Pitch Changing Software

[menhir]

I'm spent the last two nights, red-eyed and tired, working out a particularly involved piece from a recording. Bleh.

Although I'm right capable of deconstructing recorded music and then transposing it into a suitable key for guitar and my voice, this one was a bit more complex than usual. Jobs like this would go a lot faster if I could raise or lower the pitch of an wav or mp3 file without altering anything else. (If I could also save the transposed file, that would be cool, too. If it were free or at least inexpensive, the would even be cooler. )

I know there's software out there that will do the job, but before I try or buy, I was wondering if anyone here had any recommendations.

(I figured the recording section would be the place to ask. Mods, if I'm wrong please feel move this question to wherever you please. )

[Bowie]

You just want to pitch shift the entire recording? If you use a DAW (recording software) most of them will let you pitch up a recording, without any special add-ons. Most do it with or without quantization (meaning they will speed it up like tape or just keep the tempo the same).
What recording software are you using?

[Racerbob]

Check out Riffstation. It allows changing pitch up and down in multiple steps. I'm not sure if it will save the file after the chance but any good software that allows recording whatever is playing on the computer can do that for you.

One nice feature is Riffstation will show all the chord alterations that go with the pitch change since one of it's major features is showing the chords of a song as it is played.

[rick-slo]

Audacity (free)
will pitch shift (maintaining original tempo)
or tempo shift (maintaining the original pitch)
or speed shift

The first two will distort the sound to some extent

[runamuck]

Unless you're changing the pitch up or down just a few cents, I've never heard an app do that without creating unwanted, unpleasant artifacts. There probably is something out there but to maintain high fidelity you're almost certainly going to have to pay for it.

[FwL]

This is one of those areas where an Audacity recommendation actually makes sense.
.
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[menhir]

I just downloaded Audacity and will give it a go.
(I appreciate that it's cross platform too, available in Windows and Linux.)

I bookmarked Riffstation, but it looks like their site is down this morning.

As of now, I don't have any other recording software. I'm concentrating on building a stage-ready repertoire which means, for me, learning a lot of potential songs, paring the list down to the ones I think will work for me playing solo, and then concentrating on making them suitable for performance.

The basics of the song that kept me up all night were easy enough to figure out, but there were a lot of counter melody lines, embellishments, and passing tones in the accompaniment that were interesting enough to the point where they were almost essential to the way I wanted to play it. Usually, I'd just use to capo to match the guitar to the key (which was a bad key for guitar) and learn by playing along but in this case, the capo would have been on the 11th fret. .
Eventually, my brain kicked in and I just tuned down the guitar to finish the job. D'oh!
That's what initiated my question regarding pitch-changing software...Just to speed the process up if I come across a similar circumstance.

When I'm happy enough with my list of available songs, then I'll submit myself to the cruel god of home recording which I know from prior experience, will shine a cold, heartless light on all the other things I have to fix before I hit the stage.

Due to the demands of my business, I've been off stage for many years, and I've never performed solo. There are only a couple more years before I retire and I'm trying to get ready to hit the stage then. Wish me luck.

And thanks for the advice.