I want to change the formant of drum sounds to make them darker or brighter, without changing the pitch. But most drums don’t have a clear pitch, so Logic’s formant tools don’t work. Real-time plugins like Little AlterBoy just sound like changing the pitch, which I want to avoid.
Any tips on how to do this?
Change formant of drum sounds?
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- Patchmeister
- 1937 posts since 3 Nov, 2010
Not entirely sure what you mean but an eq seems like a too obvious of an answer to be what you're looking for.
Ott can work great for brightening up sounds.
And to darken the sound an eq really is best.
Or maybe a lo-fi effect to make it sound "old"
Ott can work great for brightening up sounds.
And to darken the sound an eq really is best.
Or maybe a lo-fi effect to make it sound "old"
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- KVRAF
- 6486 posts since 8 Jun, 2009
A multiband frequency shifter like MFreqShifterMB from Melda or split the bands using a Linkwitz-Riley setup in two or more EQs and put a frequency shifter on the section you want to shift.
There is also Waves Torque, which might do what you want - it's kinda the same thing as it has a frequency/pitch shifter that focuses on part frequency spectrum of the sound.
There is also Waves Torque, which might do what you want - it's kinda the same thing as it has a frequency/pitch shifter that focuses on part frequency spectrum of the sound.
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- KVRAF
- 5274 posts since 2 Jul, 2005
Frequency shifter is great for this (melda has a free one) . There are also many fft based procedures you could do to affect the tonal part of a sound without messing with the noise as much. Frequency splitting the sound with a crossover and pitch shifting only one band or different bands by different amounts. Convolution can also give you drastic tonal changes.
Waves' Torque, as mentioned above, is a tool for changing the fundamental of a drum sound while maintaining the "formant". This could be used "backwards" so shift the fundamental up 7 with torque and then pitch the entire sound back down the same 7 semitones and you will have moved the spectrum down 7 semitones while maintaining the fundamental.
Etc etc etc. always lots of tricks to get you there or at least to some new interesting sonic territory.
I've been using the sound morphing in Visco to create interesting variations on relatively common drum sounds making a 909 sound a bit like the amen break or moving acoustic toms towards a simple synthetic sound made with a sine wave.
Waves' Torque, as mentioned above, is a tool for changing the fundamental of a drum sound while maintaining the "formant". This could be used "backwards" so shift the fundamental up 7 with torque and then pitch the entire sound back down the same 7 semitones and you will have moved the spectrum down 7 semitones while maintaining the fundamental.
Etc etc etc. always lots of tricks to get you there or at least to some new interesting sonic territory.
I've been using the sound morphing in Visco to create interesting variations on relatively common drum sounds making a 909 sound a bit like the amen break or moving acoustic toms towards a simple synthetic sound made with a sine wave.
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- KVRian
- 991 posts since 24 May, 2024
Not formant shifting, but I find that extremely steep boosts next to extremely steep cuts can yield really nice wierd drum sounds that are dramatically different from their sources (but with the same rhythm, of course). If you dice them up and mix them back into the music in specific stuff as if they were brand new instruments, you can get some really nice depth and sonic variety. I hadn't even thought of formant alterations till you mentioned it, but I thought I'd add this nonetheless. Good luck.