How to transpose a cue

Change the playback pitch of an individual cue from the Edit View.

Before you begin

  • A show file is loaded.

Transpose a single cue

  1. Switch to edit view: View → Edit Cuelist (⌘E ), or click the Edit toggle in the Bottom bar.
  2. Select the cue you want to transpose. The cue's properties appear in the editor.
  3. In the Pitch field, enter the number of semitones to shift by. Positive values raise the pitch, negative values lower it (e.g. 2  for up a whole tone, -3  for down a minor third). The range is -7  to +7 ; 0  is the original pitch. Values outside the range clamp to the limit.
  4. Press Return  to confirm.
  5. Return to the main interface. A buffer window will appear to warp the transposed samples.

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Transposed cues show in yellow

When a cue's Pitch is anything other than 0 , the cell displays in yellow, so you can see at a glance which cues are transposed.

Transpose an entire song

A song spans several cues, so transposing a whole song means transposing each of its cues. Do it in one pass with the multiple-cue method below.

Transpose multiple cues

Select the Pitch field of the first cue, hold Shift, then click the last cue's Pitch field, and follow the same steps as for a single cue. Every selected cue is transposed by the same amount.

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Transposing breaks LTC

Transposing warps the audio (a pitch shift is a warp, just along a different axis from tempo). Warped Linear Timecode (LTC) doesn't work, so if the cue has an LTC channel, transposing it will stop that timecode driving lighting, video, or automation. The cue still plays back fine, but the downstream system loses sync. See Adjusting and altering cues and Linear Timecode (LTC).

Larger shifts affect audio quality

Pitch shifting uses the same warping engine as tempo, governed by Warping quality in Preferences → Devices (Fastest , Medium  (default), Best ). Small shifts are clean; the more you transpose, the more the audio can smear, particularly on percussive transients. If you need a larger shift than the cue handles cleanly, ask KeyboardTEK about a re-pitched version. See Adjusting and altering cues.

See also: How to adjust the tempo of a cue — the same warp engine, applied to tempo instead of pitch.

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