options you choose will usually depend on your confidence and experience with the Macros.

The Macro Selector

When you first open RePitch, the Macro selector will look like this:

When you click the area shown above you will see this selection of Pitch ranges first.

You might wonder why?   

It's simple:

Setting the Pitch range makes RePitch process faster and its editing sound better.

Also, please note that although we show pitch ranges mainly for vocals, RePitch can very effectively process single-note (monotonic) instruments, from Bass to Flutes. This is discussed later in the topic Pitch Range below.

For now, you only need to select the pitch range of the incoming audio, and then you'll be shown a few Processing options such as the 3 shown below.

Most Macros you create will refer to Snapping Notes to Scales (or not snapping).

We will explain how you access and present these scales in a later chapter here.

For now - we'll describe how to start with you doing all the work and then how to get RePitch to do the preliminary work for you.

Option 1 - You only do manual editing after capturing your audio

If you are familiar with manually editing the pitch and other signal features, you can choose the setting shown below (available for different pitch ranges) and then use the manual (and automatic) editing tools described in the chapters which follow.

However, we also recommend at least trying the two automatic "Snap to Scales" Macro processes described next, as they are designed to save you time in the long run.

Option 2 - Automatically Move (Snap) Notes to Scales After Capturing Audio

We suggest trying RePitch with one of these TWO Macros if you want an automated starting point:

The Macro above indicates that the audio will be analysed to find the best "Measured Scale" match, and then the audio's  note blocks will be moved to the detected (Measured) Scale’s note centres with a "centering strength" of 100%.

If you prefer telling RePitch what specific Scale you want the notes tuned to, use the Macro below.

This will use the scale shown in the Scale display area (see example below) which is showing "Chromatic".

The captured audio's note blocks will be moved to the Selected scale’s Note Centres with a "centering strength" of 100%.

As mentioned previously, we will explain how to make the list of scales you can chose from in a later chapter here.

Changing a Macro setting after capture

When you use a RePitch Macro to pre-process, after it is done, you can still select a different Macro and run that Macro's processing.  This includes running a Macro (with no note snapping) that will reset your audio back to its original pitches.  Before the processing starts, you will be shown a warning that all manual and any automatic editing will be lost if you select a new Macro.  In general, once you start to manually modify the audio - you should not chose a new Macro setting again on that range of audio, because all the manual (and previous automatic) edits will be lost.

The Macro Settings Window

For the above factory setting, you will see this:

This menu is useful for inspecting the settings and also changing them to create your own USER Macros, which will be shortly be described below.

We first will explain the items in the window.

Macro Settings Descriptions

Setting Name	Purpose
Pitch Range	Used to select the range of the audio frequencies analysed to save processing time.  You can set whether the input signal is in a low, high or normal voice, or a high, bass or normal instrument range.  See further detail below.
Center Notes to	The slider sets the "note centering strength" where 100% means "Snap" i.e. move the note block's measured average frequency to the defined frequency of the nearest Measured or Selected scale, depending on the "Snap Using" selection. 50% means move the note halfway towards the nearest defined scale note frequency and 0% means do not move the note.
Snap Using	If set to "Measured Scale", the target scale for moving notes to is defined by the best "guess" of matching a histogram of the measured notes' frequencies to an extensive selection of existing scales. This should NOT be used if a singer is not very accurate in hitting the right pitch. If set to "Selected Scale", the allowed notes are defined by the User's Scale Selection which is described here
Shift Formants	If ON, the Formants (i.e. resonant frequencies related to acoustical properties of the sound creation mechanism) will be shifted up or down by the number of Cents shown.
High Resolution Editing	Turns On or Off extra processing for improving editing of high-pitched audio. This involves up-sampling the audio to 384kHz for the internal editing process, which prevents certain rarely encountered artifacts at the expense of additional processing time. This is mainly helpful in editing more "pure" tonal signals such as high female voices, flutes, bell sounds and so on. NOTE - THIS INCREASES PROCESSING TIME

User-created Macros

The user can modify any of the Macro control panel settings and save these choices as named User Macros. We will step through this simple procedure next.

Let's say we have recorded a Bass Guitar and want to manually adjust some notes in the recording. 

We can select a Pitch Range = Bass Instrument and turn off Center Notes to, and also keep "Selected Scale" to be displayed.

The window would look like below but the old Macro Name is present. 

Pressing the Save as User Macro Settings button will bring up a window like this (on Mac OS and similar for Windows)

Managing User Macros

User Macros can be renamed or deleted by clicking  and then clicking in the Macro Setting Name which in this example shown below is "User - Bass Guitar - Manual Editing"

This will bring up the menu window below

Clicking Manage Macro Processing in the menu above will take you to the RePitch User Macro directory, which in this example will look like this on a mac.

The computer's directory system will let you Rename or Delete the User Macros you create.