Using Pitchmap by Zynaptiq for Synths, Samples and More

Tutorial | Mon Sep 20 2021 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

I recently bought the pitch map plugin by Zynaptiq, and I've been experimenting with it to create unusual workflows. I can use it to correct a pitch to a different note, and I can also use it to turn percussion sounds into synths, or use samples in the sampler. I can also use it on my Eurorack and analog synths to get diatonic chords. Overall, pitch map is a really useful plugin that I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is Pitch Map by Zynaptiq? #

Pitch Map by Zynaptiq is a plugin for audio workstations like Bitwig that allows users to adjust the pitch of audio signals. It has a visual interface which displays a map of notes, enabling users to drag dots around to transpose audio signals to different pitches. It also has a variety of controls that allow users to tweak the algorithm and sound to their liking.

How can Pitch Map be used to manipulate sounds? #

Pitch Map can be used to manipulate sounds in a variety of ways. It can be used to correct pitch, to transform percussion sounds into tonal material, to prepare samples for use in a sampler, or to detune analog synths. It can also be used to strip away MIDI information, allowing users to play the plugin like a synthesizer.

What is the strict mode feature? #

The strict mode feature is a setting within Pitch Map that allows users to get synth-like sounds from audio signals. When this mode is activated, transients are removed from the output signal, creating a sound that is closer to a synthesizer.

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] Welcome back folks today. It's about this plug in here. It's called pitch map by Zynaptiq
[00:16.600] and it's on the market for a long, long time now and it was available on sale. I think
[00:22.440] some weeks ago and I bought it and I tried to use it and then I came up with some unusual
[00:30.560] workflows. Maybe it's not so unusual but I want to show you how I use it. So first up
[00:37.840] it's just pretty simple, laid out here. You have input notes here that's your pitch is basically
[00:44.920] going in audio wise and then you can move these dots here around and correct it basically
[00:53.200] to a different node as you can see here. This one is as a B and it's corrected to a C sharp
[01:00.960] if I'm not wrong. Yeah, C sharp. So this is basically here the scale of eb minor which
[01:08.160] is D sharp minor. So everything audio wise going into that it's pitch corrected to D sharp
[01:17.160] minor scale and then you have here some controls where you can tweak the algorithm basically
[01:23.720] how it sounds and there you have a lot of possibilities. For instance, your purify simplifies
[01:30.840] the output signal which removes all the transients and it's almost like a synthesis method or
[01:39.080] it sounds like a synth. So you put in some noisy stuff and you get out here a synth sound
[01:45.080] and I can show you this here in a minute. For instance, let's go for some percussion sounds
[01:52.480] here in Bitwig maybe use here in e snare or something like this. So let's now then lay
[02:04.560] down a clip here put some snare sounds on it and then you can use your pitch map and then
[02:19.040] you see my D sharp minor scale, mute everything and...
[02:49.040] And you can do basically a synth sound with these snare sounds just only with pitch map.
[03:06.680] And you can see I turned up purify pretty high and I got the tip from the developer on Twitter
[03:13.720] that when you activate strict mode you also get more like synth sounds out of this which
[03:18.880] is nice and you can turn basically percussion sounds into tonal material which is pretty
[03:26.080] nice. Okay, something you have to be aware of is the MIDI input of this plugin. You can't
[03:32.120] disable MIDI input with the pitch map. You always get MIDI information in when you have
[03:39.280] your keyboard active on the track. So for instance here this track is an instrument track
[03:44.120] and when I play here my keys on the keyboard you can see certain keys become red which
[03:51.760] means you exclude these keys from pitch shifting which is sometimes not what you want. What
[03:59.720] you can switch the C2 live MIDI, MIDI map which means you can't play this plugin like
[04:06.200] an instrument. If your strict mode active maybe you can dial down your purify a bit. And
[04:21.200] you can play it like a synthesizer. But sometimes you don't want to have MIDI input at all
[04:35.040] in this situation where you have to exclude active. Like you don't want to exclude
[04:40.680] you every time you play some notes. So what you can do is inside Bitwig you can use
[04:45.880] just a channel filter like this here and just disable all the channels. So you strip
[04:55.120] basically the MIDI information or the note information away from the pitch map and
[04:58.920] now you can play it on the keyboard. And you can see no keys are here. Disabled are
[05:06.640] turned into red excluding keys. You can also use pitch map for preparing samples for
[05:15.840] the sampler inside Bitwig for instance. So I have here this jazz guitar loop. So it's
[05:30.200] playing different notes right. And when you want to use this in the sampler you can
[05:34.200] do this of course in this form also but when you put your pitch map on it you can say
[05:44.720] just give me here only C back or pitch every single note of this key to the C note here.
[06:10.960] We put a small reverb on it. Something like this. And then you bounce maybe or put
[06:23.440] it into the sampler. Yeah let's just bounce this here. Then you use a sampler and put
[06:34.520] this in here. And then yeah you basically have a nice new sample you can use. Let's
[06:44.000] turn this up. Root should be C3 probably. Let's do this bit longer here. Let's try it
[06:53.880] out. Or maybe go it texture smooth. Rain up this one up. So it's nicely pitched or crunched
[07:14.280] down to one note which is easy than to play in multiple notes.
[07:27.640] Hey get nice sounds out of it. You have to play around with this but you can easily
[07:46.920] just take any sample from your hard drive that has multiple notes in it and turn it just
[07:52.000] in a flat one single note sample and then use it in the sampler. At least that's what
[07:58.960] I'm using it for. Also try to use this on my Eurorack because it probably produces a lot
[08:06.320] of inharmonic content sometimes and also you need to tune a lot of these devices manually.
[08:12.480] And just put it through pitch map and you get also some nice results out of it. This is
[08:17.040] a session I recorded recently and just by letting the Eurorack run through the pitch map and
[08:23.480] playing around with the parameters of pitch map you get nice results.
[08:53.320] Thanks for listening, guys.
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[09:52.680] Also interesting using pitch map on your hardware, on your analog synths.
[09:58.680] Because pitch map takes care of all the right tunings and you can't do really wrong.
[10:04.680] Even just detune all the oscillators, get some nice diatonic chords out of the synth just by using pitch map.
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