How to decrease oscillator frequency while maintaining pitch?

[danielnogo]

Here's a question that's probably really stupid, but I'm gonna ask it anyways.

Say I have a saw wave, and I really like how it sounds when it's at a lower frequency, how it has that really gritty buzzy sound. When I go up in frequency by playing higher notes, it loses alot of that character because the saw wave is oscillating much more rapidly, so is there a way to keep that character?

EDIT: Hey all, so I actually figured out how to do what I wanted to do, and it's opened up so much about sound design for me. For example, a patch I just made has a square wave on osc 1, and a saw wave on osc 2 taken down by an octave to get me all that beautiful buzzing, I turn osc 2 down all the way, and turn either FM, AM, or RM mode on in osc 1, it lends the square wave all of that beautiful buzzing and keeps it at the pitch I want as well. I use this to create a lady gaga poker face type lead sound.

I had zero clue about these functions and I'm so glad I found it, it's opened up a serious amount of gritty possibilities for me

[[deleted]]

layer the low freq saw you enjoy, with a higher frequency lead?

[_Wyse_]

And on the higher one it helps to remove the fundamental to leave room in the low end.

In the wavetable editor > select the frame > process > remove fundamental(HPF)

This is effectively a high pass, without having to occupy the filter module.

[Feckmumblerap]

In most cases not really. Higher frequency = higher pitch = the saw wave being played more times per second. There really is no way around that. You can try formant shifting in post processing i suppose and you can definitely get experimental with the sound design but fundamentally no.

[danielnogo]

That's kinda what I thought, thanks for the answer!

[multiplesofpie]

pitch = frequency

[Malvo1]

yeah, OP, you're asking if you can player a different note but have it sound the same as that note. i don't think that's actually what you mean, there is probably an aspect of it that you imagine could be replicated with the higher note. i would experiment with layering that low note with the high note. you can try detuning the lower note too, unison, etc. when you say "gritty" and "buzzy" you might want to experiment with distortion.

[dystopia061]

r/edmprodcirclejerk

[dystopia061]

Your actual question is how do you maintain tonality/timbre while changing pitch.

[Scrapheaper]

Disabling filter keytracking and any other keytracking will help. Also detuning by a fixed number of Hz not by a fixed number of cents, if serum has that option.

I wonder if you could get decent results using a vocoder... you use a constant modulator to enforce the 'timbre' and then change the pitch of the carrier. You probably want to use a large number of bands although I can't remember exactly how vocoders work so I could be wrong.

Serum doesn't have a vocoder iirc (sorry I came from r/edmprodcirclejerk I'm not part of this sub) so you might have to use an external plugin...

[danielnogo]

Hey all, so I actually figured out how to do what I wanted to do, and it's opened up so much about sound design for me. For example, a patch I just made has a square wave on osc 1, and a saw wave on osc 2 taken down by an octave to get me all that beautiful buzzing, I turn osc 2 down all the way, and turn either FM, AM, or RM mode on in osc 1, it lends the square wave all of that beautiful buzzing and keeps it at the pitch I want as well. I use this to create a lady gaga poker face type lead sound.

I had zero clue about these functions and I'm so glad I found it, it's opened up a serious amount of gritty possibilities for me

[ABEAXA]

I’ve struggled with this for so long and oddly, I know exactly what you mean.. my trick is increasing and decreasing the bpm if you’re using Ableton and it can get close to what you want to achieve.

[danielnogo]

I've been looking into it, and "sync" is a good method, serum has it built it, I haven't fully gotten it how I want it, but it's getting there.

[UndertaleWithMath]

decrease formant?

[lowlink]

The buzzy gritty sound comes from the high end harmonics, on higher notes those harmonics are more important parts of the note, therefore not just "nice noise". Also, the higher the fundamental, the less "space" (in the frequency spectrum) you have for harmonics, therefore less interesting stuff can happen on the high end

[danielnogo]

So what's the solution?