I know A guy can build a pedal that can drop a pedal one or 2 octaves. BUt how about 2 or 3 half steps?

You'd need a pitch bender.... that's kinda difficult to do, unless you go digital (:x). Even if you're doing digital effects you still gotta do some programming...

To my knowledge there isn't anything in the DIY community that does this... I gues the Boss PS-5 (pitch shifter) or HM-2 (Harmonist) can do what you want.

i think you could use a combonation of flip flops and counters to get just about any ratio you wanted.

You can get any small-whole-number ratio down. You need to clean up the signal, square it up into a square wave, Phase-Lock-Loop it to a programmable divider chip. That lets you generate thirds, fourths, fifths, etc. One or two half steps are very hard this way, because you have to generate fractions to approximate the twelfth root of two - 1.059...(continues forever)

See the harmonizer article from E&MM at Mark Hammer's site.

Pitch shifters are another way, as are DSPs, but they're a whole quantum leap more complicated.

The last two guys, you're WAAAY outta my leage... Is there any pedal i can BUY that can do this then? Like, i wanna do stuff 2 or 3 steps down, but i'm too lazy to tune. Band's like a perfect circle...I dig the whole downtuned guitar thing. Will the ps5 do this for me?

Korg Toneworks AX100G?

in general you're not going to be able to reliably shift your whole guitar signal down a step or however much you want. maybe their is a digital way of doing this (including chords and stuff) but i've never seen anything this powerful.

paul, i have a korg ax 1000g and it does have a pitch shifter (which sounds pretty awful, but only works on single notes and no matter where you set the mix knob, the original note is always at it's normal volume, the pitch shifted note is just added on top... stupid digital... i can't even mod the damn thing!

but as for wanting to tune down... i'd suggest either investing in a good quality tuner, so you can go down quickly and easily, or if i really had my way, i'd just say buy a new guitar... do it like a lot of great bands have (trail of dead, sonic youth) have a different guitar for each tuning... sure this might seem a little over the top at the moment, but having more than one guitar that is gig quality is a must in my opinion.

sorry for the lack of effect help...

trent

This can be done for about $35 in a DIY context with DSP, but it takes some hard work and you need boards to be professionally done unless you want to do photo type etching at home. I already have the code for both pitch up and pitch down. Each takes a different method to eliminate clicking. The best part is the DSP code will work on chords too, but nothing is perfect.

Maybe in a few months I'll have the DIY DSP boards ready to move, but right now money is beyond tight. When they arrive, the boards will fit inside a 1590B box.

Take care,
-Peter

Wow. I was thinkin like adding this feature to a boss oc3? Like A 2 step down switch, and a 3 step down switch. I wouldnt need a volume, cuz it'd be a total switch. I'd rehouse the oc3 into a hammond box. I think i can buy the oc3 circuit from roland.

Maybe this will make it clearer why it ain't gonna happen.

Octave boxes *divide* the frequency of the note they get by 2 or 4 (or both) for one or two octaves down.  So feeding it 400hz would get you 200 and 100hz.  Getting something in between 1 and 2 (e.g., 350hz) or 2 and 4 (e.g., 150hz)  requires dividing by fractions and nobody makes a chip that divides by 1.25 or anything like that.

On the other hand, cast your mind back to grade 6 math.  If you *double* the frequency of the note you feed in, and divide *that* by, say 3,  you can get things other than what I described in the paragraph above.  So, using the formula (F * 2)/3, if you doubled the input then divided by 3 (a whole number rather than fraction), you can get something less than a full octave down (i.e., 2/3 of an octave down).  If you *quadruple* the input and divide by 5, you get something which is 4/5 the frequency of the original, right?

So, using octave-box technology, the way to generate intervals other than octaves is to multiply the input frequency high enough so that if you divide it down by whole numbers, you can produce something just like "fractions" of the original.

The Harmony Generator RG referred to uses such a method.  The phase-locked-loop he refers to is an oscillator that tracks the input frequency, but generates/plays an artificial tone several times higher.  That signal, in turn is divided down by a counter chip that can only divide by whole numbers (2, 3, 4, 5, etc).  But, if you start off high enough, dividing it down gets you something that can end up being just a bit higher or lower than what you originally played.

The general principle is that the higher you "up-shift" to begin with, the easier it is to use division by whole numbers to eventually get you what you want.  As you can imagine, getting something that is 5/6 the frequency of the original requires some *serious* upshifting.

Make sense?

A true harmonizer works differently.  They can be built using analog techniques, but are normally digital since analog version are pretty damn complex.  Go to my site (http://hammer.ampage.org) and read the review of the old A/DA Harmonizer floorpedal in the back issues of DEVICE, and you'll realize exactly how much is involved.  That particular pedal probably several times harder to build than the E-H Microsynthesizer for guitar/bass.  Not exactly a starter pedal!

I aint lookin to build it really. But you know how digitech whammy's have that divebomb thing, that can drop you an octave. BUt its not a sudden drop. YOu can actually hear it slowly going down. Would a whammy help me out? Like positioning the rocker perfectly or something?

To do this via DSP....

http://www.alesis-semi.com/datasheets/AN3201-02.pdf

Take care,
-Peter

A whammy will "work" but you might not be too impressed with the sound. It will drop the pitch polyphonically (i.e. you can play chords) but the further you drop the pitch the less natural it will sound.

I just tried the whammy emulation on my Zoom 707 and it wasn't too bad down only a semitone or two but even that small amount was enough to change the sound enough to notice.

Try the whammy patch on a cheap multi like a Zoom 505 and see if that works well enough for you.

I've got a Boss BR-532 digital recorder.  One of the effects it has built into it is a digital pitch shifter.  You can change your pitch by half-steps a full octave up or down.  What you have left is your original signal plus a pitch changed signal of whatever value you program into it.  You can then remove 100% of the original signal, leaving you with just the pitch changed signal.  I've actually used it for recording a "7 string" guitar sound without actually having a 7 stringer.  The biggest problem with this is that the natural attack of the guitar is....skewed (for lack of a better word).  There seems to be  the slightest delay between hitting the strings of your guitar and the having sound emit from the speakers.  It's quite difficult to keep a good rhythm.  The sound is only usable.  You wont the guitar's natural warmth and attack.  But, it works.  :wink:

I've got a Digitech RP-12 which has a pretty decent harmonizer built in, and it has a preset that lowers your pitch wherever you set it too. I used it for a while to tune down a whole step so the singer could sing a song that was out of his range. It sounds better than it FEELS when you doing it.

Honestly, if you dig the downtuned thing, you should get some big ass strings and tune down. It will sound better, and feel better than a harmonizer.

Regards

RDV

Quote from: RDVHonestly, if you dig the downtuned thing, you should get some big ass strings and tune down. It will sound better, and feel better than a harmonizer.

I agree with RDV totally!  Beyond testing the pitch shifter's capabilities and satisfying my tweak-o-freak fettish, I wouldn't recommend using one for downtuning.  It'd be MUCH easier and sound 300% better just downtuning your axe by hand.

Or if you have too much money you can get a second axe, downtune that and have your other guitar in E tuning.

Darn I need to get a job :mrgreen:

But I tried the boss harmonist HM-2 and loved it, too bad I couldn't afford it at the time, but it was so powerfull that you could play power chords one octave lower with just one string :mrgreen: Maybe I gotta get one of those 2nd hand or something...

I have an RP-12 as well, and it does a pretty good job at harmonizing. The whammy effect is cool too, but I've found the actual pitch shifter to be a little more accurate (at the cost of not being able to do the whammy effect of course :-D) I have a fairly hard time playing complex stuff unless my amp is up loud enough to cover up the natural ringing of the strings.

I'll throw in a vote for some sort of a DSP solution.

You guys are right. Even if i did have a good pitch shifter, teh tracking would suck. So here are my two options, downtune my guitar, i can't buy a new one, cuz this is a les paul, ebony neck ::drools:: circa 1990. Or i can get a boss oc3, and play up 9 steps when the tone is one octave down.

The OC-3 doesn't track polyphonicly right? I know the OC-2 doesn't, I have one, but yes you could drop the octave by one and play 9 steps up... bit of a pain though, can't you just transcribe the song? :mrgreen: