Do you ever pitch-shift your songs to see which you prefer?

[Thrace]

Kind of a weird question I guess but bare with me.

A little while back I discovered a lot of my music was in B minor, even in different tunings I would always come back to the same set of chords and tones that I was used to and loved, I think mainly because my guitar was tuned to drop B.

So one day I was pitch-shifting some of my songs just for fun to see what it sounded like and found in some sense that I preferred it a semi-tone higher, which would bring the tuning to drop C.

Here's an example of what I mean, here's a piece of one of my songs

[SC]https://soundcloud.com/thrace/test-1[/SC]

Now here's the same but a semi-tone higher

[SC]https://soundcloud.com/thrace/test-2[/SC]


Which one do you prefer? If you like it at all! Haha. And which ever one you prefer then why? It's something that I've wondered about for ages, before I was doing a cover of To Live Is To Die by Metallica and preferred listening to it a 3 semi-tones down for some reason.

I imagine it's because I've just become bored of the same key all the time, so this sounds in some ways fresher maybe?

Either way, would love to hear your opinions!

 

[piggins411]

I prefer the first one

 

[Tegara]

Sometimes I do pitch shift melodies/parts of a track to see if they sound better upper or lower, not because I'm bored of the key I play them in (I don't play melodies always in the same key anyway) but just to hear it differently and if they work better somewhere else. I never pitch shift whole tracks though.

 

[Señor Voorhees]

Sort of related, but I always pitch shift a track up a tad after I'm finished with it. It tends to highlight errors/bad mixing. Every now and again I'll pitch it down too for lulz, and I find sometimes it sounds good enough to re-record in the new key.

 

[beyondcosmos]

I always do this. I always throw songs I have in my library into Audacity.

I've come to the conclusion that Obscura's 'Omnivium' record should have been recorded with the tuning half a step down instead of a full step down. In example, Septuagint would be in E flat minor, not D minor.

It really sounds a lot more powerful, in my opinion.

 

[GalacticDeath]

The only thing I pitch shift on occasion are growls to see if a different pitch or tone would work better, but never the music

 

[thisiswhywefight]

The sound of a whole mix pitch shifted is a bit grating even using a quality pitch ....er so I never really have. I wouldn't be opposed to rerecording a whole song in a different key if there were two keys I was unsure of but that's a lot of work lol.

 

[noUser01]

It's probably more mental than... well "actual", for lack of a better term. After hearing something once and then bumping it up a half step I'd imagine we find that it has more energy, is more uplifting and strong, simply by comparison. I think it would be the same if you wrote something super heavy and then dropped it down a half-step. It's probably just relative.