Pitch Detector

How to use the pitch detector

1. To read your voice or an instrument, press Use microphone and allow the browser to use it. Sing or play one note and hold it. The note, how many cents it is sharp or flat, and its frequency appear as it settles.
2. To read a sample, drop the file (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 or M4A) onto the deck. The detector reads the whole file, shows the median pitch of the parts with a clear pitch, and draws the pitch over time underneath, so a slide or a glide shows as a slope.
3. Click the note or the frequency to copy it.
4. If your song is tuned to something other than A = 440 Hz, set the A4 reference first. The note names and the cents follow it.

Nothing is recorded, stored or uploaded: the microphone and your files are read in this browser tab.

How do you find the note of an 808?

Drop the 808 one-shot onto the detector. Most 808s start with a pitch drop: the first few milliseconds sweep down from above before the tone settles, which the pitch strip shows as a short slope at the start. The median reading leaves that sweep out and gives you the note the tail rings at.

Then compare it with the key of the song. If the detector reads F1 and the song is in G minor, tune the sample up two semitones in your sampler, or play it from a different root note. The guide to tuning an 808 walks through it step by step, the Key and BPM Finder finds the song's key, and the EQ frequency chart converts any note to its frequency.

Heavily distorted 808s are harder: distortion adds harmonics that can be louder than the note itself. If the reading jumps between two notes an octave apart, trust the lower one and check it against a cleaner part of the tail.

Note frequency chart

Every note from C0 to B8 in equal temperament at the standard tuning, A4 = 440 Hz. Find the octave's row and the note's column; the number is its frequency in hertz.

How the pitch detector works

A pitched sound repeats: a note at 110 Hz repeats its waveform every 9.09 milliseconds. The detector looks for that repeat. It takes a slice of audio 80 milliseconds long, enough to hold two cycles of the lowest note it reads (25 Hz), and compares it with copies of itself shifted by every possible delay. The delay where the copy matches best is the period, and the frequency is one second divided by that period. This is the YIN method, a refined form of autocorrelation.

On a clean test tone it is accurate to within a cent from 25 Hz to 4.2 kHz, the range from the lowest 808 to the top of a piano. Real sounds are less tidy: a voice drifts, a plucked string starts sharp and an 808 sweeps down before it settles. So the live reading is smoothed over the last few readings, and a file gets the median of its clear parts.

Some sounds have no single pitch. A chord holds several notes at once, so the detector either finds the one it hears most clearly or says No clear pitch. Distortion and saturation add harmonics that can be louder than the note itself, which is why any pitch detector can read a distorted 808 an octave away.

Common mistakes

• Reading a heavily distorted sub. Clipping puts more energy in the harmonics than in the fundamental, and the reading can jump an octave. Read the clean tail, or the sample before the distortion.
• Room noise on the microphone. Fans, traffic and other instruments blur the repeat the detector looks for. Get close to the mic and play or sing one note at a time.
• Reading a chord. Several notes at once have no single pitch. Play the notes one by one.
• Judging the attack. Most notes start off pitch: an 808's sweep, a singer's scoop. Hold the note and read the steady part.
• Forgetting the tuning reference. A song tuned to A = 432 Hz reads about 32 cents flat against 440. Set the A4 reference to match.

<a href="https://vitricaudio.com/tools/pitch-detector">Free pitch detector</a> by Vitric Audio