Airwindows PitchNasty: Mac/Windows/Linux/Pi AU/VST

[jinxtigr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo8hSy7r0SE

TL;DW: PitchNasty is a primitive pitch shifter that also has primitive time-stretch artifacts.

PitchNasty.zip(615k)

So this is a bit unusual. Though this is a sound mangler, there's no bit crushing here, and in fact most of the time it's delivering a very high-res immediate and punchy pitch shift, super clean and tight.

It's just that the rest of the time it's throwing a nasty, loud sample-glitch, at audio rates. No, beyond that. It's throwing digital trash at you so hard it becomes a musical note!

And therein lies the secret of PitchNasty. This plugin brings you the heart of old school digital like your classic Akai stuff, back when they did not have the luxury of doing anything elegantly or nicely. Instead, you got things like time stretches that just plain looped a tight time cycle and overlapped it, producing a weird digital honk. Some folks really seem to crave that stuff, and there's a reason.

Turns out if you do that, your results tend to be very punchy, direct and intense, except for the weird robotic overtone that's welded to the sound like it's a musical note. Things like drums love being timestretched or repitched in this way! It's a whole retro tone, which PitchNasty starts off with. The crossover is very slightly 'clever' in a way the retro stuff isn't, for the purpose of making it sound more retro and less DAW-like: it keeps the presence very high while slightly masking the high frequency edge of the 'note' you get.

But then PitchNasty goes way beyond, in that Airwindows way. You've got two pitch controls, one giving you note intervals in half-steps, and the other being a pure pitch bend. They stack, for really high or low bends. Then, there's a control that's the same as the classic Akai method of setting the sample buffer size… but for this one, you specify the buffer as a musical note (six octave range). Set it insanely high and you're basically not able to pitch shift anymore because the buffer's too small, set it insanely low and it barely registers as a note anymore. And then after that, how about a feedback? How about a feedback that can be cranked to more or less constant regeneration? This gives you horrible wonderful old Eventide noises of many descriptions, or you can use traces of it to make your existing sound more complicated and harmonic-dense.

And then the whole thing's followed by a Dry/Wet, and you can see that PitchNasty sticks so tightly to the underlying sound that you can get it acting like a giant flanger or strange overtone generator. And that's the other secret of the crude old Akai-like time/pitch processing: when you don't have any RAM or CPU to work with, you can only do naive primitive things that happen to sound really immediate, direct, alive. It doesn't lose the impact of a drum track. If you set it up to thicken a snare by applying, Eventide-like, a 30% layer of pitch up (or down, with feedback), there is no flam or hesitation to the sound like more sophisticated algorithms would have to do. Instead, it's just THERE in the sound, with a hefty dose of digital gnarliness, but woven right in to make a very 80s composite sound that's huge and fierce.

If you would like to use this as a time stretch, what you should do is open the source sound in an editor, change the sample rate without resampling until you have the new pitch you want and apply that, resample it back to what your working sample rate is (use a good resampling method, you don't need to use a bad one), THEN use PitchNasty to re-pitch it to what the target pitch is. That'll give you the time-stretch artifacts, because they are really just pitch-change artifacts used in a different light. Hope you like PitchNasty!

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

[Funky40]

I like it !


it reminds me of my old Iron ether FrantaBit Pedal. A RM with a twist.

Pairs nicely with a LP Filter ! ......just to mention
Well, my actual patch has a "DIY" BP Filter in use ( combining a Hicut and loCut + combined controls).
The aspect that it can lock at single notes triggers me the most.
....similar fun as with the FrantaBit.
the first time i stumble over such thing in Software.

Much Thanks Chris !

[jinxtigr]

I made the grind lock to musical notes so you could automate it into melodies that were in tune

[Funky40]

I made the grind lock to musical notes so you could automate it into melodies that were in tune

good reminder !
This specific aspect would have slipped my attention
since i mostly just play realtime play *by hand*. No sequenzing at all.

But i have a Hapax at hand, in fact "also" routed to the computer,
and i allready envisioned that it would certainly be fun to send some sequenzing over to Pitch Nasty.

yeah, i allready came into territory that was better feeling than where the FrantaBit brought me vs. "lock in to specific notes and walk from there".
Need to check with Bass guitar !
......yours with Bass was btw. "for me" the part of the demo that made me jump.

Tanks again !
...still need to dig thru all the other FX.
(i only know airwindows from years ago, when everything seemed to be more focused on Ambienty music)

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Now I crave a DigiMcNasty that does some Digitech Whammy type sounds. Or at least the one-octave up sound on the Whammy. Maybe it's just all the Radiohead (My Iron Lung, Subterranean Homesick Alien) and Rage Against the Machine, but that weird, glitchy pitch shifting just sounds great to me. Haven't found anything in software that nails it. That said, I have the hardware and a reamp box if really needed. But a plugin version of just the octave up alone, would be killer.

[jinxtigr]

Now I crave a DigiMcNasty that does some Digitech Whammy type sounds. Or at least the one-octave up sound on the Whammy. Maybe it's just all the Radiohead (My Iron Lung, Subterranean Homesick Alien) and Rage Against the Machine, but that weird, glitchy pitch shifting just sounds great to me. Haven't found anything in software that nails it. That said, I have the hardware and a reamp box if really needed. But a plugin version of just the octave up alone, would be killer.

PitchNasty has that second slider, which goes between an octave down and an octave up. Wouldn't that work? If you had a controller (like a foot controller) and could map it to parameters I'd make it go from 0.5 (no change) to 1.0 on the second slider, and maybe also do something like take the grind control and move that up too just for fun and to make it weirder

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Hi Chris, it's just that particular sound of the Digitech Whammy pitch shifting that I'm after ITB. PitchNasty is just a little too aggressive IMO. The Digitech method results in a smoother, almost chorusy sounding glitchy-ness if that makes sense. The pitch tracking felt like it was holding on for dear life and there are audible splice points, but it just works. Sounds great on guitars.

EDIT: if you were interested, I could give you some Digitech Whammy before/after on some DI'd guitar.

[jinxtigr]

I'll be happy to listen. Whether I can DO it is another story, but if you've got demos of the thing you want access to, I'd love to hear it

[Funky40]

issue: Chris, i´m on a mac ( M1 / monterey),
every time i start my host, do i have to "open" the security settings,
so that pitch-nasty is allowed to be loaded.
i used the as "signed" declared installer*, and would have thought that there´s no such problem.
is there anything i can do, or is this the expected behave ?

* i just freshly draged the pitchnasty.component over to the plugins folder,
rescanned the plugins, startet the host again. Same

[jinxtigr]

issue: Chris, i´m on a mac ( M1 / monterey),
every time i start my host, do i have to "open" the security settings,
so that pitch-nasty is allowed to be loaded.
i used the as "signed" declared installer*, and would have thought that there´s no such problem.
is there anything i can do, or is this the expected behave ?

* i just freshly draged the pitchnasty.component over to the plugins folder,
rescanned the plugins, startet the host again. Same

Wouldn't you have to restart the computer anytime you're using signed AU plugins? It should be fine but you used to be able to just use the plugin, now you have to reboot the machine. Try that and let me know if it fixed it?

[Funky40]

Wouldn't you have to restart the computer anytime you're using signed AU plugins?

i have no clue vs. all this.
I would have "thought/expected", that "signed" means that the installation would not require to open the security settings.

....now you have to reboot the machine. Try that and let me know if it fixed it?

i start my computer fresh,...then i open my Host.
Just donne that right now.

I got four fail messages ( can´t open plugin) during the load of my project. ( guess i have 4 instances of PitchNasty incorporated, each in one of 4 different "subprojects")

means, i HAVE to be in front of the computer that it would load my project, since i have to click ok each time.
And means, if i do not open my security settings, as donne when freshly installing a plugin, Pitchnasty does not load.
means: thats not practicable.

i have no clue on all this.
And you seem to be a Win-PC guy

as sayed: M1mac / Monterey
Hope you can get behind this........would be much appreciated.

[jinxtigr]

Be sure you're not using the 'retro' component: the signed one is in the little .dmg file inside the zip, or in the signed plugins download with all the plugins

[Funky40]

Be sure you're not using the 'retro' component: the signed one is in the little .dmg file inside the zip, or in the signed plugins download with all the plugins

i would say i took the one from the signed one which contains all the plugins.
i mean, finally, i did all that new, bevore posting here.

i´ll check again.
i´ll take it out then, that it should work.
so, must be on my side

( i just shovel the .component over to the .component folder,
in case i should do other....? )

Much thanks Chris

[jinxtigr]

Yeah, that's supposed to work and yes you're meant to shovel the .component over to the components folder. It would probably ask for your password or TouchID, if it's /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components as it's meant to be.

We will figure this out and see it fixed

Is this just Funky40's configuration, or is anybody else at all experiencing this issue with the signed Mac AU? I don't often run into issues of this sort.

[Funky40]

Is this just Funky40's configuration, or is anybody else at all experiencing this issue with the signed Mac AU? I don't often run into issues of this sort.

To notes is here this:
i use my plugins within a pluginhost. Gigperformer that is.

when i start my "project" which incloudes "PitchNasty" i´m i asked four times to give approval.
Guess i use pitchNasty within four "sub-projects" within the main thing *.
( * its like if a DAW could load many projects at once, and you chose which one you want to have active. So, "subprojects" is refering here to whole "patches"( as i call it). You run one, or the other. (like "presets" in a workstation synth) )

i´m right now sidetracked, i will make some tests with a DAW. i finally have one (that i also can handle)

Much thanks for caring Chris