Zplane reTune User guide

reTune

Quickstart Guide v1.0

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 2

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 3

Contents

1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 4

2 How to use .............................................................................................. 5

3 Examples ................................................................................................ 8

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 4

1 Introduction

reTune gives you full access to the pitch content of your audio samples
and enables you to map each input pitch to any other pitch of the
chromatic scale - all in real-time.

This allows you to re-tune your audio to any target key (e.g. from D major
to C# minor), or to use it as a creative tool to modify the pitch content in
any way you like. If you are unsure about the key of your input audio, you
can let reTune estimate the key for you.

In addition, reTune can act as a pitch correction tool that quantizes pitches
to the nearest semitone. Additional controls include the sensitivity of the
pitch detection, the treatment of transients as well as a smoothing of the
pitch contours.

Quickstart Guide reTune

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2 How to use

In the following we will introduce the general views and controls of reTune
at a glance.

(1) View selector - Switch the appearance of the plugin window

between simple, normal and advanced view. In simple view you have
access to the basic controls only. Normal view additionally displays
the pitch mapping matrix, whereas in advanced view you have
access to all controls.

(2) Input key - Select the key of the input audio by specifying its root

note and scale. If you don't know the key of your input audio, reTune
can estimate it for you when you hit the "Learn key" button (see (3)).

(3) Learn key button - Estimate the key of your input audio. In order to

accurately estimate the key, you should play a characteristic section
of your audio while having the button enabled. You can manually end
the learning phase by hitting the button a second time. reTune will
end the learning phase automatically once a stable key estimate was
found and display the estimated key. You can accept or discard the
key estimate by hitting the green checkmark or the red cross.
Accepting the key estimate will set the input combo box to the
respective key.

(4) Pitch correction slider - Correct the intonation of your input audio.

With pitch correction fully enabled, each pitch will be set to the
center of the nearest semitone and any pitch variation will be
removed. Disabling pitch correction leaves the relative pitch
contours unaltered. Any slider position in between these two applies

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 6

pitch correction proportionally. Pitch correction is only applied to
those columns of the pitch mapping matrix that contain a mapping
point.

(5) Output key - Specify the key of your output audio. You can set the

root note of the output key by transposing the input audio by a
number of semitones (see transpose box (6)).

(6) Transpose box - Transpose the input by a fixed number of

semitones.

In normal or advanced view you have access to the pitch mapping matrix.
Map input pitches (horizontal axis) to output pitches (vertical axis). By
selecting an input key and an output key, a mapping between input and
output pitches is automatically set up. You can manually modify the
mapping of an input pitch by clicking any cell in the column of that pitch.
The display of both the input and output pitches are organized in
ascending chromatic order starting with the root of the selected key.
Columns that do not contain a pitch mapping, are likewise transposed by
the amount specified by the transpose box (6).

Quickstart Guide reTune

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Sensitivity - Set sensitivity for pitch detection. A high
sensitivity will shift a large number of pitches whereas a
low sensitivity will only shift the most predominant
pitches.

Transients - Set transient strength. A value of 100% will
leave the transients unchanged. Larger values will boost
the transients, lower values will attenuate the transients.

Smoothing - Set smoothing of melodic lines. Shifting
individual pitches can result in gaps in the pitch
transitions of connected melodic lines (e.g. of vocals). A
smoothing is applied to even out these gaps and to
avoid jumps in the pitch contours. Shorter smoothing
times will result in less smoothing and will enable
quicker changes in the pitch contours, whereas larger
times will result in a stronger smoothing of the pitch
contours.

Dry/Wet - Control the ratio of dry and wet signal output.

Product activation button - opens a context menu for

product activation (not available in BETA!).

Help button - opens the help menu.

Quickstart Guide reTune

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3 Examples

In order to get you started we will outline a few example use cases for
reTune. These include changing the key of an input file, tuning an
instrument and making creative use of the reTune’s pitch mapping
functionality.

3.1 Changing the key of your input

In your audio workstation, drag an audio file into a track and make sure
that reTune is added to the effect chain of that track. In order to achieve a
meaningful key mapping, you need to set the input key combo box (2) to
the key of your audio input. If you don’t know the key of your input, you can
hit the “Learn key” button (3) while playing the audio. reTune will come up
with a suggestion that you can either accept or discard.

Once the input key is set, select the output key you would like to tune your
audio to. You can modify the root pitch of the output key by transposing
the input. Use the transpose box (6) to specify the number of semitones
you would like your input to be shifted by. You can select the output scale
by selecting one of the scales in the output key combo box (5).

The mapping of the individual pitches between input and output is
displayed by the highlighted cells in the pitch mapping matrix. You can
manually change the mapping of each input pitch by clicking on one of the
cells in the corresponding matrix column for that pitch. Matrix columns
that do not contain a highlighted cell are merely transposed by the number
of semitones specified in the transpose box (6).

After specifying input and output pitch, adjust the parameters sensitivity,
transients and smoothing to your needs. If your input is a single instrument
that only plays one or a few notes at a time, set the sensitivity to a low
value. If your input contains more complex audio, increase the sensitivity
accordingly.

You can vary the amount of transient preservation with the transient slider.
Good transient preservation will affect the pitch shifting quality and vice
versa. Just experiment with the transient slider to find the right amount of
transient preservation.

Likewise, experiment with the smoothing parameter to find the right
amount of pitch contour smoothing to bridge potential gaps caused by the
shift of individual pitches.

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 9

Different parts of your song might contain different keys, so you might
want to apply different pitch mappings to different parts of your audio. You
can use your workstation’s automation feature to change the pitch
mapping at certain positions in your song. Just move the play cursor to
the position you would like a new pitch mapping to begin, adjust the
mapping parameters as described above and take an automation
snapshot.

3.2 Tuning an instrument

You might have recordings of instruments that are out of tune and that
you would like to be in tune with the rest of your arrangement. A guitarist
might have been a bit negligent while tuning his guitar or a singer might
have been a bit flat at times. You can use reTune to correct the pitch of
your input audio.

If your audio input is already in the right key, select ”C chromatic” both as
input and output key. This will highlight all input pitches in the pitch
mapping matrix and will map each input pitch to the same output pitch.

Use the pitch correction slider (4) to adjust the amount of pitch correction.
Full pitch correction can be achieved when you drag the slider completely
to the right. Any slider position in between will apply pitch correction
proportionally.

3.3 Using reTune creatively

Instead of using the predefined input and output scales, you can configure
reTune in any way you like.

You could for example create a “One Note Samba” by mapping all pitches
to a single pitch. Just manually map all input pitches to a single output
pitch. You can modify the output pitch by changing the transposition.
Similarly you could map all pitches to a single chord which results in a
vocoder-esk effect.

Or you could add an upper part to an instrument melody that either stays
in the same key. Say you have a melody in “C major”, just shift it to “E

phrygian” and put the dry/wet slider to 50%. This will add an upper third to
each note with all notes being part of the “C major” scale. Or experiment
with using a different scale than “phrygian” to obtain some notes that are

out of key and to make it sound more interesting.

Quickstart Guide reTune

© 2016 by zplane.development GmbH & Co KG 10

Feel free to experiment with reTune’s countless possibilities. Some pitch
mappings will sound more musical than others.