The Pitch Correction Algorithm - Excercises

Pre-reading excercises

  1. What kinds of digital music formats are you familiar with?
    • Kinds of digital music which I am familiar with are as follows: wav, ogg, mpc, flac, aiff, raw, au, gsm, dct, vox, acc, mp4/m4a, mp3, wma, wav, ra, ram, dss, msv, dvf, mp4.
  2. Do you know how digital audio is stored?
    • Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the pulse-code modulation (PCM) format. PCM audio is the standard audio file format for CDs, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since PCM uses an uncompressed, lossless storage method, which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software.
  3. How do you understand the word “pitch”?
    • to set at a particular pitch, or determine the key or keynote of (a melody),
    • the degree of height or depth of a tone or of sound, depending upon the relative rapidity of the vibrations by which it is produced,
    • the particular tonal standard with which given tones may be compared with respect to their relative level,
    • apparent predominant frequency sounded by an acoustic source.

Comprehension questions

  1. Explain these words:
    • to (de)matricize
      • to change linear into matrix
    • harmonic
      • pertaining to harmony, as distinguished from melody and rhythm; an acoustical frequency that is higher in frequency than the fundamental.
  2. What is the pitch correction algorithm used for?
    • It is used for changing the pitch of voice signals.
  3. What are the only parts of speech that contain pitch?
    • Vowels.
  4. Explain the abbreviations DFT, FFT, DC
    • DFT - Discrete Fourier Transform
    • FFT - Fast Fourier Transform
    • DC - Direct Current

Possible topics for discussion

  1. In what kinds of situations do you think this algorithm might be used?
    • Pitch correction has numerous applications and is commonly used to add harmony to certain words or phrases without re-recording those words or phrases again and again at the necessary pitches. Depending on the specific model used, various vocal effects can be added

Possible difficulties

The article contains a lot of field-specific information.

See also: