How to make the vocal in a song higher or lower without changing the music
Ask Vizard Agent to raise or lower only the voice. Shifting the whole file would transpose the instruments too, so it separates the vocal from the instrumental, shifts the vocal with its tempo and character preserved, matches it back to the instrumental sample for sample, and listens for smearing on the loudest parts.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say which way and roughly how much, and add any change in feel. "A bit higher" and "a bit lower with more aggression" are both clear enough, because each new version is rendered from the original vocal, so you can move in either direction without the sound getting worse each round.
Make the vocal higher. Then a bit lower than that, with more aggression and energy.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It treats the voice and the music as separate tracks, even when you only have the mix. Pitch-shifting a whole song is the quick answer and the wrong one, so the first step is getting the vocal on its own. In the session behind this article it:
- Asked whether shifting the whole file would work, got a no because the instruments would move too, and split the vocal from the instrumental.
- Raised only the vocal by three semitones with the tempo unchanged and the voice's character preserved, trimmed it to the instrumental's exact length and remixed.
- Heard watery smearing on a screamed section and re-rendered it with a higher-quality two-pass engine until it was negligible.
- For "a bit lower", rendered one semitone up from the original vocal rather than pulling the first version down, so processing artefacts did not stack.
- Added aggression with a parallel saturated layer, then backed it off where the screamed part turned piercing.
When does this not work well?
When the mix is dense and the vocal is buried. Separation leaves traces of the voice in the instrumental and of the music in the vocal, and a large shift makes those traces audible. Small moves of one to three semitones hold up far better than an octave.
Common questions
Will the beat change speed? No. Vizard Agent keeps the tempo and shifts only the pitch.
Can I go back and forth? Yes. Vizard Agent renders every setting from the original.
Does it work on a finished mix? Usually. Vizard Agent separates the vocal first.