I am a new XF owner who spends most of his time in the XF forum, but meatballfulton suggested I might find an answer to this question here:

Say I have an audio (WAV) file of a song I need to learn for the band, but it is a whole step too high.  I would like to shift the pitch down a step somehow, then be able to load it back into my XF to play-along with the track and learn it right-off-the-bat in the “correct” key.

Is there a way to use my Cubase AI5 software to facilitate the transposition of the audio file?  If so, how would I do this?  Please keep in mind I am new to the XF, but even newer to Cubase, so don’t be afraid to dumb-down any suggestions.  Thanks for any assistance.

A.F.A.I.K., no, there is no way to accurately do what you want in the free lite version called AI5. For VariAudio and Pitch shifting etc., you will need to invest in one of the commercial versions of Cubase or purchase a program like Melodyne. AI is meant to introduce you to some of the features of Cubase, but many of the more advanced features of Cubase are missing intentionally................frank

Thanks very much for that info frankE!

Mmm, my bad then.

You can use the free program Audacity to do pitch shifting instead of Cubase then.

Follow the above link to download it.

From the Audacity manual section on the Effect Menu:

Change Pitch - changes the pitch/frequency of the selected audio without changing the tempo. When you open the dialog, the starting frequency is set to Audacity’s best guess as to the frequency of the selection. This works well for recordings of singing or musical instruments without background noise. You can specify the pitch change in one of four different ways: musical note, semitones, frequency, or percent change.

meatballfulton - 29 November 2011 01:49 PM

You can use the free program Audacity to do pitch shifting instead of Cubase then.

Excellent, that sounds like just the ticket, thanks much!  I am sure that not too far in the distant future (Once I have the time to really delve into it) there will be numerous really good reasons to consider buying the latest full version of Cubase, but making life a little easier to cop a cover tune for the band is (Unfortunately) not one of them!  Thanks meatballfulton.

Unfortunately, based on what you mentioned you hoped to do, I suggest you are going to find Audacity very limited (for “singing or musical instruments without background noise") and results not what you wish. Sadly, if you want features and flexibility and decent results, you’ll need to purchase a program that can provide those things. It takes time and money to develop more sophisticated software, and that’s why it isn’t possible to offer programs like Melodyne or the features in Cubase for free. As always, basically you get what you pay for............frank

BTW, to see the features that you can access in AI5, please see your manual. If a feature isn’t mentioned in the manual, then there’s a good chance it’s not in AI! :)

Thanks meatballfulton and frankE both for your help.

I downloaded Audacity, plugged in some songs (After converting mp3’s to WAV files in iTunes), and hit the pitch change utility.  Wow, instant results, just what I needed.  Exported re-keyed songs as WAV’s, and they’re now ready to go back into the XF audio import thing to get them ready to play-along/learn with.

The pitch change allowed me to not only transpose, but to transpose and tune-up the audio track by doing a hz-to-hz specific interval of something slightly less than a semi-tone because I started with a slightly sharp out-of-tune track.

Thanks for the help guys.

Audacity can do the mp3 to WAV conversion for you! Just load the mp3, it converts it to WAV on the way in.

meatballfulton - 29 November 2011 06:43 PM

Audacity can do the mp3 to WAV conversion for you! Just load the mp3, it converts it to WAV on the way in.

Good point, DUH!  The simple just got simpler.  Thanks!

Hum… Very interesting suggestions here, as usual.
Just a curiosity: why don’t you change the XF pitch instead of the song one?

ozio01 - 02 December 2011 04:38 AM

Just a curiosity: why don’t you change the XF pitch instead of the song one?

That is really an excellent point ozio01! And that works fine if you are just playing along with the XF, which was my original post concept.  Then I realized if you want to vocalize or add a “normal” instrument early-on, like a guitar or sax, it is best to get the song into the “correct” key as soon as possible in the learning process.

cmayhle - 02 December 2011 04:56 AM

ozio01 - 02 December 2011 04:38 AM

Just a curiosity: why don’t you change the XF pitch instead of the song one?

That is really an excellent point ozio01! And that works fine if you are just playing along with the XF, which was my original post concept.  Then I realized if you want to vocalize or add a “normal” instrument early-on, like a guitar or sax, it is best to get the song into the “correct” key as soon as possible in the learning process.

:-) i thought about it but liked just a check… given that you didn’t mention this possibility