Sampled note + FL + Reaper pitch adjustment = detune

  • Thread starter Thread starter YanKleber
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YanKleber

YanKleber

Retired
Today I had a strange experience.

Yesterday I picked this song that I sequenced in FL and then exported the tracks for Reaper. Drums and bass line in MIDI and all the rest on WAV. Also I had a couple recorded guitar tracks that were put together. The vocals are going to be recorded yet.

Anyway, After to put everything in Reaper I noticed that it would be better if it would 2 semitones above. Since I didn't want to go back to FL and export all the WAV tracks again I just double-clicked them and used the Reaper 'Pitch adjust' option.

OK, today I was listening to it to start playing with the tracks mix and at certain point of the song the things didn't sound correct for me, in a specific part where there was only drums, bass and a long keyboard single string note. It really seemed as something irritatingly detuned. At first glance I thought that it was the bass, but after some tests I figured out that it was actually the keyboard.

Happens that this keyboard track came from a sampled string note that I found in the 'legacy' FL folder and that showed to be perfect for what I wanted. Obviously it was semitone processed in FL when I played the notes I needed (it had to be stretched to generate the different notes from the original) and then it was processed again in Reaper when I shifted the whole track by 2 semitones.

Long story short to fix the detune I had to shift this string track an extra 1/10 of semitone.

Now, being all digital and mathematically perfect it never shouldn't happen, right?

:confused:
 
Until you hit the first .wav, yes. Once you'd exported it to wav, every transformation that you performed on the note was run through a lossy, distorting algorithm of some sort.

Add to that the fact that your standard western scale is technically always out of tune, it's not surprising that you'd hit a note that's off by a few cents.
 
Got it! Thanks for the clarification, from now on I will pay more attention to it!

:)
 
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