One use for pitch bend stick

This is a bit silly thread again. Inspiration strikes me often when I am not close to my daw so I have started to hum when I get inspired musically in order to store short melody clips in my phone. Biggest problem is I usually hum so that the resulting sounds are between keys, for example between E and F. That makes it hard for me to create the same melodies on my keyboard. I figured out the solution quickly. I use the pitch wheel thingy on my keyboard so that it sounds equally between keys. This has made it a lot easier for me to recreate the hummed melodies. This was one of my unusual musical work habits. I would like to hear if you also have a bit odd or unusual work habits when you make music.

bapu
Melodyne

Zaxtly - you can even convert directly to MIDI

Wow.  Most people are always trying to remove any hum...  Interesting.  Um, different!

Carry pitch pipes with you?
 
Alternate... get a tuner app for your phone and use it to find a starting pitch...
 
or...
 
If your phone has playback capabilities (I'm assuming it does) make an MP3 recording of the C major scale. Use the most appropriate note as your starting pitch.
 
or...
 
Get one of those VST/MIDI keyboard app and use that as your starting pitch AND you could quickly create a MIDI track of your hum based creations.

Guitarhacker

kakku
I think using Melodyne would take more time so I do the 'translation' with my ears. Thanks for the comments.

 
I don't use it for that reason.... however, I do believe you can simply grab/lasso all the notes or even use the "auto correct" mode and it's done in literally a few seconds.
 
 
I used to use the auto-correct mode all the time...for convenience mostly,  until I discovered that I got much better, and more accurate results doing the edits manually.  However, to transpose to "on key" with a short melody, yeah... the A-C works well.

Thanks for the tips and info.

Just another quick thought about the Melodyne fix. It really isn't that hard (and likely much easier than using a pitch wheel). ll you have to do is...
 
a) Import the audio file
b) Select the clip and enable Region FX > Melodyne (if you have X3... otherwise you could use V-Vocal but that would be different)
c) Just select all the blobs (Ctrl A...) and nudge them up or down until the first note of the clip matches a tuned note on the scale.
 
If you sung the melody in tune with the first note your work is done... otherwise you could use the detect features to automagically make all the notes snap into place using a chromatic scale or an appropriate diatonic scale/mode or if it is a short passage or only a few notes are out of tune you could just select the out of tune blobs and fix them.
 
Clone the track (actually you should clone the track before doing the pitch correct so the original is intact) and bounce the corrected version so you have your hummed track in perfect pitch. Then if you want a MIDI version to use as a starter you can just create a new MIDI track, select and drag the corrected audio track and kablammo... your melody will now be in the PRV ready to use.
 
If there is minimal note by note correction this whole process could be done in a couple minutes.
 
This is all theoretical on my part though because I haven't actually tried Melodyne yet (because I'm busy with other stuff... but really should because it looks cool) and am only basing that on the tuts I have read/watched but it really should be extremely simple.
 
So yeah... starting your recordings at a proper pitch from now on will help but for stuff you already have recorded that's how you can easily fix them up. I recommend watching for Karl Rose's SWA X2/X3 vids to go on sale because he is very thorough in describing this and most other aspects of Sonar X2/3. I picked it, and the Rapture tut, for $20 on sale after doing the Cakewalk survey (so I actually got them both for free with the coupon).
 
The Cake TV section has some Melodyne vids too that might describe the same procedure.
 
Anyway... that's just how I would go about things. I'm a little weird and crazy though.
 
Cheers.

Yeah, I prefer to do things manually too whenever possible.
 
Here is another suggestion...
 
Instead of using the pitch wheel you could use the controls on the MIDI track or in the virtual synth to fine tune the outpout of the synth to the recording of you humming. So pick the note on your keyboard you want to start the melody with then play that note and adjust the fine tuning of the MIDI track/virtual instrument until it matches the first note of the recording. Then you can figure out the part without the pitch wheel, lay down a MIDI track then just tune it back up to a normal pitch.
 
Just a thought.
 
Oh and I think if you turn the clip of you humming into a Groove Clip (select the clip > right click > Groove Clip) open the Inspector (press I) and there is an option to increase/decrease the pitch of the audio clip. It's been a while since I looked at that feature though so I may have gotten that wrong.
 
Either way... lots of ways to do this. Cheers.

Thanks to Bleepster, I have finally gotten a midi keyboard phone app. I have already done some simple melodies with it. It is handy to be able to use a keyboard anywhere and it cost nothing. I am a bit shy though and I fear people who find me humming or phone midi playing, in a store for example, may think I am a bit cuckoo:D

Oops. No harm intended. It is just my crappy memory modules that sometimes miss a couple of bytes. So, thanks to Beepster!:)

I want to use my cell phone as a bluetooth mini-touch midi keyboard...then i could really rockout! -S

Hmm...  The above just gave me an idea.  Since they now have projected keyboards for laptops, tablets, etc., how about projected inputs for music?  I can see how a MIDI keyboard, drum pads, mixing board or just a general dials, knobs and sliders device could be useful!