+infinity

The software would need key detection first

Im not exactly sure what you mean...?If you mean they should have this too, I agree completely! If you are saying it is not possible to do without knowing what key it is already in, that is not true... it is completely plausible to have key change/transposition ability without recognizing what key it is in... Basically a key change ability would mean the ability to transpose a track in semitones up or down, and it is not necessary for a software to recognize what key it is already in to be able to carry out this operation....

Yeah that was what I meant, but if what you say is right then it would be a very beneficial feature. Things like that are what digital DJing should be able to do

I hate to say it, but DJay detects accurate BPMs and Keys... just saying - and Serato is a much more powerful software

+1

Key detection and transpose to another key would be appreciated. +1

Don't make me buy Mixed in Key! lol I have too many damned applications:

Serato DJ
Logic 9
Rekordbox
LPD8 Editor

Actually am very close to buying Mixed in Key... I am just not smart enough to manage all the metadata across them all.

+1

+1

Could be implemented as SHIFT + Pitch Bend on NS6 for instance..

+1 It's long overdue.

+1

Torq has it and I was able to map it to a midi keyboard. It worked beautifully and you could grab a one note loop and make it a melody. This NEEDS to be added (and make it map-able). Please.

Serato, seriously, when will you implement this? This is absolutely necessary!

Oops, too late, already bought Mixed in Key. Worth the $58 dollars to analyze my entire library (although it took 3 straight days to analyze my 20,000 songs). It would be awesome to have it from this point forward though, so...

+1

I'll be honest and say I've had amazing results from this key analysing software that trumps MIK. serato.com

However, the request is to change or 'transpose' the key live with a MIDI mapped knob (like in Traktor) so we can manually shift the key up and down semitones.

Hopefully they will add it at some point.

Not necessarily. All the software would need to do is what to do when you tell it to transpose up or down a certain amount. YOU would need to know what the keys of the tracks are in order to know how much you need to transpose. I'm assuming you'd want to transpose +3 camelot keys if you're playing a 7A track and want to mix in a 4A track (transposing up the 4A track to 7A.)

Is this what you're asking for?

"key detection and transpose to another key would be appreciated. +1"

+1

Yes. I like the idea of a Shift + Pitch Control to change the key. It could be a simple software update that could still work on older hardware.

+1

I just don't understand why pitch n time doesn't have the PITCH functions included. Doesn't serato know that everyone wants the ability to play a track in any key at any tempo? At this stage of the game it's common sense, and as always serato is behind. DJ Player 7 has this on an iphone. Come on guys. It's getting sad that the only reason to use serato is because it's the standard at the moment, and not because it's the better product.

Isn't there an effect that changes the pitch?

+1

+1

yes key detection is a must inside serato SW
+1000

1+

+1

+1

+++++

+1,000,000,000

+1

+10000000!

IMPOSSIBLE !!??!!

No Key adjust / change ability , and no possibility in Searto Dj 1.6.2 too ???

Ey, the year is 2014! For me, making minimal progressive and Undaground psy tranze.
It´s one of the most important features , please tell me i´m wrong and there is a solution for my PIONEER DDJ-SR with SERATO DJ 1.6.2 ...
Buying PITCH n TIME Plugin woudn´t solve the problem , or ???

PEAZE

www.digitaldjtips.com

Of course it's possible! They have the technology. See Picth'N'Time: serato.com

It's "just" a matter of priorities - a business decision for Serato if/when they want to do it. The more people asking for it increases the odds it will come soon.

interesting. thanks.

+ endless to be able to do this with SDJ!

+1

Thx, of course, this could be an alternative ...

thank you,
it was clear wait, wait, yes or no, I'm really bored ... so it´s on you serato-dj users out there, come on, go on, ask, and ask ... ask them a hole in their SERATOric Abdom-ina ;)

i found myself wanting to do this this weekend, but alas...

;)

...maybe it would be even better to screw some people a live transpose midi knob in thier throat ...

+1 for transposing tracks in real-time.

+infinity

Unbelievable that Serato DJ doesn't let you adjust pitch independently of speed. It's simple math.

And no, you don't need to know the original pitch to do semitone shifting (see M-Audio Torq software)...

I'll be glad to make a video to demonstrate how this feature should work (using Torq).

+1

For the record, I would gladly pay $50 for an expansion pack that provides this functionality.

He really meant to say


English isn't his first language so disregard the original translation =P

+ infinity x infinity + more infinity.

+++++

very good, the stone slowly comes into rolling, finally! ready steady , go! please build in the transpose / live key change feature, or tells us how much people still have to beg and plead for it !!!!!!!!!!!

+1

Coming from DJ'ing with both Ableton and Traktor this is a much used feature by me for layering vocals, synths, baselines that are completely in key with the playing tracks. However it also needs to have the ability to pitch by cents, not just semitones as not every track is off exactly in a semitone range.

Traktor and Ableton can implement it and you guys have the better algorithm for re-pitching!! Add a knob to Pitch N' Time and I'll be happy to pay the price for it.

Anyhoo Another +1.

thx, Steve francesco...

+100000000
I'll gladly pay for this!

yep. if there is NO OTHER POSSIBILITY; ME TOO
Searato Dj is good SOFTWARE Technology with Good FX and ... Searato DJ is good,
if TRaNSPOSE LIVE ABILITY will Be Integrated , then it would become GREAT !!!!
SERATO GUYz , Integrate this feature , for free or for pay , what the matter, but do it, in next time, please... and me with my friends would be going to advertise for your SOFTWARE ...

+1

+1

This is a key feature offered in the most basic DJ software on the market. It's a bummer being limited to either mixing songs that are only in the correct key of each other, or butchering your set with keys that mix horribly together.

+1

Or you could learn some basics and stop the butchery www.digitaldjtips.com

I already use that method for gigs that don't require mixing tracks as frequently, but when your mixing 90+ songs in a two hour set you need all the assistance you can get to expedite the process which is what makes a dedicated key changer useful.

Actually I hoped that would be part of the Pitch-n-Time plugin.
+1

It's pretty astonishing how many people are requesting this feature to be added, yet it seems that Serato could care less. Even the crapiest DJ softwares out there have a key changer, because they all understand it's an industry standard function. LET'S GO SERATO!!!

Hey guys,

Just to be clear, its not that we don't care about this feature, or your requests for it..it is something we really want to do!

BeatWiz put it best:



We always have a lot going on here, but this feature get its time to shine eventually, because we have scheduled it into our roadmap. Unfortunately I just can't reveal when that is exactly, because there is always a possibility that its priority could change.

Don't stop bumping this thread and talking about it though - I encourage any discussion about exactly what you want out of this feature, how you imagine the interface would be and what the interactions are.

I think the best way to interface with it that is available on most controllers and is not taken by another feature would be a SHIFT + nudge. I don't think that function is assigned to any controllers and it provides a +/- control for each deck individually.

That definitely sounds like a suitable mapping to me. In terms of mapping to existing controllers, it always going to be case by case. I notice Numark and Denon typically put pitch nudge buttons, but they are not so common on Pioneer, Vestax and some other controllers.

We can probably find a space for the mapping though - but in terms of offering to people without controllers, we will also have to provide a way to do it via the GUI.

What would this look like? Two buttons? A knob? What increments would you expect it to move in?

Mostly Semi-tones, with an extra function for fine tuning.

This could probably differ from controller to controller.

Ah yes, I was meaning what would it look like in the software, the user interface. It needs to have a graphical representation so that you could use your mouse or MIDI map it. Not everyone has a controller :)

For existing controller's...I would love for it to be mappable to the pitch fader as a shift function, or the option to use it like an FX and assign it to one of the FX knobs to adjust the pitch up/down, as well as a shift function for pitch bend in half semi-tones increments.

Setting it up as an FX makes most sense to me: most cotrollers already have the required knobs & buttons. Maybe something similar to the combo lpf/hpf: neutral at 12 o'clock, turn left for down, right for up.

So you would load a key change effect in one of the DJ-FX slots? I would think that you would want this accessible always, if you used it.

I feel like with only two effects units would make assigning to a deck a nightmare.
Btw Martin I was actually referring to the platter nudge instead of the nudge buttons since I think some have functions for the buttons like keylock and range.

Guess I wouldnt use it THAT much. lt least from the times Ive spun om mixers/controllers that have pitch shift, I still use the filter more than the shifter. It wouldnt be a nightmare for myself as Im not that FX heavy. Mostly echo, delay, reverb and filter.

For others, I can see why they would want it accessable all the time. Personally, Im all about the "less is more". There is a fine line between sleeknees & bloated gui's IMO.

I also think that if pitchshift is to become a standard for all software/controllers, it should have some sort of continuity across controller brands/setups..

Shift + platter is "platter skip" where it moves through the song very quickly. So you are suggesting it would specifically be controlled by SHIFT + the side of the platter?

Yeah that's what I meant. I own the TM4 and I'm aware of the function. I thought that maybe you could split the two functions between the "vinyl" zone and the "edge" zone.

As far as the Gui goes the current pitch value could be displayed on the jog and the knob could be placed under the VU meters in the same style as the gain control is above the VU

Absolutely not. This should be dedicated functionality, mappable and available in the GUI. There are some circumstances where I'd need to jump the pitch a semitone in the middle of a loop. I'll be glad to point you to a set of mine on Soundcloud (made with Torq) that exemplifies the use cases that just aren't possible with Serato today.

To Martin C, as a software product manager I know you can't commit to a delivery date, but THANK YOU for taking the time to respond. I urge you to keep us in the loop (ha ha) as things progress. I am personally glad to provide usabiltiy feedback and/or user story definition.

Regarding the math, here are some notes I found long ago that might be helpful:

Changing the pitch up an octave is doubling the pitch, and an octave is split into 12 even semitones.

Therefore each semitone up is a 12th root of 2 = 1.059463094359295.

Each semitone down is 1 over that = 1 / 1.059463094359295 = 0.943874312681694

So you'll need to bust out your calculator and use these:

n semitones up = ( 1.059463094359295 ) ^ n x 100
n semitones down = ( 0.943874312681694 ) ^ n x 100

Some examples (of how pitch relates to speed):

1 semitone up = 1.059463094359295 x 100 = 105.95%
1 semitone down = 0.943874312681694 x 100 = 94.39%
2 semitones up = ( 1.059463094359295 ) ^ 2 x 100 = 112.25%
3 semitones up = ( 1.059463094359295 ) ^ 3 x 100 = 118.92%
12 semitones up = ( 1.059463094359295 ) ^ 12 x 100 = 200%
12 semitones down = ( 0.943874312681694 ) ^ 12 x 100 = 50%

Hope this helps!

/b

^this

Regarding interface, I can see it implemented as a knob and two button combo in each individual deck, with zero position being the knob in the middle position. Rotating the knob would increment it by "clicks" up or down semitones, and the two buttons would do the same thing, just in single directions.

I would REALLY want to see pitch shift in Serato. This is one of the major things that it is missing versus Traktor, Ableton, Torq, VirtualDJ, etc. etc. It sets an effective limit on what you can do spontaneously in a mix. While you can work around the missing pitch shift by making edits before your set, Traktor and everyone else just lets you incorporate into your set on the fly.
I don't know too well the philosophy behind SDJ, to be honest it still kind of confuses me, but pitch lock would raise its ability to compete with everyone else quite a bit. For ITCH and SSL, I can maybe understand a bit more as I feel they emphasize themselves as pure, music playing interfaces versus a creation/destruction interface. For SDJ though, I think it could definitely use pitch shift.

Hey blaxthos,





I agree with these suggestions.

I would be keen to hear the examples of soundcloud. Where could I find them?

So for you guys who have chipped into this discussion and use the feature in other software: Is the main reason usually for "an effect"?

Or is this useful for key mixing e.g you know how many semitones to move through in order to match two songs?

Hey Martin C,

Please take a look at the way M-Audio Torq implemented it. Each deck has an up and down button that will raise/lower the pitch by one semitone per press (independently of BMP).

This is _not_ for effect, and is absolutely for melodic mixing of two otherwise-incompatible songs (which is why it's _so_ important to have pitch/key adjustment completely divorced from BPM adjustment).

Regarding some sets that demonstrate what isn't possible in Serato today, I have two for you to check out. First, I have a video of Torq where I employed key change and looping. Watchwww.youtube.com Jump to about 18 minutes in and check out the "KEY" section below each deck (just below each fader). See how each song has been adjusted to the _same_ key (some up, some down), and the Lady Gaga is looped through like 3 songs playing at once (because they're all in the same key (or, in one case, a 5th of the song's key (making it compatible))). Note that the ATB song was transposed like 4 keys to maintain compatibility. You couldn't make this set in Serato. :(

For a more aesthetically appealing set that employs the same techniques, check out soundcloud.com

I am also a product manager; I'll be glad to send you some user stories. Let me know if you want my contact info.

/b

Hey Blaxthos,

Thanks for taking the time to answer the question and provide examples. Great to see the feature in use. I have a few more questions :)



You mentioned this, but I didn't see it transposed in the software. Did you transpose the song before hand in a DAW or something?



So I notice there is a lock button next to the -/+ which I assume is keylock, correct?



How often do you need to adjust within a semitone?

So it seems like there could be three functions in order to achieve all use cases for key mixing:

1. +/- buttons to move up and down one semitone
2. A notched knob/encoder which moves in semitone increments
3. A fine tune knob/encoder which moves within a semitone

I have to ask, and I hope this doesn't sound silly to you, but if there was just a "key sync" button where it automatically made the appropriate adjustments to your track to get in the correct key, would you use that instead?

Seems like it would save you having to make manual adjustments, for people who aren't super good at knowing the correct adjustments to make, its automatic for them?

Hi Martin C,



So check out Watchwww.youtube.com (I've linked to the appropriate time) and watch the stuff going on next to the key lock on deck 4 (The Fields of Love). Notice how I jump it up by 4 semitones just before starting the track.



Correct, though I don't use the keylock functionality (in fact it does exactly the opposite of what I want). We _DO_NOT_ want to lock pitch with speed (hence notice all the keylocks are off).



Almost never... I would recommend to have the "knobby" style adjustment as an effect (allowing you to fine-tune the pitch), whereas the primary use case (from my perspective) is end-to-end key adjustment for melodic/harmonic mixing.



Maybe, just like i use the BPM sync button on occasion, but doing it this way has a ton of disadvantages:

1. You have to do the key analysis yourself (within Serato) -- a whole giant ball of new functionality you as a company have to maintain, and a lot of pre-setup end users have to do (like we do with beat grids now).
2. It's not always a 1:1 match... in many cases, a melodic mix can work on 5ths (see that Lady Gaga part of People Eyes, where the Gaga song is in a 5th key of the root song) or thirds or other harmonic intervals.

I strongly recommend keeping Serato key agnostic, providing the ability to adjust the pitch by semitones (easy math) without you [serato] having to do the extra work of key detection (which your suggestion would require). It's nice-to-have functionality for the novice user, but in the end they can go buy Mixed in Key for $50 if necessary (and I also recommend).



In my opinion, i'd go for #1 (which negates the need for #2). For #3, i'd offer a pitch knob effect (like hardline Pioneer DJMs do) to allow fine-grained adjustment of pitch. You don't often find out-of-tune songs (at least I don't), so the #3 use case is much less important to me.

Thanks for staying engaged! :)

/b

What time are you talking about in the link? The vid starts at 0:00

The second link ( Watchwww.youtube.com ) should drop you off at 32 minutes 15 seconds.

+1

This feature would remove the shackles on DJs to dive much deeper into their libraries.

I find myself re-recording vocals a semitone above and below, all the time.

-This is time consuming
-It fills up my Serato library quick.

Having such a feature would simplify this process in these ways:

-Easier time managing library
-3-6 minutes saved per acapella / beat that we want to re-record in a new key
-Legitimately doubles DJ's capacity to create a unique mix on the fly.

Hey again blaxthos :)



I think we inevitably would like to introduce key detection regardless, too many people are simply asking for it in the software, even though I know Mixed In Key has a well established and solid system for key detection. For someone like myself though, even if I go out and buy Mixed In Key, I still have to get used to the camelot system, so this is why I think we should provide key sync.

I completely agree there should be a more manual function however provided for users such as yourself, and beside wanting control over it yourself, a feature like "key sync" isn't always going to be 100% accurate I feel.



Thanks for sharing your opinion, its really given me a few things to think about and discuss with my colleagues. At this point I am in agreement with your suggestion. I think even with only providing the two buttons for manual adjustment, someone could MIDI map these buttons to the left and right movements of a knob if they wanted to.

I have mixed feelings about "Key Sync". It could sometimes be very handy, but other times it would not be optimal.

You don't want to mix in the same semi tone all night, you want to shift up/down gradually over the course of some songs so that it doesn't get boring.

For example, you have a song playing in 7A. You can mix a song in one semi tone up or down, 6A or 8A, and most people would think it sounds really good. If we have the ability to shift semi tones manually, I could take a 4A song and shift it up two semi tones to 6A while I mix it with the first song. Then once the second song is playing by itself I could shift it down to it's original 4A and so on..

With Key Sync feature you would be more restricted in doing things like this - if I haven't misunderstood how you plan to implement it.

Manual Key shift is what I rather would use. Don't mind if you have auto-key-sync feature, as long as we have the ability to do it manually as an option.

I wouldn't suggest mixing in the same key all night either, it could be something you use for the occasional mix, just to quickly get things sounding better if they sound off (but you really want to mix that tune anyway).

Perhaps there is some way to navigate through different keys appropriately and still using key sync, like "energy up/down" buttons or something.



Completely agree, its just good to talk through these things sometimes :) Cheers!

Looking forward to manually change semitones but is there any way of storing semitone change point within a song like a cue point?

If it's possible..It would be nice to be able to set a multiple semitone change points within a song and be able to trigger it on or off by pressing the pad it's assigned to. One example would be storing multiple semitone change points at the same point in a song. Which stored semitone change point I use depends on what song comes next.

Definitely not... MIK has an option to switch between Camelot, Sharp, and Flat notation (as well as some other configurable options regarding where / how to notate (in ID3 tags, filenames, etc.)). I only use MIK to embed the key in the song, which Serato displays in the library. From there, I can sort the library by key and pick where I want to go. :)

Key detection is notoriously hard, especially for songs that shift keys in the middle. Before you guys invest dev dollars in the key detection/matching feature I hope you'll go after the pitch adjuster first (as it's much more simple/mathematical, and doesn't require a priori knowledge of the key).

If you do go after the key detection piece you can do some really cool visualization of key in the waveform (see how MIK does it), but at the end of the day that's a nice-to-have that can already be covered with 3rd party software.

In my humble opinion. :) Let me know when you're ready for an alpha/beta tester. :-D

That's a nice suggestion, also, some color coding for matching and "semi matching keys" would be nice, while still beeing able to manual. Have a look at Rapid Evolution to see what I mean about color coding.

I would suggest that the color coding could be applied only to the "slave", ie the one to be mixed into the mix, and color only showed in the key field, not to confuse users with regular color code squares....

Once again, had to ditch a handful of tracks during last nights set I was wanting to mix at particular times because the key wasn't complimenting the track that was playing. Can't wait until the $3000.00 I dropped on my computer and controller to run Serato DJ has the same functionality as my old $1000.00 setup running VDJ.

+1

That is a cool idea!



But those are all systems I don't understand or know how to use. That is why I am suggesting an additional (but not replacement) system for people like myself that might simplify key mixing to some degree.



I will be in touch ;)

Martin C for president...Make it happen lol ;P

DJ'd a wedding last night and the groom had requested ahead of time two particular songs for me to mash up to end the night. I had to do the mix ahead of time using VDJ, because the keys in each song sounded like a train wreck together. Nothing like sitting in front of your decks and pretending that you're mixing live, because your software doesn't have basic functionality. Would've been a disaster if he requested that mix during the gig.

C'mon guys, you must have thought about implementing this common feature when you first launched the software. Why have you given such an essential function that's so commonly used such little priority?

You have six different reverbs to choose from, but no key changer. Put aside whatever extra curricular expansion pack you're developing at the moment aside and cover the basics.

Key sync makes sense as it saves having to manually change each track, but you can then adjust the key (a plus minus gui button sounds best) so as not to stay in the same key all night.

I think they spent all their time getting the Numark NV functionality up & running.
Hopefully now, Serato will have some time for their existing customers again.
^^^^^^^

I would be happy enough to have it just added it as an effect slot and included it in the pitch-n-time plugin which already incorporates time stretching (with a great algorithm). To me anyhow It would seem to be an obvious to add the functionality there.

It's not something I would use ALL the time, about 20% of the time at rough guess. Yes, I would certainly sacrifice an effect slot for times when needed. It would also mean no need to re-label controllers for the added feature.

There would also need to be a control panel to select various degrees of pitch shift as well - maybe ranging from +-3 semitones fine to +-20 rough to allow more accurate adjustment on a 127 step knob.

A fine mode is certainly needed as overlapping Vocals or synths can sound a million miles off even if there is fluctuation in the recording of even .05 of a semitone.

Aha! So it looks like you've been focusing your time on trying to compete with Traktor and Ableton with the release of Flip in September. You know what you can do with both of those softwares? KEY CHANGE!!! Ableton is by far the best software out there for remixing and will probably always be, because that's what it's always been designed to do. You're not gonna go out and spin a standard DJ set with it like you would with Serato DJ. If I'm spinning EDM I go with Traktor, if I'm working on remixes in the studio or live triggering I'm using Ableton, and if I'm spinning a set that requires scratching, various transitions, and effects for manipulating all other music out there I'm going with Serato DJ. No way am I buying that expansion pack. You're spreading yourself too thin Serato! Let's get that key change with the next update.

I don't think Flip competes with either of those products - It was just a good idea that we though would be useful for our customers.

We will get to key changing features in due time.

There is nothing we can do to change how fast feature requests are implemented, so the best we can do is enjoy the things that do come our way, like bug fixes etc....... whenever updates are released.
I read somewhere about key change possibly coming from a PnT upgrade.
That make sense to me & proves that this feature request has been discussed.
Watching a kettle boil always feels like it takes forever!!

From watching the videos the way Flip operates is EXACTLY the way I re-mixed in Ableton except made easier.

In Ableton I would need to copy a track 6 or 7 times, create loop points and "fire" it from the grid, where now I can take one copy of a track and set up the flip points. Genius.
..
..
..
..
And yet useless if tracks I'm trying to mash are not in tune with each other.

+1
Please see www.ibrahimshaath.co.uk

Keyfinder does not help either, it only shows you the key. What should be possible is mashing up up 2 tracks that are completely key mismached.

+ 1

Ignore the above, as this should be clearer:



For those of us who understand the Camelot wheel and how to manipulate around it to achieve certain effects (i.e. "energy boost mixing"), key sync would be an absolute disaster. It would limit our ability to get creative with non-standard key mixings which definitely have an effect on a floor, most notably the major boost you get from the mixing two keys that will definitely clash horribly if you don't mix them quick enough.

Within a major or minor key, there are a handful of keys that will clash horribly due to a greater number of notes being sharp or flat compared to the original (or other related keys.) If those handful of keys were able to be transposed just 1 or 2 semitones in either direction, then there would be NO limitation between any song in a given key (minor or major) and any other song. If you're sticking to the "safe" keys (for beginners to harmonic mixing), then +/- an octave would be sufficient, but could very well require Pitch In Time, I would imagine.

That said, key sync would have a tough time dealing with mixing a song in a minor key and a major key (only two of the opposite major/minor key would work with any major/minor key.)



I know this will sound a lot like the old-school DJ (which I am) who bitched about BPM-sync, but harmonic mixing is a skill that takes some musical knowledge to use and use well. If key-sync were implemented, it would lead to a vast legion of Serato DJ's playing "Beatport top-100-chart" sets in the same key and same BPM, from start to finish.

If you are playing from the Beatport top 100 chart the vast majority are already in the same key and BPM anyhow hehe :P

+1 though an Auto Transpose would completely take all skill out of harmonic mixing, but I don't think Serato are about to take all the fun out of mixing just yet by adding a feature like that (at least I hope not!).

But I don't think the original poster meant a locked down automatic feature, more of a "tiptronic" gearbox of transpose, where you can select your own or do what it tells you to do - not that I think even that should be added.

Lets just hope for a manual, by-ear transpose knob on the interface before they look at any kind of automatic, whizz bang, i-need-no-skillz to mix in key, auto transposing madness.

^ the Autotune of DJing....would hate for that to happen.

Its already happened. Both DJay for the Ipad and the Mixxx Beta (open source DJ software) so I would say its a matter of when rather than "if".

DJ mixer's with motorized fader's for automated performances. Would have never thought of it but nothing seems sacred anymore...That Skynet software in the works to destroy the DJ.

+1
Will Pitch'n'time in DJ 1.7 have the function of maintaining the key without tempo, like it has in Pro Tools version?
+1 for idea of mapping of Shift+Pitch Bend to key change function

I never use it for an effect but rather as a creative tool for mixing incompatible keys but otherwise compatible songs.

Definitely needs to be always available. I'd see it as simple as a plus and a minus button per deck, in semi-tone increments. I guess a knob could be useful but I don't know how many times I'd need to mix something that is more than 3 semitones out so the range a knob provides isn't really useful imo.

Agree with chefed completely. :) Should not be an effect.

It is clear that Serato has a big delay in this area;
all dj software has this feature .... it's hard for me to think that is the best dj software (maybe the best communication?), especially if it accumulates wholes bugs buffers reading that can ruin your live...
I can only support this feature, but without much hope, it's been over a year since it was requested.
I think I'll turn to tracktor, or mix with ableton live :'(
(sorry for my google-translate-english)

I am about to make the step between doing a few parties to a more professional set up. Money is tight so I have been doing a huge amout of research - I don't want to get it wrong (or more like ...... not as right as it could have been).

It seems to me that that all the leading software all has its strengths and weaknesses so comparing them is not easy. I had made up my mind to invest (time in learning plus actual purchase) in Serato, but the lack of this feature does give me serious doubt.

SO ........can I give one more vote for this feature.

Unlike DjdiE I am going to take the view that MartinC would not have invested the time and energy in his questions without a good chance of this happening. I hope I am not proved wrong ..... I hope I am proved right very soon !!

Key Sync sound pretty good for me @MartinC.
Guess I'd use it the same way I use BPM Sync from time to time.
Sometimes I just activate it for mixing in and deactivate it before the first downbeat after a drop to have smooth tempo transitions and go on with another tempo.
This could work with Key Sync too. Still on button on my Dicers left to map this ;)

@SgtBilko: ok, maybe I overreacted but that's why I'm frustated :

Watchwww.youtube.com

I cannot do this in live, I have to prepare my song and modify the key with an another software an save it....for every set!!!
I think that's not an intuitive and logical way, that's all, I think Serato has his good parts, and his bad parts, like every Dj soft, but I believe that's the worst negative aspect of this soft.

+1 for key change

+1

FOR KEY CHANGE FREEDOM!

Now that I read more through the thread I want to add my thoughts:

- Expand the Pitch'n'Time functionality as for now it's only 'Time'. Not as an effect please.

- I second the negation of 'Pitch-Sync'. Don't waste your time on that. and:

Agree

I agree. But if we were to make this pitch control happen and Serato would develop it, I would see it more like a piano keyboard control type of thing, rather than just a linear knob.

Just sync then values that Mixed In Key allready analized ;)

I rather have just a knob or buttons in the software to adjust the key manually. I want the freedom to change the key of any song freely/manually. Suppose I play a song in 8A. i don't want to keep on playing in 8A all night do I want to take it slow down. Next song may be in 5A. During the transition I want to key shift the second song to 8A so they match. But later at a drop etc I'd like to adjust the key down to let's say 6A. To be able to adjust key on the fly like this is more important to me than an auto key sync. Is rather do it manually. Sync on off may in some cases be too dramatic. I'd rather be able to do it manually/gradually when I want to adjust the key of a playing song.

So IMHO, no need for auto sync. Just the ability to shift they key in semitones is sufficient/desirable.

Sorry for all typos...#%€!.....phone

So we'd definitly need a knob in the GUI and then map it to a controller plus we need to see the changing chamelot numbers in the decks and some visual finetuning help like that little are where those small lines show if the beats of both decks have the same tempo. Not the waveforms, that other little spot on top between two decks where I never can't remember what it's called. But I hope everybody knows what I mean.

Sorry buddy, your assumption is completely wrong.
As a guy who manually, I can tell you that all the minor keys are represented, even if some keys are more used than others.

Sorry, I meant as a guy who manually keys his tunes...

And of course, +100000000000000000 for this functionality.
By the way, should be great to get some news from Martin C for the end of 2014.

Well, I see the 1.7.2 Beta is out and again nothing to help with this issue is being addressed, so I just jumped ship and mapped my controller to run the latest version of Traktor. Runs like a champ, amazing effects, extremely user friendly, and.........drum roll.........KEY CHANGER!!!

Thanks Serato! If it weren't for your lack of support I would've never realized that I probably should've been using Traktor all along for my style of DJing. Not saying I have anything against scratching, but with EDM it's all about the functionality and Traktor's pretty impressive. Better hurry up and pay more attention to your existing users before they start jumping ship as well.

Peace....

If you mix with older tracks, trance or lots of vocals you"ll know a semitone is not accurate enough, and tracks can clash BADLY if they are 1/4 tone out of place.

A knob is IMHO the right way to do it, with an option of sensitivity adjustment between semitone / tone or cents as with Traktor or Ableton.

Matching the keys automatically is a nice Idea for the future, but lets get the basics down first eh? Just give us a damn knob or something ? ;)

This should have been done along with the release of Flip, which offers amazing potential creative control for remixing and yet no pitching option.

Been thinking about getting an RP-8000 lately....then It dawned on me...wouldn't it be cool if I could use the pads to play notes on the RP-8000 like one might do on a Vestax Controller One....so I started brainstorming on how that would be achievable by MIDI mapping and the solution that came to mind as I was looking at the loop parameters buttons from 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 beats....so I started thinking Serato DJ could have the same type of parameters for Key changes....have the default key (0 pitch) be the sixth button. From there you can either pitch down five increments or pitch up six increments...like how there are 12 piano keys in one octave. In most cases there wouldn't be a need to go beyond a full octave.

Sound like a great idea

Sound like a good implementation.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss please
+10

A transpose knob for each deck as an extention of PnT seems reasonable. However, I don't think implementing key detection is among top priorities for Serato as all serious users would still probably buy Mixed in Key.

Pitch-sync to me sounds absurd. Is it really that much work to look at the key tags of your files and pick songs with right keys?

Also let's not forget that Traktor, Ableton and Serato are different from each other for a reason and if you want the best customization and tweaking options from your software of course you should switch to Traktor right now. Serato has different sntrenghts

...Damn smartphone posting too soon. What I was saying is that it always amuses me when reading these boards that people first choose the wrong software for their needs and then make it everyone's problem here by aggresively demanding for the missing features and threating to jump ship to Traktor.

Way cheaper then chasing down a controller one.

sad to discover my previous contoller / software (xponent with torq) was this cool key +/- feature.
even sad to know it had +-10,20,50,and even 100% pitch, letting do cool things during dj-sets.

key tuning on the fly is the thing i would like to have... again.

+1000000000 for this ofc.

However,
I'd say pitch-sync would be a unnecessary thing to have - given key information it'd be a 2 second job to do it visually with the right real-time controls and feedback (and for experienced musicians a 2 second job to do by ear). I imagine it wouldn't detect 'tuning' so to speak, so it wouldn't be a fully automatic system anyway. if you do implement it, treat it like the beat sync - press the button to get it more or less there, and nudge the track to get it spot on!

Again, >DEFINITELY< need a fine tune control (Cents?) - so many tracks are just subtly off each other, and there's nothing that nags your ear more than slightly off tuning. Manual control ftw!


I can also imagine that, even if the algorithm is awesome, Serato would undoubtedly want to automatically shift further than it really can in order to force keys into track, creating all sorts of lovely artefacts. Maybe implement some sort of option in the preferences so you can tell Serato to switch to the closest compatible key (5th up for example) if making the tracks in unison would create artefacts? Maybe a 'cycle' button that'd go through the various 'compatible' keys?



Actually, if you want an accurate change to be made by Serato, in semitones, then this is not possible - the frequency change per semitone is not linear, so, if Serato is not given key information to begin with, it can't possibly know by what proportion it should raise/lower the fundamental frequencies to achieve a semitone change. You could still have a manual pitch shift dial, with feedback via a percentage, which would then rely on the DJs ears to match the pitches.


One more thing, If there IS key detection to be included in the software, PLEASE for the love of God make sure it's easily manually alterable for if/when a key is misidentified. Perhaps make it a one off processing thing, as how Serato detects the bpm - once it's decided what it thinks it is you can manually change it and Serato won't say otherwise! (Otherwise this would create obvious problems for an automatic system if false keys are left in!)


We NEED this. Everyone's already said this, but Traktor has it, Virtual DJ (?), dJay, the list goes on... Considering you guys made that pitch'n'time plugin for pro tools that's supposed to be so good (haven't personally tried it), you'd think Serato would be leading in this area! I mean I'm vaguely considering using dJay for low-key gigs for God's sake, what with the spotify integration and everything!






Forgive me, but how on earth can you not know Sharp or Flat notation...? That's super basic music theory! (pretty sure that's covered in ABRSM Grade 1 actually)!


Anyway, the crux of what I'm saying is, give as much manual control as you possibly can, for experienced musicians, but also to benefit those wanting to learn more and dive deeper.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. Torq (and Traktor and VDJ, I think) do semitone shifting without any key detection; I pasted a youtube video somewhere above that demonstrates said functionality in Torq and I believe I pasted the math behind it as well.

Key detection is a messy business best left to 3rd party software. I propose that first-order priority should be to provide a +/- based semitone adjustment, and that second-order should be to provide a fine grained (cents/knob based) adjustment mechanism for slightly-out-of-tune songs. I've been doing harmonic/transpositional mixing for years, and (in my case, at least) 95% of it would be covered by priority #1 above.

Was just about to point that out. Since musical intervals are proportional you only need to know the frequency of the sound and the interval you want to change it by. For example a perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio. So do some quick algebra by setting up a proportion:

3/2 = nf/cf
3cf = 2nf
1.5cf = nf

Where nf is new frequency and cf is current frequency

I take your point, I guess when I said 'key detection' I really meant some form of pitch detection - which from your replies is in fact necessary, 'only need to know the frequency of the sound'? Isn't that how key detection works at a basic level anyway? Identifying the fundamentals?

What part of calculus? Lol. I can do integrals and derivatives well but infinite series and advanced vector calculus isn't my strong suit

I remember integrals and derivatives ... vaguely .... more of those things I never found a use for lol

Guys, ^ this ^ isn't all that relevant or helpful...

Just realised there's a key change ability >AND< they also already have key match in 'dJay' (pretty sure on both the Mac & iOS version).

Just thought I'd point that out...

Torq and Traktor Both do fine .01 semitone adjustments - VDJ does semitone adjustments and thats one of the reasons I am not bothering to use it (despite an unlimited license).

Semitone adjustment alone is almost as worthless as the complete lack thereof in Serato IMHO, and better the devil you know.

Wow this is unreal.
I've decided to get back in to mixing again so:
- just spent £1700 on a Pioneer DDJ-SZ
- got a new mac so it can run without crashing every 2 mins like my old one does - and thus run serato

And now.......

..... Now I find there is no key adjust?

I checked for a few features before splashing out - but seriously. Something __this__ simple in this day and age - that even DJay has has been missing for this long?

Simply astonishing. Seriously guys - cant you get an intern to just add this in over a weekend or something?

You are not the first to sing this song... I first joined the forums after looking for this functionality too.


That might be a bit unfair... Don't minimize the complexity of introducing an entirely new variable dimension to a real-time audio engine. I'm sure it's not something to be undertaken lightly.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not making excuses. You'll see I've been a vocal advocate for this functionality for a while now. If anyone has any ideas about how to motivate or turn the heat up on Serato for this feature please share your ideas.

Think all I can do by the looks really is a) suck it up or b) see the whole lot back and stick with my spin2 + djay.
I realise its not as trivial to implement as I joked - but likewise I don't feel it is likely to be a large undertaking. Especially after its been asked for for so long.
Just feel a bit like I've picked up a shiny new car.
And then find out it has no indicators.
Why didn't I check it had indicators!

Even more frustrating when PNT is so powerfull when working with the pitch changes... :-(
Having ability to change the key while having the PNT's great sound would be epic...

I would happily pay £50-100 on an expansion pack for this. I'm sure others would do the same.
And given PND - can't be far off being able to make this work.

Does traktor have this? I guess I could always try dropping serato and trying to map the sz on to it.

Traktor does but it sounds crappy so its not much usable...-when I engage keylock in the tracktor, I loose some of the sounds character (mainly the bottom)
As said - this in combination with the pnt would be groundbreaking :)

50-100gbp? Honestly I'd rather stick with 29usd :-D

Yup, any way made available to do half decent key change live thru serato happily gets 100 of my finest pounds sterling. I want it _that_ badly.

I believe its not about wanting it but needing it :-D

bump

+1

Now with mp3+g supported this is the logical next step.
It's just a question of time.

You'll have to explain to me how you connect mp3+g support to key change ability. Not sure if logical is the word I'd use.

mp3+g = Karaoke
When doing Karaoke loads of people want the key to be changed to suit their voice.
Logical is the correct word when you know what mp3+g is ;)

I knew what mp3+g was but didn't see the practical application of key change to karaoke until you put it like that

I am first & foremost a dj, however I do the occasional karaoke gig to supplement my income.
Most guy's that do karaoke wouldn't even consider using software without the ability to change the key. It really is pretty much an essential feature to have karaoke.

Edit - pretty much an essential feature to have FOR karaoke.

Wait! Someone does karaoke?? Someone spends so much money on a hw to do karaoke?? I thought that 90's are already over... :-/

@maarawoe - I can only dream to be as cool as you dude!
Sigh.... one day maybe. Lol!

It wasn't meant to be cool... I am only surprised that someone is still interested in karaoke as its kinda outdated stinky way of fun for drunken mothers...

Yes... Serato decided to support it... Just to keep me (the only one) happy.
Btw, if you spent less time in your room playing to the walls, this sort of thing might not surprise you that much.


Really? - where do you hang out?
maarawoe, unless you have some input regarding key change ability,
please go give your shitty opinions of karaoke to someone who cares about them.

Honestly I'd like to see the key change ability feature more than some mp3+g support.
I am not playing to the walls so I have quite good idea about how popular is the shitty (using your words...) karaoke here around and yes - it shot its head 20 years ago :-)

maarawoe - can u read??
mp3+g support is already here - live with it.
I said your opinion of karaoke is shitty - not that karaoke is shitty.
This is getting pathetic. I'm out!

3 Billion Asians Disagree

Damn ... wish I could hit 0.001% of that market, I'd be rich .... rich I tells ya !!!

Yep you could be - if you had key change ability :p

hey, for that much money I'll use Traktor :D

Ahem - Since when did traktor have Video ;)

Theres always VDJ though

True ... but let's be honest, by the time I'm in that market Traktor will probably have video playback along with a new plastic controller complete with a built in 42" TV screen, lots of lights and a touch strip!!

Key Adjust was my favourite feature in Traktor. I've made some pretty crazy mappings for playing melodies on hotcues - that was what, 3-4 years ago... but I really, really miss this feature because it allows you to blend stuff that just wouldn't go together, key lock or not. Not to mention the insane possibilities for creative transitions.

Pitch'n Time is superior to zPlane v2, but once NI releases TSP3 I fully expect it to adopt zPlane v3 - at which point PnT *must* get that feature, in my not-humble-at-all opinion.

Cheers all!

+1 to key adjustment; key detection not really necessary as Mixed In Key will likely still be better (based on their years of research and improvements to the algorithms they use) but would still be a nice addition.

I only use MiK as a reference - it's fun to just sort your entire collection by key and try to do a cross-genre mix based on that... but just as with beatmatching, it doesn't really matter because in the end it's all up to what your ears tell you.

I think Serato, NI and everyone else should just let MiK keep their part of the market, because it's not like cute little Flow is likely to become a serious contender in the DJ industry. I don't get why a DVS has to do EVERYTHING - instead of trying to recreate something other people do better and getting lost in a sea of useless features (anyone here actually use Flips?), focus on fixing the stuff that needs work - like effects, which bug out so often I may just write a separate post about it and include a video.

Bottom line: +9001 to key adjustment. That's over nine thousand, Serato... OVER. NINE. THOUSAND.

I do actually use flip. Its become an important tool in my work flow and me and several other people were asking for it before it came out.

Really? Not to go too far off-topic, but I've honestly yet to see anyone use this in a club. I mean, if I want to do an edit, I'll just do an edit (or do it on-the-fly with hot cues) - and the controllers I've tried so far (AFX, Neon, NV) don't seem to handle flip recording and playback well enough to bother... but if you've got an example, enlighten me about what I'm missing.

Flip is good if you find yourself making those same live "edits" all the time for the same track; just saves work. It's perfect for building longer intros and outros for tracks that lack them.

That's mainly what I use it for is intros and outros. I also use it for making clean edits for songs that I would otherwise have to keep a second version of and copy all my cues, loops, and beatgrids to the second version.

Its handy for making complex intros and outros as well. For example I do a lot of college events and pop music has to be well represented at those. The song Dark Horse has an interesting vocal loop at the beginning but there's too much talking over it to make it loopable so I use flip to stitch the pieces where no one is talking to create the full loop.

Another example is the song Without Me by Eminem which has no instrumental intro leading into the first lines of the song. So I use flip to create an 8 bar intro and jump to the beginning at the right time (which happens to be the 3 instead of 1 in this situation) to keep the phrase intact.

Nice examples DJ Compiler. I do the same with flip. "Last friday night" has an unusable 16 beat intro because the last two beats get part of a vocal. But not anymore :) It's amazing how you can do clever things like cutting out the vocals and grabbing another part of the song in its place to make an un-loopable song work. I use it to make clean edits too. Some songs I just use it as a safety net to stop a song finishing that doesn't have an outro, by it automatically going back to the intro, while I'm busy scratching in on the other deck. It's an amazing tool when you need more hands. I have dared to use it live a few times now too without disaster (although I do hold my breath every time lol)

What was this thread about again......

....oh yeah... +1

Bumping this thread, as this is (still) the biggest problem with serato dj...

I thought this thread has gone to the garbage that's why I started a new one with a subject: "KEY SHIFT CONTROL."

My +1 will be counted better in here, lol!

And if possible make it work on a pair of the FX knob/button so no mapping or additional modular is required.

I like the idea of having this feature as an effect.

It should work like the Pitch Looper, so it's just activating this feature/effect and then key goes up when turning a knob on my DDJ-SP1 to the right and key goes down when turning the knob to the left. If the knob is in middle position the key adjust feature is neutral and no changes are applied to the sound.

I guess this would be the easiest workflow for this feature.

I disagree with having key/pitch adjustment as an effect. While it is probably the easiest thing to do from a development perspective, doing so will forever introduce some really nasty disadvantages:

1. Key changes will be for the entire duration of a song, and will rarely (if ever) be used in the way effects controls are usually implemented.
2. Since key changes run through the whole song, they necessarily have to be completely configured prior to mixing in the song. Setting pitch adjustment in an effect bank and configuring the parameters would additional steps and (unnecessary) complexity to an already narrow opportunity window.
3. Key adjustment (not pitch/tuning adjustment) is a finite, coarse-grained operation (steps in semitones, exactly). Effects knobs are too loose for a step operation like key adjustment, especially on the fly between songs.

In the best implementations I've used (in hardware & software), this has always been a separate mappable function (+ and - keys). Hell, I don't even care if it's not mapped to the hardware by default, just have a +/- in the GUI (for now). Just don't make it an effect! :)

/b

^ +1 to blaxthos, he raises three excellent points and a good idea for how to implement it correctly.

As long as it resets when a new song is loaded I don't see any problem if it was mapped as an FX.

But I don't want a debate here.
Whether the way you want it, or the way I want it, as long as it gets added as a regular feature (on the next version hopefully) I will be happy : )

@blaxthos: Maybe you think to complicated.
Why should it stay on for a whole song and not only during a transition.
With my solution it's easy for us to activate and deactivate with the push of only one single button whenever we want to. Same for the adjustment, turn one single knob or don't turn it whenever you want to.

Of course the adjustment on the knob should be prelistened and done while also doing gain adjustment, pitch adjustment, EQing and so on. This would just help to keep it real and use headphones again ;)

+ 1

@BBN: not the first time I've been accused of thinking too complicatedly. ;-)

The nature of key adjustment is that you necessarily have it in place for the duration of a song (not just during a transition).

Using key adjustment as an effect can only considered "push of only one single button" if you have already loaded the key adjustment effect into the bank and preset the correct adjustment parameters (a cumbersome process). It's doubtful anyone will want to essentially give up an entire effect slot for key change for a whole mix, which means we necessarily have a complex setup procedure (for key change) that must be completed in that narrow window between songs for complete setup. I propose that a hard-mapped standalone function that steps pitch up / down by a semitone using a single button press (+ / -) is much more efficient and aligns more closely with how this feature will be used.

Speaking of efficiency, from a mathematics perspective it is much more graceful to do the pitch adjustment calculation in the same engine that does the speed/frequency adjustment (the core Serato engine), as pitch is just another variable in that function. Otherwise, the system will be doing quantization/adjustment twice (which, due to the nature of Fourier transforms, will introduce a lot more opportunity for loss and undesirable audio artifacts).

I usually don't get this passionate about a single feature, but this case is the exception. This is critical functionality missing from Serato DJ, and it really needs to be done right for users to be able to use it easily. My most strongest preference is that this is a feature of Pitch N' Time or some other add-on (yes, i'll pay!), and it's hardmapped to a distinct mappable control that steps the key up/down by semitones. My kingdom for this...

/b

I don't care how it is created and programmed, but as a DJ to me the easiest way to use it would be in one of the effect slots and all I need would be my headphones for prelistening the next track, a button to activate keychange and a knob to turn left or right to adjust key.
This could make everyone happy the easiest way. You can leave your adjustent on for a transition only or a full song, just depends on for how long you leave it activated.

What I definitly don't want is something like a key sync button.
God gave me ears and I'm using them.

I'm only using Echo out and Pitch Looper on both decks, so The third slot is free on my DDJ-SP1 ;)

Serato Programmers !
We Still waiting for this amazing Feature !



Here is my suggestion:

1. Serato should make/buy a key finder program like "Mixed in key"
2. When making ANALYZE - the program will ask how to Write the Key (Before/After "File name" / Separate column)
3. Serato will find the key and write it to the IDtag so we can sort by this.

4 For using: maybe addind a fader in the software (parallel to Tempo fader) to each Deck will be efficient and easy - like the Tempo fader .

I'm sure that after that key the controllers will also make another fader .
I will be willing to pay for this and i belive also others a fair price .

Waiting for progress !!

+24

IMHO, the key change ability should work like this with ie the DDJ-SP1

In hot loop mode :

1- Storing the hotcue point normally
2- Choosing with the autoloop knob the relative pitch of the cue point from -24 to +24 (default:0 = basic pitch)
3- Pushing the autoloop to apply the selected pitch
4- Pushing the pad plays the track with the stored pitch

That's it !

Yea!

+1 for this feature.

I would not leave the Serato Ship because of this missing feature..
Serato is still too good :)

But I really hope that it is comming within the next 2 updates..

It would be totaly okay if you could pitch it up or down without keyLock and then by pressing keyLock exactly the tone you had pitched before will stay and you could pitch back the tempo where you want it to without changing the key.
When PnT came out I thought it would be like that but...

Please Serato, bring the keyChanging ability!

+1

+1

As a classically trained pianist, this feature is essential.

I started dj'ing with a pair of CDJ-800's timecoded to a DJM-707 running VDJ.

yes. Virtual DJ. and my sets sounded amazing because I had the ability to shift key.

5 years into it, I upgraded to a DDJ-SR which came equipped with Serato, awesome, I was stoked.

I get home, start mixing, and voila, no key change ability, "no worries" I thought to myself, this is upgraded and updated technology. USB this, Serato that.

Then I found Pitch N Time online, "excellent!" I thought, and happily forked over for the expansion. No, no pitch shift ability here. You've got to be kidding me Serato....

Virtual DJ did all the same things you did at a fraction of the price + key change ability.

I only upgraded to DDJ-SR and Serato because of the pioneer brand, and because everyone was always talking about Serato or Traktor, and no one gave love to Virtual DJ.

Reading up on Traktor, looks like they have more effects, don't nickel and dime you for expansions, and also have the ability to CHANGE KEY.

way to lose a customer.

TO ALL THOSE READING THIS THREAD FOR THE FIRST TIME -

SERATO DOES NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE KEY. DO NOT PAY EXTRA FOR SOFTWARE THAT "ANALYZES" YOUR LIBRARY FOR KEY.

use your ears and a DAW that actually cares about its customers...

this forum was started two months and two years ago...

A Serato representative responded on JUNE of 2014, A YEAR LATER. And last responded in August of 2014 saying "in due time".... WOW

As a classically trained pianist are you really saying that because sdj can't change key means you shouldn't bother finding out they key of your tracks?

Wow

No. If you need to find out the keys of your tracks to figure out what sounds good. That's fine. Go for it.

When you develop relative pitch you can "hear" it.

Thats great. So you know what tracks will mix in key before you select them because you know if they will go once you play them?

I'm not sure what you're asking here... right now I preview a track through ddj-sr's soundcard to see if it is in tune. I use the 3%/6% semi-tone rule but am still limited to about a 1/4 of my library in any given key. Key change allows the ability to adust, not match.

Why? Why not just analyse them so that you know straight away which tracks will mix in key without having to preview?

Because I'm not going to shell out more money for something my brain already does.

and you're missing the point, it's not about knowing the key. It's the ability to adjust it. I regulsrly recieve requests and about half my pay is in tips, wih vortual dj and traktor I can throw in requests on the fly, even sample hem in. Now I have to say, "uhh sorry, that request isn't in key wih my set" LAME.

Ibrahims key finder is free.

Does your brain know what key all your tracks are (without having to listen to them first)?



I'm not missing the point. I 100% want the ability to key change too.

But what is lame is a dj who won't play a track that isn't in key.



This is the comment I have a problem with

Again, I am not saying not to analyze your library. Go for it. Have fun.

Serato does not have the ability to change key.

If you want to pay for Mixed in Key and again for Pitch N Time, awesome.

But neither will provide you with the ability to change the pitch or key of your song.

I don't think anyone who read what pitch in time does thought that it would let you. It has been heavily implied that the expansion pack would be upgraded free of charge to include pitch change. If you just want an improved keylock then you should buy it at your earliest convenience. If you want the ability to change the key just wait for PnT to be updated.

+1 - I'd like to see it implemented like VDJ where the key lock button simply locks the pitch wherever it is instead of jumping it back to 0%.

It's a simple change that would make a world of difference and allow you to first match pitches then lock it and match tempos with the same slider.

Sorry but all I understood was:
"I didn't read what I was paying for and now I'm pissed"

I wrote this a dozen times in these forums and I will continue to do so:
Never buy any product for the features it may or may not have in the future. If the current product fits your needs: Enjoy the great piece of software that you just got.
If it doesn't: Don't blame the company. Blame yourself.

Yeah, I know this is a feature suggestion area but it should be for existing customers that are satisfied with the product as is. I like SDJ and I will like it even more with every useful feature added.

I don't buy NI or Atomix products and then go to their forums to complain about the things they don't offer compared to Serato. It just doesn't make any sense.

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.
Turn off key lock, adjust the pitch (which also adjust the key coz key lock is off).
Then turn key lock back on (which now locks it at that specific key you just adjusted it to).
Then adjust pitch for correct bpm?
It seems a bit long winded, certainly is a very unique way of getting things done.
As long as we can see the key change whilst we change the pitch, I guess it could work.
I would still just prefer a simple knob & shift combination to change the key.

It's an essential feature for Serato, can't believe you don't have it. Torq had it as a standard functionality - despite being defunct for years it still blows Serato out of the water because of it.

What's interesting for me is thinking about how to map it to existing controllers. To date, I don't think any Traktor controller has had the "Key" knob natively mapped, I usually see it delegated to a secondary controller or to a unique mapping for that artists. If it was included, perhaps just make it mappable to an auxiliary controller and don't even bother with a native mapping?

please serato this is an absolute must and if i'm not completely wrong about this I think you could slightly modify the code already used to correct key changes caused by pitch changes to willfully effect key changes without having to change the pitch also midi mapping this function to a rotary knob would be best possibly two knobs one coarse and one fine adjustment center post click being zero

+1
This would be a great feature. I agree that it would be best to have a course and a fine adjustment. Perhaps it could be added as an FX?

In both Traktor and Ableton I also use it as a mappable effect during transitions e.g. Loop Roll + downshift pitch + echo delay out.

A semitone adjustment is just too rough.



The key change function implementation in VDJ is IMHO also pretty rotten as you are forced to use semitone adjustments - no fine key control.

Not every track is created perfectly in key, and your ears will always be more reliable than software at figuring it out.



I buy the software that has the address the MAJORITY of features I need, there is no such piece of software yet that has ALL the features I would like to see, drawing comparisons to other software that has had this implemented for years is an easy way to explain what we would like to see.

Its a feature suggestion forum, all we can hope for is that when manufacturer actively asks for additional feature suggestions that they might listen to the many voices who all want the same thing and get a chance to have a look at how others are implementing those features successfully.

Back then there was a software that had all features of other prducts today plus many more, it was called Torq and made by M-Audio ;)

I don't like how long this discussion has been going. I feel like Serato should've implemented this by now :(

+1

With you on that! A pretty basic feature users have been requesting for over 2 years... Looks very much like Serato's not listening.

Serato's gonna have to take their time (no hate pls) to make sure that they balance a good-sounding pitch-shifter and not wasting too much CPU on a feature I don't think many of us would ever use imo

The logical thing to do would be to add these features to the Pitch'n'time plugin...

Independent key-adjustment for Pitch'n'Time

+1

DAMIT i don't wanna pay for it!

Are you in audio engineering? Or programming? Or both?
I'm not but I have a common sense that key correction/shifting/etc. isn't easy or basic at all. Especially not if the company is Serato who built it's reputation in this field.

We've waited for years to have better key lock in SSL/SDJ and now with P'NTDJ we arguably have the best key lock available.


Advanced key lock (P'NTDJ) is a paid plugin so it's more than likely that key shifting will be too.
I don't think it matters whether you WANT to pay for it or not.

Are you in audio engineering? Or programming? Or both?
I'm not but I have a common sense that key correction/shifting/etc. isn't easy or basic at all.

Audio Engineering yes, programming no. I'm not suggesting any feature that shifts the key of a track as required in a set is basic as in easy to implement (although you'd guess with P'NT a lot of the groundwork is probably done). What I'm suggesting is the feature is a fairly fundamental one, one that exists and works well in other platforms. There's obviously demand for it, clearly demonstrated by this thread. In my opinion, people who don't think they'll use it will be surprised how useful (and fundamental) it is if it's ever made available. As for a paid feature or not, if we have to pay for it to make it happen, I'll happily pay.

Key change ability needed again and again!
+ keylock button of course.
It should be on keyboard of course, not controller!

I use key change (semi-tone and fine adjustment) in Traktor in a variety of scenarios from simply wanting to keep my mixes harmonic between key changes to basically correcting a poorly recorded song (or bad singing) that is slightly out of key so it fits into the next without it sounding like a bunch of cats being strangled.

So... A major +1 from me. There are so many implementations of it out there in terms of hardware and software (with open source availability in programmed key changes)!

Pitch 'n' Time is half way there with the high quality key locking with tempo changes, now we just need it expanded to have a nob to:
- Allow us to key lock at any key so the tempo can be changed with a key lock engaged
and / or
- Allow us to change the key (rotary knob with fine adjustments for those 'bad recordings')
- With the above in mind, a function to jump by semi-tone
- Provide a snap-back function to reset the key offset to 0

I'm sure there are other things but the above would be a pretty damn powerful addition.

+1

Mixvibes, Traktor and others all already have this. I'm frankly surprised that as advanced as Serato is, it hasn't already implemented this.

I would like to say YES to serato to created a function "key changer" in semitones for using on serato dj. Many people are thankful when it's activated :)
I begun to set my whole karaokecollection from disks to digital formats, so i can use it with serato video and my pioneer ddj-sx and/or denon hc-5000

please please serato, make it possible for many many serato users
thanks a lot ;)

ps: i'm sorry for my "bad" english, i'm just a dutch man ;), but i'll hope that everyone understands me :)

Apologies if this has already been mentioned - This needs to be implemented in a fine control surely, rather than a coarse step setup. A number of songs aren't exactly on key anyway, especially in sample-based music.

Let us sort out the pitch with our ears! I personally would find it >infuriating< to have it restricted to step changes that may sound slightly off.

From my experience with the waves pitch shifter when producing the fine control is invaluable.


>PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE< >ADD THIS FEATURE< ADD THIS FEATURE< >LISTEN TO THE CONSUMER< >IT'S REALLY NOT THAT CONTROVERSIAL< >JUST ADD IT< thanks.

Davster, out of curiosity, if you aren't going to change by semitones, then why wouldn't you just turn key lock off and use the pitch fader on your player? Seems to me that would be much easier. In atonal or as you call it "sample based music" the song doesn't have a key to adjust in the first place, so trying to match key doesn't make a lot of sense - music theory 101.

All you can do is match tone and the pitch fader would do that already, so it seems to me that the pitch control already does what you want. So I'm kind of confused by your response. Either things play in a key, or they don't. If you're talking about differences in root node, then that doesn't really apply to key control, and is an overall pitch issue. You'd adjust your pitch slider to match, and then if the music root note matches the root note you want, then key control would once again only go up or down by semi-tones.

So you might be asking for a different feature than key control. Is that the case?

But increasing pitch also increase speed

I see what you're trying to say, however I think you may have misunderstood my post... (and I assure you I do know what I'm talking about with music theory).


Yes, obviously you can turn key lock off and change the speed to change the pitch. However in this discussion we're talking about changing the tuning (and therefore the key) of the track >independently< of the speed.

I wasn't talking about 'atonal' music. Atonal music is music with no tonal centre - 'no key'. The sample based music I'm talking about might be Hip Hop or whatever where the entire track (or elements) may be a number of Hz off traditional tuning (but it still is tonal). If you take a song like that and put it through a coarse pitch shifter it's still going to be 'off key' since you can't make small enough changes to get it in tune.

The feature request we are all talking about changes the pitch of the audio - changes the frequencies up or down a certain amount - obviously through this the key can change.

Therefore the 'overall pitch issue' IS actually the issue we are discussing. We all want a way to shift the track up or down by a certain frequency, and all I'm saying is that you may as well make it a completely 'loose' control so we can really get stuff 'in tune' with our ears, no matter what the circumstances or source material is, rather than be restricted to mixing tracks that are based on the same tuning (A=440Hz for example).

There could of course be a coarse AND a fine control. With most pitch shifting plugins for DAWs you can tune it to the correct pitch with a fine control and then shift it up entire semitones with another control. Without the fine control though you're severely limited.


Two examples to show what I mean:
1.
Lets say I take track A and I want to mix it with track B.
Track A is tuned to A=440Hz (so, B is 493.88Hz etc) , and is in C major.
Track B is slightly 'out of tune', say, A=470Hz, and is in D major.

With a coarse control all I could do is move track A or track B by a predefined amount which corresponds to a semitone. Moving A up by this amount will still amount in a discrepancy in tuning and same with moving B down.

With a 'loose' fine control you could move it up or down by exactly however much you want to to get it in tune.

2.
Track A and B are both tuned to A=440Hz.
Track A is in C major.
Track B is in D major.

A coarse control would work in this example, however a loose fine control would also do the job just fine.


Having a loose fine control is surely a benefit providing the operator has a musical ear.

Ah, I see. Given the fine tuning and necessity for a human ear to make the adjustment here, it really does seem to me that what you want is to use a pitch slider to match your root note first, and that should be it. The pitch slider already does exactly what you're asking for. If you know what key your music is in, say C major, and it's off by a couple hertz, you take keylock off and adjust with the slider which is what I do. Given that your standard slider goes +/- 10% at least these days, and with plugins like pitch-n-time it can be mapped to go way beyond that, it seems duplication of already existing functionality.

Even if you had a control for cents up or down - the lowest meaningful interval in western music, I'm not sure that it would really gain you very much more flexibility than moving to a semitone up or down and fine tuning with your pitch slider.

I'd be interested to see how you would see something like this working.

If you know cross DJ / mixvibes, it has an ability to go up or down by semitones, and I'd be really hard pressed to find a situation in which that kinda control isn't granular enough, and if it was, being able to use the pitch control seems that it would allow me to correct enough.

I don't see any reason why someone wouldn't want to implement it, but on the other hand I'm not sure I see much of an advantage in club or dance music.

:)

BBD, pitch and tempo are different. This is why you have keylock and timestretching stuff these days. If you turn the keylock off, then yeah by increasing speed you increase pitch, but if you want to adjust the key of a song up and keep the same tempo by less than a semitone, you will find that there is for most songs of under 5 mins length virtually no observable change in the tempo, unless you're going up by full tones, and easily correctable by the occasional hit on a nudge button, or draggin a platter. Human drummers drift more than that between bars.

Right... except as we've already stated using the 'pitch slider' (or what I just call the tempo slider) with keylock off changes the tempo as well as the pitch, which is absolutely not what we're going for.

Two songs at 128bpm one is in C Major one is in D Major but slightly sharp. If I change the pitch using the pitch slider then they're not going to be beat-matched are they!

If you have two separate tracks playing at the same time, even the slightest little change can cause havoc with, for example, the groove. It's just not true that changing it by a semitone won't affect the tempo. Besides, what about the DJs who don't bother manually beat matching (I mean why would you with Serato tbh). As soon as you hit that sync button it's gonna screw up your carefully measured tuning.

If you have key lock disabled and you drag the platter it's gonna cause a noticeable increase or decrease in pitch.

So the obvious workaround would be to correct that slight sharpness in a DAW before bringing the track into the DJ application? I'm not opposed to fine resolution key change in SDJ, but I just think other functions are more needed currently. Eg. fine resolution tempo change in internal mode. (+/- 1% as in SSL)

A one semitone increase can require a 6% adjustment

Absolutely! Some can take even more. But we're talking about fine tuning sub semitone adjustments, not whole tones, and 6% is well within the range of just about any pitch slider you're gonna encounter. That's all I'm saying. So on the surface it seems that fine tuning lower than a semitone is already sort of doable with pitch faders. So if you need to go up say B -> C and 1/3 of an interval, you increase by one semitone with a control and then nudge up say 1%. As I said before, human drummers on old vinyl drift more than that in their tempo between bars, so classic vinyl skills pushing and nudging can compensate for the drift in tempo.

To be clear, I am not against it. I just think it seems overkill from a coding perspective. Instead of using a frequency lookup table, you probably end up having to do fourier transforms which is computationally expensive.

I think WarpNote makes a really good point above. The obvious thing is to fine tune tracks offline in another DAW with better time stretching and aliasing. Heck, even in free stuff like audacity. The reason I agree is that 99% of all the music we play at club or dance event is gonna be within half an interval of a key root note, or it's not gonna be in key at all. Either way, fine tuning to that level seems a bit overkill. It's a bit like buying a brand new McLaren F1 if where you live only has dirt and gravel roads. Again, not against it, but I have serious doubts that it's gonna have much practical world use when performing.

If I really had to lock on a harmonic mix between two songs and move up and interval and a quarter in a live situation, I think I might consider doing what WarpNote suggested and key correct the track in live, audacity or 'tools first.

However, I suppose not everyone is comfortable with that, and someone may have a creative use for detuning a song, so as I said, not against it. As mentioned above, I'd be interested to see how someone would implement this and use it. Be interesting to check out and play with for sure.

I also like WarpNote's point about fine rez tempo changes. On my NS7 2, I can do this by setting the pitch range with the controller, but when using DVS with my SL2, that doesn't seem to be an option in SDJ like it was in SSL. However I will say that for the large part Ive found it unnecessary in SDJ, as the occasional platter nudge or bend button hit has compensated for what tiny drift I have seem. I'm pretty careful about mapping my beatgrids however.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but giving us a totally loose control would surely be simpler from a coding perspective than something that shifts up or down by semitones? Pretty sure the Hz gaps between semitones decreases at pitch increases, so all you'd have to do with a loose control is make sure the resolution was high enough to cover cent-sized changes at the highest reasonable pitches and the rest can be done by ear. This was discussed in quite a lot of detail a long way up the discussion - a number of users pointed out that semitone shifting would hence require pitch detection.

Regarding the 'just fix it on a DAW' comments - what about when you've got a giant library and you're mixing on the fly? You can't honestly be suggesting that one goes through their entire library making sure each track is exactly 'in tune'. With any sort of respectable library that would take days at least, if not hundreds of hours. Aside from anything else, decent pitch-shifting is few and far between in native plugins that come with DAWs, and 3rd party plugins that are any good can cost you a pretty penny. Logic Pro's pitch-shifting is >awful< on entire songs - I use Waves pitch-shifter but that's also not THAT good. Some DJs swear by FLAC because of the increased quality, and you're suggesting permanently screwing up a particular track's audio integrity just in case you might want to mix it at some point with something else that's not quite in tune?



What WarpNote is saying about correcting the tuning in a DAW would surely be equivalent to me just saying to you 'it doesn't matter if we don't have particularly high resolution tempo-change because you can just bring it to an exact integer BPM value in a DAW'. Given that, in my experience, the human ear is far more attuned to hearing slight changes in pitch rather than slight changes in tempo, those slight differences in BPM can already be effectively quashed with nudging yet there's nothing remotely as effective for small pitch changes, and the fact that there isn't this much-wanted pitch-shifting feature yet at all, it seems that pitch-shifting (in whatever technical form) is actually something 'more needed'.


Having a loose control gives creative control also (as Amplogik briefly alluded to) - lets say I've got a track in C major and I'm shifting up a notch to D major with the next song (now, yes, that's obviously a tone not less than a semitone) - with the right context it might work nicely to gradually bring the pitch up (lets say if there's a 'pad' section or sustained tone in the current track). If we were stuck with straight semi-tone jumps this would be impossible - this wouldn't be something you could do in a DAW unless you knew what transition you were going to make (and then you might as well say 'F*ck it' and just do the stitching in the DAW as well!

Not really seeing any convincing reasons why having a fine control would be a >disadvantage< over having a coarse control, aside from the comments about the CPU efficiency (which may or may not apply, I'm not much of a programmer).

Until you've got it and start using it. Setting your whole library to one key in a DAW is both impractical and undesirable - who wants to be constrained to the same key every single time they jump on the decks? Setting the key using a DAW also means you have to have your entire set worked out before you play. Some of us like to inject a bit of spontaneity when we play. Do we pre-plan every conversation we have and configure our sentences accordingly?

It's also not overkill. To extend Amplogik's car analogy, it's like saying why would I want to be able to plug in my mp3 player to the car stereo, I've got FM radio to play tunes. Well, because it gives more flexibility, more choice, and more control. Who doesn't want that? Torq 2.0 had this function way back in 2009/2010. It was flexible, it opened up a whole range of options mixing on the fly, it sounded good, it did not chew up CPU. Come on Serato, it's a fundamental piece of functionality and this pretty substantial thread clearly shows your users want it. Why ignore that?

Absolutely need this feature. Its been without for too long. And detect the key upon analyzing the file. Both are needed. It should be on the next version.

Nobody said that mate. We're talking about correcting to the closest key if it's out of key. Not one key. That would just be stupid.

As for Torq, it allowed you to change by semitones up or down, which was already suggested by yours truly up above. It didn't go finer than that because just about nobody needs in in the real world. 99.999% of all western music is written and performed in one fo the standard 24 keys seperated by semitones. More fine grained control than that IS computationally expensive when having to do frequency analysis over a domain. Ask any third year math major. ;)

This is why stuff like mixed in key, or keyfinder work offline and write the data to the ID3 tags rather than doing key analysis real time. If you can detect a key ahead of time, you at least have somewhere to start to base movement up and down the scale. If however, your music is not in a known key, then there is no standard tuning that is going to work, and a fine control is gonna be as much use as wearing oven mitts for protection while trying to thread a needle. Key change ability is not meaningful because there is no key.

So you're left to straight tuning by frequency domain, and that is a lot more complex to implement in code.

Again, not against it, but fine tuning in between semitones is unnecessary for just about any western music or club play.

Musician's don't say "Hey, can you pick up and follow me in the key of E Major and 1/5th. No, they agree on tunings ahead of time, and what scale, and that's where you get your keys. Now, the musicans may all agree to A444 instead of A440, but the harmonic difference in practice is negligible to the human ear unless you REALLY bend it outside that, which case, the ear will hear it as another key.

Let me put it this way, you can pick up a guitar and play Stairway to Heaven in A minor, but you can't pick up a guitar and play Stairway to Heaven in A minor + 2.4%. Nor would you want to, because it would fall apart later on in the song.

Adjusting for 'slightly off' is what the DJ's mixing skills are for. This is why I think that fine tuning of less than a semitone is overkill. It massively complicates the calculation requirements, meaning exponentially more time to implement, and won't add anything significant to 99.99% of mixing, and that remainder might just be a matter of selecting different music rather than trying to force things together that don't have harmonies.

If it was that important to you that you get those two songs harmonically matched, then the right thing to do, is take the song that's drifted off key and clean it up in a DAW and moving it to one key or the other instead of the no man's land in between.

:)

Before I have my rant, I think it might be advantageous to actually define the terms we're using here and make some things clear - because certain things people are saying seem to be confusing the issue.


1. Tuning = what frequency each >individual< note is performed as.

TWO DIFFERENT PRACTICAL MEANINGS OF TUNING WITHIN THIS DEFINITION.

- 'Tuning practice', which is making sure an instrument is 'in tune'. It's what almost any instrumental player does before they play (yes even pianos occasionally are tuned).

- 'Tuning system' - there are different systems of 'tuning' to decide what frequency each individual note is performed as.

N.b. An instrument can be 'in tune' but the player can still play out of tune on certain notes.


2. Key = is defined by the use of certain notes (the frequencies of which are decided by the tuning). A song in D major with no harmonic funny-buisness will use the D major scale for it's notes - D E F# G A B C#

3. >Tuning is DIFFERENT and SEPARATE from what key a song is in<. A song can hence be 'in a key', and be out of tune.
_____



Amplogik was right, nobody was suggesting that. We're talking about the same tuning, not the same key (see my definitions above). If you replace 'key' with 'tuning' I'd be more inclined to agree.





But that's just not true! I play violin, which is a stringed instrument without frets in case anybody here didn't know that (duh).

As I alluded to above, there's a whole tuning debate regarding the different tuning systems! You've got equal temperament (brought in for keyboards pretty much), 'just' intonation, pythagorean, etc etc etc. These aren't just theoretical things they're tuning systems people actually use and can actively tell the difference between. In 'Classical' (to use the broad layman's term) performance a professional string quartet will play with tuning quite different from how it might play with a piano since the piano would determine whether they were restricted to equal temperament. This doesn't mean that the quartet is tuning to something other than A=440Hz, it means that the subsequent intervals above and below that are different - the tuning SYSTEM is different, not the tuning practice. The tuning practice here can also change however, I suspect a few of you might be aware that in the Baroque era they tuned A to something more like 415Hz, this is a very noticeable change to the musically trained (when put side by side with 440Hz in any case, even if not played at the exact same time).

Whilst it's true that most of well-known western music (miles off 99.999%, but accept your generalisation for the sake of it) is written to a 'key', that does not mean that all of recorded western music is recorded in the same tuning system or practice. In fact, it'd probably be technically fair to say that a majority of live recorded music is NOT recorded to the exact same tuning practice.



Being a performing musician myself, I can tell you that whilst they don't say that, that isn't to say that they don't adjust their tunings on the fly to interact with each other. 'E major and a 1/5th' just doesn't mean anything at all (see definitions up top).



I'm not personally sure what change +2.4% would make, but you certainly CAN pick up an instrument, tune it sharp, and play the same song, in the same 'key', just sharp.
I could pick up a cello, tune A to 455Hz (along with the corresponding pitches on the C, G, and G string) and play a piece of Bach that opens in G major - it would still be 'G major' even though A is tuned differently.



I totally agree. But as we've discussed, there aren't any decent tools for this 'adjusting' at the moment.

Even if it is something more complicated from a programming perspective, it's still nothing revolutionary I'm asking for, and the creative benefits and the 'just in case' benefits make it wholly worthwhile imo.

I mean, come on, it can't Hertz.

Awesome post Davester!



Hahahaaha! Awesome.



That's why I said for club play. However, there is a typo. "or" should be "for". You're very infrequently gonna be playing the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 tuned flat in concert. I play folk on Banjo and Lute for fun. Chances of hearing I'll Fly Away or any other bluegrass in a club with a DJ are pretty slim too. Modern dance, pop and electronic music is nearly always composed on a standard tuned 12 semitones to the octave keyboard, and most often in a minor key.

On top of which, by the time producers are done with recordings, even most western stuff is mapped to a specific key on the circle of fifths. It's somewhat an artefact of the tools used to create recordings these days.

This is why even in DAWs like ableton, hardware samplers and so on, that sample playback tuning adjustments are done in semitones, and master tuning is set elsewhere.

I'd be very interested if someone could turn me onto a popular artist that goes outside of that commonly. I mean I know it's not gonna happen with a lot of older classical or bluegrass recodings, but we're not dropping that in the club that often.

The challenge of course is that in the case of a DJ, there's no set master tune, because third party recorded music is all over the place. So I can kinda see it getting used, but not that often unless you're doing something really specialized. I can think of once in 25 years of DJing where I worked with a cellist and a flutist, but there I prepped loops and tracks ahead of time in Live.



Turning key lock off, pitch fader and nudging the platter works for me. It's worked for DJs since Jazzy Jeff. The only downside I see to this is if you have to force a specific song more than a few BPM out, or the original key is entirely different than what you want. In which case, this is a job for a DAW with complex time warping ability. I think this is largely the exception rather than the rule.

Frankly, I'd be happy to see that capability, but even just being able to bump a songs key up or down by a few semitones ala Torq or CrossDJ/Mixvibes would cover nearly anything you're gonna find yourself having to do in a live context.

But hey, if it turns out that fine tuning between semitones is just as easy to code, and it makes someone happy... sure, why not.



Almost none. Try it in protools. Minor differences on the high end. If you're not classically trained, you're probably not gonna hear it. This is why I say that sub semitone tuning would largely be a waste of time. Unless you have perfect pitch and a decade of formal musical training, I doubt very much that you're gonna hear much difference, as we tend to hear in equal temperament unless you're one of those lucky sods with perfect pitch. :)

Great post Davester! Good explanation of tuning vs key for those that don't have the music theory background. I suspect a lot of folk have some trouble understanding keys and what they represent. So when you talk about changing key, or moving up or down semitones, it might be confusing or give the wrong impression.

I don't have time at the moment to write a proper reply to this point yet, but I was just going through some music and BAM.

Found a key example - Listen to 'I'm not alone' by Calvin Harris.

Watchwww.youtube.com

I think we can agree that Calvin Harris is a pretty 'big' artist, even if this song is relatively old.

I challenge you to try and play along with that on a piano and not to flinch. It's less than a semitone out of tune, and it's >extremely< noticeable. Mixing something with that sounds completely disgusting, and dragging it is also too noticeable for my tastes.

Just tried mixing with it for a laugh with Djay on my iPad and the flaws of a 'semitone only' adjustment immediately show themselves.

Dude, that is E min pretty much straight up.

A,A, B,B C, E, G, C and D.

I can play it fine on a keyboard.

Not that I don't appreciate the challange. Awesome dude on trying to find one. I think that's great you sent it along. I love a challange.

BTW, KeyFinder, MiK and Keys Plus all agree with me. E minor.

Even the bassline on a keybord is E and F#. E minor as well, and the notes are pretty much standard penatatonic tuning at A440.

But I'm open to others. Love exploring new music and recommends by others. :)

I'm not sure why changing the pitch in a seperate programme (or even audacity) once so you don't have to ever again isn't a good option.

I'm not saying you can't play the song on a keyboard... Have you tried playing ALONG? At the same time at the same octave? If not, try it again.

If so, then... come on... you're surely not telling me you can't hear the dissonance between how the piano is tuned and the tuning of the synths in the song? (If you're playing along on a real piano then to be fair I don't know how out of tune yours is). They're very noticeably out of tune with each other. Take it to any decent classically trained musician and they'll back that up.

I'm aware the keyfinding software finds it to be E minor - the key-finding software will find it to the nearest 'in tune' key, not that it has much bearing on what we're talking about anyway - I'll quote myself:



So... the key of the song can still be E minor whilst the tuning can be slightly off.

I notice you said you play folk banjo and lute, so perhaps that might be why we're coming at this from different angles and missing each other in doing so. From my own experience of interacting with other musicians, non-professionals who play fretted instruments (DJs who weren't musicians prior actually are FAR worse at this) tend to have differently trained (or untrained) ears to those who play instruments where tuning is more of an active task.


Anyway, since you asked, here's another example of a song that's been recorded noticeably flat, yet less than a semitone out. Just found it with a quick google search, I know it's not exactly club material!

Watchwww.youtube.com




Well, the point is that that's a destructive change to the audio file, usually heavily degrading the 'quality' of the sound. It's also a total pain for large libraries, and takes out creative applications of having a loose pitch bend.

Go ahead and open up audacity, if you've got a decent listening setup, and change it up or down half a semitone. You should instantly hear a noticeable drop in audio fidelity - if you're playing that out in certain clubs you might cause all sorts of problems. If you can't hear the problems, or you think they're just fine, then by all means play that out in the club, a lot of people probably wouldn't notice in a club situation anyway - just know that producers / audio engineers / musicians / anybody who knows about music listening will be giving you a dodgy look.
As I mentioned in a previous post, a lot of DJs talk about how important having high quality audio files is (using FLAC files for example). Bearing this in mind, completely buttf***ing the integrity of the audio by suggesting pitch shifting an entire song in audacity seems rather ridiculous.

Paid application's native pitch shifting often isn't that much better to be honest despite being rather expensive, and all sorts of artefacts are generated. It can quickly turn a clean track's low end into a rumbling mess.
I understand Serato's Pitch 'n Time Pro plugin for Pro Tools is rather good, however it costs $799 (note, this is very different from the expansion for Serato DJ) [by the way, this means that Serato obviously already have the technology for this, and therefore presumably wouldn't require that much development].

The crux of the matter is that as a professional DJ software, Serato should be striving to provide the best features in the best possible implementation.

Now... I've just been reading a vaguely similar discussion over on djtechtools about Traktor and guess what I found about how it works for NI:



So, Traktor already has this functionality I speak of. Maybe I'm just whining, but currently Serato seems to only be on par feature-wise with freebie iPad apps! (now yes yes, Serato is more reliable, 'more professional', perhaps does certain things better etc etc).

A way this could be implemented also just occurred to me that could satisfy both sides of the fence (I'm using the buttons on my DDJ-SX as reference here since I don't have much experience with other Serato controllers):

a) Keylock button has two functions now - clicking it toggles key lock on and off as normal. Holding down key lock toggles coarse/loose (and fine) semitone pitch changes.

b) Rotary knob, or a button-combination + the tempo slider can change the pitch in a loose form.

That way, guys who don't give a flying monkey-ball (anybody remember that game?) about special tuning instances or creative applications can simply dial up or down to their desired key with the coarse shifter, and those of us who want more control can use the loose fine setup.

It also just occurred to me - assuming no key-detection software is implemented (and even if it is that would be done in the analysis of the track not upon arming the deck) then of course you can still have coarse pitch-shifting - Wave's pitch shifter VST/AU plugin does just that - and if you're gonna have semitone adjustments in this light then I'm 99% sure it makes no difference AT ALL to be able to have a fine control. Waves allows you to change the pitch by a ratio of up to something like 5 decimal places - any software that shifts up or down even by a semitone minimum would have to have at least a certain resolution in order to ensure the target change is reached beyond reasonable audible error, and this resolution would more than cover the needs for sub-semitone changes. Therefore, adding fine pitch control without key detection should be no more of a task than simply adding the necessary UI.

Also... is somebody from Serato ever gonna come and trawl through this discussion? They really should, we've got some good stuff going here.



Awkward, I guess I'm a lucky sod then!

Interesting. I didn't know the current traktor did that. How is the audio quality of a shifted song? As it's in real time, I wonder how good it is. I found that cross kinda made the high end a bit "off" for me, but it's ok in a pinch. I's still rather use serato and choose my songs to match ahead of time, but it's a great feature for having to mix some curveball request to get someone off your back. I hated the Torq implementation however as it seemed to really degrade the sound quality.



You're absolutely right, depending on how the stretching algorithm is implemented. I've seen ones that just use tables based on

mfact = 12th root of 2 = 2^(1/12) = 1.0594631

But they aren't always great when doing transforms as equal temperment fudges the numbers a bit, so some notes end up sounding "off". It's one of the problems with a percentage or linear control, as it doesn't truly represent the relationships between semitones in most scales.

So shortcut methods can result in somewhat of a dissappointment.

I'll be interested to check out Traktor again just to see how that pitch shifting works in practice. :)

Yeah, but I was talking about club / dance music. Still, it's a pretty dope song. I like it. Thanks for the recommend! :)

Would serato be able to make this a possibility that's 1. works better than audacity REAL-TIME with minimal CPU loss (audacity gets to take it's time going through the song slowly, but serato can't do that), and 2. not cost a bugati to download?

I personally haven't tried this functionality in Traktor, so I can't speak first hand of the quality. In that thread I linked they mentioned that past a few semitones it starts to noticeably degrade.



Well, as far as I'm aware Serato's Pitch 'n Time plugin is in real time. Waves' Pitch-shifter is in real time, being an effect insert you place on the channel you want. Having said that, it does introduce a certain noticeable latency so I suppose you might say it's not 'real real-time'.
Waves' Pitch-Shifter does have a very high CPU usage. It's quite old mind, don't think it's been updated in a while.

I 100% guarantee you that Serato Pitch 'n Time and Waves Pitch-shifter sound >ridiculously< better than audacity's native shifting however despite the decreased processing time...

Regarding the CPU usage, I don't really see this as necessarily a huge deal. Those of us with higher-spec machines would be able to run it as we want, whereas people with crap machines wouldn't! Such is the way of life. In that Traktor discussion some people mentioned avoiding the pitch shifting since their laptops can't really handle it - as NI clearly appreciates, that doesn't mean the rest of us can't benefit.

As for the price, well I really don't know how Serato work out their pricing methods. It doesn't have to be $750 Pitch 'n Time quality. I personally think their time-shifting stuff works very well, better than lots of stuff you get in DAWs, and that upgrade addon wasn't that expensive.

Ableton Pitch Shifter works fine over a reasonable range. (Set warping method to "complex")

I find ableton's time stretching with warping set to complex pretty good too, but even there I agree with Davester about the consequences of reducing audio quality. If you shift up or down only a little bit and your audio is lossless flac, it's quite good, but more than +/-5% and it starts to get noticible I find. Ok for individual loops and so on, but I can hear exactly what he's talking about on vocal cuts, so I'd only use it to stretch the odd song here or there.

I will say however, that sometimes the introduced audio glitches have a really great tone that can totally "make" a new remix. :)

Sent a message to Serato about this, and they said the following:



'Both' the features referred to this and Spotify integration.

Any update about this feature addition, Serato?

I note that Mixxx now has this in 1.12 as well as good FX, MIDI clock and all the other bells and whistles that folk have been clamouring for over the last couple years.

I'm rather surprised frankly, that open source and free software is starting to technologically surpass serato in these areas.

Any chance serato might give us an update on what they think is a good idea, and what they're working on? Key change ability would really make some of us happy.

Perhaps if we start posting really offensive and inappropriate things we'll attract their attention. Or maybe if we all just report a comment... hmmmm.... Depends if its an automated system I suppose....

So I'd thought I'd just do a bit of quick research to highlight how behind Serato is with what appears to really be a basic feature these days:

DJ software packages that have this feature...

Traktor: Yes
Traktor Mobile: Yes
Abelton Live: Yes
Magix Digital DJ 2: Yes
Mixvibes CrossDJ: Yes
Algoriddim DJay (both versions): Yes
VirtualDJ Pro: Yes
PCDJ: Yes
VJ6: Yes
Zulu DJ: Yes
Image-Line Deck-a-Dance 2: Yes (through VST support)
Party Mix DJ app for Android: Yes (I think?)

Rekordbox DJ: no (?)
Serato DJ: No.

Now, I pulled those names from various 'top 10 DJ software' lists and searched the name followed by 'pitch-bend' or some similar phrase. In many lists, Serato was the ONLY software not to have this feature.

*sigh*

Key detection, key adjust & key match have all been added in the 1.8.0 Beta,
I really don't understand why u guys r moaning? Download the 1.8.0 Beta & test it.
It works a treat!!

I think you're trolling but there isn't a 1.8 Beta available or mentioned any where on Serato's site

Thanks man. They must not have updated the page on the mobile version yet. Will be sure to check it out

Ok wow that's pretty exciting ngl.

Now... the REALLY interesting thing will be to see if there's the 'fine' loose control... ;)

So that's an invite Beta and wasn't supposed to be shared openly

Ah. Well we appreciate you sharing it all the same and will keep it all hush hush for your sake :P

Where does it say that?
If it wasn't supposed to be shared, I wasn't aware of that.

Look at the pinned discussions and read the one with invite in the title

Admin, pls delete my post if necessary.
Sorry & No harm intended.

Egg on face !!!

Well... It's happened now.

I've just been messing around with the beta briefly, and the pitch-shifting seems to perform pretty well! It's of decent quality up to about three steps, which I think is more or less what we could reasonably expect.

It doesn't have the fine control :'( :'( :"( :""""""""(

Given the fact that it was shared without apparent proper authorisation does this mean that if we have a suggestion or problem occurring we can't share our experience?

Have removed the link Acemc -Please be mindful of the pinned discussions next time, we are less likely to run these kinds of activities if the rules are not adhered to.

Davster, you are in now so feel free to log bugs in the area if you wish.

Thanks Jason.
Humble apologies. I thought it was a public beta.

Thanks Jason, I'll have a dig through the software tomorrow and see what I can find!

Thats okay acemc, we will be rolling this out more publicly shortly but for now while we are still making large changes we are keeping it smaller scale.

Thanks everybody,

Jas.

Now this is great news. I'm not part of the beta, but I am stoked that this feature is finally making it in. I'm looking forward to the public beta.

Awesome guys!

Not long to wait now amplogik!

Sweet!

ITS ALMOST HERE?!

Almost mate, hold tight!

!!!

Inconceivable!!!

The Princess Bride just flashed through my mind LOL.

Yes :)

I don't suppose there's any chance of the release version coming out by this Tuesday is there....?

Playing in my mind whether I'm gonna just take the risk of using an unstable beta in a performance environment.... XD

Davster,

Do so at your own risk mate, I can't stop you but I would advise against it :)

Figured you'd say that... ;)

Serato sent out a email warning us not to upgrade folks!

SO DONT DO IT! for now...

to El Capitan? or the new beta?

El Capitan.

Oh god I'm dying now, I'm a habitual updater and I've got far too much stuff that says it won't work... (You'd think that since they release the developer versions of OS X early all these software packages would have updated compatibility by now but there we go).

Can't really develop based off of a preview as the end product could be (and often is) completely different from the starting product (beta 1). Standard Practice.

Time to change habits, lol

But then why do Apple bother having an early release program for developers?

I'm would think for many apps it would be fine. TBH I have always though that software that does everything internal as in no external devices or driver that go along with them etc. would be fine basing it off the dev previews but this is just my guess though.

Also if I am not mistaken the word preview in itself explains if all as it is just a glimpse of what to expect and not to be developed on as a final product.

Not for nothing it is also their way of doing their own private beta test.

Time for the annual OSX catastrophe. Lol

Yeah and we got Windows AND Mac users. I don't get it. I've even seen some peeps I was under the impression were on top of their game making the jump.

I just find it interesting that Serato breaks for almost every OSX update and people always blame Serato. Whereas the compatibility issues with the new Windows OS has been minimal to non existent. I feel like its more along the lines of Apple not concerning themselves with backwards compatibility.

Incidentally serato has released a statement saying they don't expect any problems, but then the same 'just in case' stuff.

Not entirely sure you can really blame apple for this either though... imagine what percentage of OS X users are Serato users, something ridiculously tiny. It would be ridiculous for Apple to do each update with every single software developer's current software version in mind. Apple don't know 3rd party developer's software, and even with their resources it'd be an impossible task for their engineers to learn the ins and outs of all of it, so all they can do is do what they do and then other people fix it to them. Although I suppose if this is the case then it is 'their fault', just I wouldn't blame them for it 🤔

In my own experience WINDOWS is the bad one, I've had much more software stop working on newer OS with them. Perhaps the reason audio programs can have particular problems with Mac OS updates is that all things audio are natively more tightly integrated on OS X?

Have to say this is the first Apple update where I've had emails from pretty much every company I've bought software from saying "Don't touch the update, it causes problems"

That includes Serato, Native Instruments, Waves, Slate, Steinberg etc. Windows 10 is pretty much the same so don't think there's much to choose between them this time around!

Mike

Yeah I noticed that too. Even enough for the DJ blogs to post a "STOPPPP, DO NOT UPDATE" blog LOL.
I share the same experience as Compiler. I am getting more bugs with Windows yes but the Apple update actually "breaks" more apps to the point of being risky and useless.

Don't worry guys, I'm sure all these applications will update compatibility for this update in time for the next OS X version to come out ;)

True Serato is a small percentage, but as stated above NI is having trouble along with a bunch of other audio oriented companies. Plus I've heard that El Capitan is breaking Microsoft Office Suites as far back as 2011 that were previously stable.

Obviously the moral is don't adopt early (I'm still on Win 8.1 for my DJ Rig) but it seems every year a significant number of issues pop up at least on the audio side of things for OSX.

I have yet to hear of any significant compatibility issues with Win 10 but it's early yet. Something serious could still turn up.

Yeah.... NI is usually having issues even when there was no os upgrade.... :-)

OOOOOOOH ;P

Note on key change...

I run regular karaoke twice-Three times a week, I have a some very very good singers, some with key change needs...

after some research on key change, and test pitching the fader up/down 0.3% seams perfect for +1/-1key

It sounded right

this was perfect, and the clients are happy!

Denon MC6000mk2, turn off pitch key lock first! then pitch +/- 0.03%

I'm gonna cry...

serato.com

WE HAVE BEEN HEARD!!!!!!

gif.co

give me your happy gif!

YES YES YES YES YES

well done Serato ! you rock! thanks for listening and provide such a great product!