Antares AutoTune 3 user manual

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Chapter 3: Auto-Tune 3 Controls
This chapter is a reference for all of the controls used in the Auto-Tune 3
interface. This chapter describes the function of each control. How these
controls are used together for intonation correction is demonstrated in
Chapter 4, Auto-Tune 3 Tutorial. Much of the information in this chapter is
also presented in Chapter 4. However, a few of the less commonly used
controls are only explained here.
Common Controls
The following controls and displays are visible regardless of which operat-
ing mode is selected. Their settings affect both Automatic and Graphical
Modes.
Sample Rate Display
This display indicates the sample rate of the current audio file as
reported to Auto-Tune 3 by the host application.
Note: Auto-Tune 3 is high sample rate compatible. If your host
application and audio hardware are capable of dealing with
88.2 kHz and 96 kHz files, Auto-Tune 3 will process them
correctly. However, it’s important to remember that high sample
rate files require twice the DSP power of 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz
files, so the number of possible simultaneous Auto-Tune 3
instantiations will be halved.
Another Note: If you are using external A/D converters with
independently selectable sample rates, it can be possible to
establish a mismatch between the actual conversion sample rate
and what the host application thinks is the sample rate. If this
happens, Auto-Tune 3 will appear to be correcting pitch to the
“wrong” key. If this seems to be happening, check to be sure
that your converter sample rate and your host application
sample rate (as displayed by Auto-Tune 3) match.
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Input Type
As a result of Antares research into the unique charac-
teristics of various types of audio signals, Auto-Tune 3
offers a selection of optimized processing algorithms for
the most commonly pitch-corrected inputs. Choices
include Soprano Voice, Alto/Tenor Voice, Low Male Voice, Instrument, and
Bass Instrument. Matching the appropriate algorithm to the input results
in even faster and more accurate pitch detection and correction.
To select the desired Input Type, click on the Input Type pop-up and then
select the desired type from the pop-up list.
Note: Choosing the wrong Input Type (or just forgetting to set
it at all) can result in compromised performance. Pay attention.
Another Note: When any Input Type other than Bass Instrument
is selected, Auto-Tune 3 is reliably able to detect pitches down
to A0 (55Hz). Selecting Bass Instrument lowers the lowest
detectable frequency by about one octave to 25Hz. Since the
lowest E string on a bass guitar is approximately 41Hz, Bass
Instrument (as its name so ably implies) allows you to apply
pitch correction to those pesky fretless bass lines as well as
other low bass range instruments. However, when Bass Instru-
ment is selected, pitches above A4 may be incorrectly tuned by
a perfect fifth, so be sure to select Bass Instrument only when
correcting bass range tracks.
Correction Mode
Click the appropriate button to select either Automatic
or Graphical Mode.
Select Pitch Reference
Auto-Tune 3 provides the ability to pitch correct stereo
tracks while maintaining the tracks’ phase coherence.
(Refer to your host application’s manual for instructions
on assigning a plug-in to a stereo track.) Click the appro-
priate button to select which of the two stereo tracks (left
or right) Auto-Tune 3 will use as a pitch reference.
Note: If there is a marked difference in the two tracks, pick the
cleanest, most isolated track. For example, if one track is a close
mic’d vocal while the other is mic’d from farther away for
ambience, or is heavily processed, select the close mic’d track.
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Another Note: Auto-Tune 3 will only pitch correct true stereo
tracks. If the second track (i.e., the track not selected as a pitch
reference) is simply an independent unrelated track, unpredictable
(and potentially unpleasant) sounds may result. On the other
hand, something interesting might happen. You never know.
Bypass
Auto-Tune 3 does not include a dedicated Bypass control as that function
is typically provided by the host application’s plug-in interface. However, it
is worth noting that Auto-Tune 3 is designed such that switching the
bypass state will not cause any audio artifacts. It can safely be used in
performance or in the middle of a recorded track.
Automatic Mode Controls
Knobs
All of Auto-Tune 3’s continuous parameters are represented as
knobs. To “turn” a knob, position the cursor over the desired
knob, press and hold the left mouse button (or the only mouse
button, if you’re using a one-button mouse) and move the cursor
up to turn the knob clockwise or down to turn the knob counter-
clockwise. The current value of each parameter appears in its associated
numeric display.
Double-clicking on a knob will return it to its default value. In some host
applications, Command/Control clicking on a knob will also reset it to
default (see the Auto-Tune 3 Read Me and/or your host application
manual for details).
Key Selection
To select the desired key, click on the Key pop-up and
then select the desired note from the pop-up list. This
determines the pitch of the first note of the scale
according to the standard A3 = 440 Hertz.
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Scale Selection
To select a scale, click on the Scale pop-up and then
select the desired scale from the pop-up list.
Note: To avoid having to deal with scales containing those
annoying double flats, double sharps and notes like Cb, E#, Fb
and B#, Auto-Tune 3 will automatically choose the simpler of
two enharmonically equivalent scales. For example, if you select
Db Major, the Edit Scale Display will duly display the Db Major
scale. However, if you then go to the Scale selection pop-up and
select Minor, the Key will automatically be changed to C# and
the Edit Scale Display will, in fact, display the much friendlier C#
Minor scale. This will also be reflected on the Pitch Graph
Display in the Graphical Mode.
The Scales
Auto-Tune 3 comes with 29 preprogrammed scales. The first three scales
are equal tempered. These are the ubiquitous scales typically found in
Western tonal music. The other scales are historical, ethnic, and microtonal
scales. An in-depth discussion of these scales and their history is beyond
the scope of this manual. The interested reader will find more information
in Tuning In — Microtonality In Electronic Music by Scott R. Wilkinson,
published by Hal Leonard Books.
The following is a brief synopsis of the scales:
Modern equal temperament:
•major: a seven-tone equal tempered major scale.
•minor: a seven-tone equal tempered minor scale.
•Equal Tempered chrom.: a twelve-tone equal tempered chromatic scale.
Historical tunings:
•Ling Lun: a twelve-tone scale dating from 2700 B.C. China.
•Scholar’s Lute: a seven-tone scale dating from 300 B.C. China.
•Greek diatonic genus: a seven-tone scale from ancient Greece.
•Greek chromatic genus: a seven-tone scale from ancient Greece.
•Greek enharmonic genus: a seven-tone scale from ancient Greece.
•Pythagorean: a twelve-tone scale dating from 600 B.C. Greece. This
scale is derived by tuning twelve pure perfect fifths upward and adjust-
ing the octaves downward. This leads to some pure intervals and some
very impure intervals.
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•Just (major chromatic): a twelve-tone scale. Just intonation tunes the
most frequently used intervals to be pure (integer ratios in frequency).
These tunings depend on the mode (major or minor) and the key. This
scale is tuned for major mode.
•Just (minor chromatic): (See Just (major chromatic), above)
•Meantone chrom.: a twelve-tone scale. This tuning is a combination of
Pythagorean and just tunings so that music in a wider variety of keys
could be usable.
•Werckmeister III chrom.: a twelve-tone scale. This scale was a first
attempt (about Bach’s time) to allow an instrument to be played in any
scale. It was in response to this scale that Bach wrote Well-Tempered
Clavier.
•Vallotti & Young chrom.: a twelve-tone scale. Another derivative of the
Pythagorean scale designed to allow arbitrary keys.
•Barnes-Bach (chromatic): a twelve-tone scale. A variation of the Vallotti
& Young scale designed to optimize the performance of Bach’s Well-
Tempered Clavier.
Ethnic Tunings:
•Indian: This 22 tone scale is used in India to perform ragas.
•Slendro: This five-tone Indonesian scale is played by ensembles called
gamelans.
•Pelog: This seven-tone Indonesian scale is more interesting than Slendro
and is now the primary scale in Balinese music.
•Arabic 1: This 17 tone scale is the original Arabic scale adopted from the
Pythagorean scale.
•Arabic 2 (chromatic): This twelve-tone scale is the modern version of the
Arabic scale popular in Arabic music today.
Contemporary Tunings:
Equal tempered scales with a large number of tones are typically used to
play common tonal harmony with greater purity of intervals and chords.
The typical approach is to analyze a passage (or less) of music and select
tones from a scale that will best approximate the desired pure intervals.
•19 Tone: This scale has greater purity of minor thirds and major thirds
(and conversely, minor and major sixths) than twelve-tone equal tem-
perament. A disadvantage is that perfect fifths are narrower than those
found in twelve-tone equal temperament.
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•24 Tone: Also know as the quarter tone scale, this scale is used for
variety but has no advantage in terms of ratios that better approximate
pure intervals.
•31 Tone: In addition to intervals that better approximate pure intervals,
this scale also contains good approximations to Indonesian pelog and
slendro scales.
•53 Tone: Related mathematically to the cycle of fifths, the 53-tone scale
has very pure major and minor thirds, and fifths and fourths.
•Partch: Harry Partch is considered the father of modern microtonality.
This scale was devised by him and used in instrument building and
performances.
•Carlos Alpha: Wendy Carlos performed extensive computer analysis to
devise a number of equal tempered scales with good approximations
for the primary harmonic intervals and their inversions. This scale is
good at approximating the primary intervals including 7/4. This scale
divides the octave into 15.385 steps forming intervals of 78.0 cents.
•Carlos Beta: This scale divides the octave into 18.809 steps forming
intervals of 63.8 cents.
•Carlos Gamma: This scale achieves perfect purity of the primary inter-
vals 3/2, 4/3 and 5/4. This scale divides the octave into 34.188 steps
forming intervals of 35.1 cents.
•Harmonic (chromatic): This twelve-tone scale is created in the partials in
the fifth octave of the harmonic series. The scale degrees that corre-
spond to the classic just intervals are the major second, major third,
perfect fifth and major seventh.
The Edit Scale Display
The Edit Scale Display is
used to create custom
scales or to modify any of
the preset scales. Edits
made using this display
are associated with each
scale. That is, each scale
retains its own edits
independent of the other
scales. For example, if you
select C Major and
Remove or Bypass certain
notes and then change to
C Minor and make other edits, when you return to C Major your previous
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edits associated with C Major will be restored.
The Edit Scale window displays each note of the currently selected scale in
the currently selected key. If the selected scale includes more than twelve
notes, Up and Down arrows will appear to allow scrolling through all of
the available notes.
Beside each note name are two buttons: a Bypass button and a Remove
button. Click on a button to toggle its state. The button will light to
indicate that its mode is active.
If neither of these buttons are lit, Auto-Tune 3 treats this note as a normal
scale note, i.e., when the input pitch is close to this note, Auto-Tune 3 will
correct the pitch to this note at the rate set by the Retune Speed control.
Bypass
If the Bypass button is lit, when the input pitch is close to this
note the input will be passed through with no correction.
Why set Scale notes to “Bypass?”
There are two main reasons to set one or more scale notes to
“Bypass.”
1. If a performance includes pitch gestures around one or
more specific notes that you want to preserve with no
modification whatsoever, you can set just those notes to
Bypass. This lets Auto-Tune 3 correct any pitch problems
elsewhere in the scale but passes everything near the
bypassed notes completely unprocessed.
2. If a performance contains only a single error, you can set all notes to
Bypass except the one “sour” note. Auto-Tune 3 will then pass the
entire performance through unprocessed except for the sour note,
which will be corrected.
Remove
If the Remove button is lit, then the note is simply removed
from the current scale. For example, selecting the Chromatic
scale and then setting setting C#, D#, F#, G#, A# to Remove
would cause a C Major scale to remain. In that case Auto-
Tune 3 would always retune the input to the closest note of
the C Major scale.
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Why set Scale notes to “Remove?”
To understand why it is sometimes necessary to set even correct scale notes
to ”Remove,“ let’s look again at the example from Chapter 1.
10.0 10.5 11.0 D3
B2 C

3
ORIGINAL
PERFORMANCE CORRECTED BY 
AUTO-TUNE 3
This phrase is in D Major and, if all the pitch errors were no greater than
about 49 cents, would work fine with a standard D Major scale (D, E, F#, G,
A, B, C# ). However, the pitch error of three semitones at the end of the
last note is so large that with B and C # present in the Scale, as the pitch
fell, Auto-Tune 3 would see first C# and then B as the target pitch and
therefore allow the error to remain. With C# and B removed from the
Scale, Auto-Tune 3 continues to see D as the target pitch for the entire
duration of the note and therefore pulls the phrase up to the correct
pitch.
Cents
The number in the Cents column is the associated note’s interval,
in cents, from the root note of the scale. It’s provided for refer-
ence purposes and to help you choose which notes of a
microtonal scale to include or remove.
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Set Major Scale/Set Minor Scale
When any scale that includes more than seven notes
(i.e., any non-diatonic scale) is selected, the Set Major
Scale and Set Minor Scale buttons will appear. Clicking
on either of these buttons will “Remove” all notes
from the scale except for those notes closest to the
notes of a traditional diatonic major or minor scale
(depending, of course, on which button you clicked).
Auto-Tune 3 MIDI Functions
Auto-Tune 3 contains two new functions that require it to receive MIDI
data from the host application. Depending on your intent, this data could
come in real time from a MIDI controller (typically a keyboard) or from a
pre-recorded MIDI sequencer track. Refer to your host application’s
manual for details on how to route MIDI to Auto-Tune 3.
Please note that some host applications may not support the routing of
MIDI information to plug-ins. In that case the following two functions will
not be selectable.
Target Notes Via MIDI
To use the Target Notes Via MIDI function, ensure that the
desired MIDI source is routed to Auto-Tune 3, then click the
Target Notes Via MIDI button. Its associated “LED” will light and
the Edit Scale display will automatically be set to a chromatic
scale with all of the notes set to Remove. While in this mode,
Auto-Tune 3 continuously monitors its MIDI input for Note On
messages. At any instant, the scale used for correction is defined by all
MIDI notes that are on. For example, if MIDI notes A, C and E are held,
Auto-Tune 3’s input will be retuned to an A, C or E, whichever is closest to
the input pitch.
The source of the MIDI input would typically be a MIDI keyboard or
sequencer track, and could consist of chords, scales, or, most powerfully,
the exact melody that the input should be corrected to.
Important Note: If you will not be defining Auto-Tune 3’s target
pitches via MIDI, be sure that the Target Notes Via MIDI button
is off. If it is left on and no MIDI note data is present, Auto-Tune
3 will pass through all audio unprocessed — giving the impres-
sion that Auto-Tune 3 is not functioning.
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Learn Scale From MIDI
In most cases, you will probably tell Auto-Tune 3 which notes to
correct to using the Edit Scale Display described above. However,
there may be occasions when it is not clear exactly what key a
melody line is in, or where the line has too many accidentals to
fit comfortably into a conventional scale. For those occasions,
the Make Scale From MIDI function allows you to simply play the
line into Auto-Tune 3 from a MIDI keyboard or sequencer track and let
Auto-Tune 3 construct a custom scale containing only those notes that
appear in the line.
To use the Make Scale From MIDI function, ensure that the desired MIDI
source is routed to Auto-Tune 3 and then click the Make Scale From MIDI
button. Its associated “LED” will light and the Edit Scale display will
automatically be set to a chromatic scale with all of the notes set to
Remove.
Now simply play the melody to be corrected from your keyboard or
sequencer. Tempo and rhythm don’t matter, so take your time and make
sure you don’t play any wrong notes. As each note is played, the corre-
sponding Remove button in the Edit Scale Display is turned off. Assume,
for example, that your melody starts with D, B, and then A. After playing
those notes the display would look like this:
When you have played the entire melody, press the Make Scale From MIDI
button again to end the process. The Edit Scale Display will now contain a
scale containing only those notes that appeared in your melody.
If you happen to make an error during note entry, or want to try again for
any other reason, simply click the Make Scale From MIDI button and start
the process again.
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