Tutorial Pitchbending basics

HulderBulder

Retired User
Retired User
Defender of Defoko
Pitchbending basics
I didn't see any tutorials on this in the directory, so I thought some people might find this usefull. This covers the basics of pitchbending, with pictures to aid your understanding. Most of the things in this tutorial assumes you're using UTAU for PC, but most of these should work for MAC users aswell.
This is my first toturial, sorry if it seems a bit messy.

Contents:
-What's pitchbending?
-Pitch curves
-Pitchbending types
-Vibratio
-Usefull things to know


What's pitchbending?
Pitchbending is moving the red lines you see around in the usts. Most usts come allredy with pitchbends. Usually they're there to help the bank to sound like the vocals in original song. Heres a picture of what a pitch line looks:
d7c900140576ffe62de5b4379b1c9c18.png

The pitchbends helps give the voicebank more emotion and can help them sound more human.
to make pitch lines you have to select the notes you want to have the lines, right clickk them, then select pitch. That will open this window:
4e8611f1fb42b367e92d1effbb4d1af4.png

Check the box for portamento, then hit ok.
Now you have pitch lines with 2 control points each. You can move them from left to right. To add more control points you have to right click one of the control points and hit add control point. With the 3rd controll point you can move it anywhere between the 1st and 2nd controll point.
Note: you can only move the control point 20 notes up or down.


Pitch curves

When you make a control point, you can right click it and open an option on different types of curves. There are four types to choose from:

S-curve:
5c68c61317231488916bcfcddf4db34b.png

The S-curve is the default pitch curve, when you make control points they start out as these. As their name implies, they look like Ss.

Linear:
c2dcbf744eea4e7d1e6daf9f1ac4d4ee.png

Linear curves are linear. There isnt much to say about these other than they steadly increase/decrease the pitch.

R-curve:
e5cf22596fbd89d510d110e54ef14d70.png

R-curves are basicly reversed J-curves.

and J-curve:
0911d5b18b081f34f9aeeb9319366e00.png

J-curves start the pitch line with slowly increasing then jumps up to the next note when the notes go from low to high. When the notes go from high to low, it slowly decreases then falls to the low note.


Pitchbending types

Now, there are several pitchbending types you can make. Each with their own effect. I will use S-curves for the examples, but you are free to change them to whatever curve you want.
Topps:
1584f6b7a10622c59711d386093c4319.png


Valleys:
7bd4239c58d5e91bcf868b3625dfa0ea.png


Steps:
3615acecdf7c9fde01dc93135c1332e2.png


Ns:
6c90802fc9edd32c6bd90fd1d44e6c9d.png



Vibratio

Vibratios can be made by opening the same window you opened to add pitch lines, but this time you hit the check box for vibratio.
500e58b605deffc8ae99bbda1346d0e1.png

Now, when you click the note a box will appear beneath the vibratio. That box can you adjust to get different settings to the vibratio. By clickking one the empty space in the middle, you can drag the box up or down along with the vibratio.

The vertical lines inside the box adjust the fade in/out of the vibratio. While the vertical line on the edge to the left changes the lenght.

If you click on the horisontal line of th box, you get to adjust the strenght of the vibratio. The maximun of notes it can stretch to is 2.

The tiny squares has to do with the amount of cycles and placement. The square to the left adjusts the placement of the cycles, while the other one adjust the amount of cycles.


Usefull things to know
-Vibratio sounds well placed when placed at long or high notes.

-You can make a growl with editing vibratio settings in the pitch window. Just type a low number, like 12, in the cycle settings and hit enter.

-When pitchbending, an easy way to know where to place the control points is to see what notes are allredy there. Placing the control points on those pitches makes it sound on tune.

-You can easely make an autotune effect by moving the control points close to another or uncheck the portamento box to not add any controll points.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads