3.5

261MainStage Effects
Bypass individual notes in a scale in the Pitch Correction effect
• In MainStage, to exclude notes from correction, click the small bypass buttons (“byp”)
above the green (black) and below the blue (white) keys.
This is particularly useful for “blue” notes. Blue notes are notes that slide between
pitches, making the major and minor status of the keys difficult to identify. As you may
know, one of the major differences between C minor and C major is the Eb (E flat) and
Bb (B flat), instead of the E and B. Blues singers glide between these notes, creating
an uncertainty or tension between the scales. Use of the bypass buttons allows you to
exclude particular keys from changes, leaving them as they were.
Tip: It’s often best to correct only the notes with the most harmonic gravity. For
example, choose “sus4” from the Scale pop-up menu, and set the Root note to match the
project key. This limits correction to the root note, the fourth, and the fifth of the key scale.
Turn on the bypass buttons for all other notes and only the most important and sensitive
notes are corrected, while all other singing remains untouched.
Use MainStage Pitch Correction reference tuning
Turn on the Use Global Tuning button to use MainStage Tuning settings for the pitch
correction process. This ensures that all software instruments and your tuned vocal part
are in tune with each other.
If Use Global Tuning is turned off, you can use the Ref. Pitch field to set the reference
tuning to the root key or note.
As an example of where Ref. Pitch can be effective, consider that the intonation of a vocal
line is often slightly sharp or flat throughout an entire song. You can use Ref. Pitch to
address this issue at the input of the pitch detection process by setting it to reflect the
constant pitch deviation in cent values. This allows the pitch correction to perform more
accurately.
Note: Tunings that differ from software instrument tuning can be interesting when you
want to individually correct the notes of singers in a choir. If all voices are individually and
perfectly corrected to the same pitch, the choir effect is partially lost. You can prevent this
by (de)tuning the pitch corrections individually.
Set MainStage reference tuning
• In Mainstage, choose MainStage > Preferences > Tuning, then open the General pane to
determine the tuning reference for all software instruments.