Sonar Platinum - Audio pitch envelope curves

MusicallyInspired
Is this possible? It seems like it should be such an elementary thing for an advanced professional DAW like Sonar to have. I want to be able to make changes to a digital audio clip's pitch dynamically. Much like how I control fade in and fade out curves, or use the pitch wheel on a MIDI controller. Is this even possible?

Well...yes and no. When you change pitch, you also change duration - sharper means a shorter file, flatter means a longer one. If you can cope with those changes, it's quite possible (e.g., Sound Forge has a pitch changing window with a "rubber band" interface). If you want to retain duration, the issue becomes vastly more complicated. I know of no DAW, including SONAR, that does exactly what you want.
 
There are only a few workarounds I can think of.
 
1. Transfer the phrase into Rapture, Rapture Pro, or Dimension Pro and use MIDI pitch bend data to manipulate it. Render the phrase, then use time compression/expansion (i.e., ctrl+drag the clip) to stretch as appropriate so that the phrase conforms to tempo.
 
2. For the example of sounding like a Walkman's batteries are dying, use the "varispeed" technique I've described for the loop construction window (basically, this involves using the loop construction window to do something other than create loops). I know this works because I used it for a reverse situation - I was mastering something that had been recorded on a cassette recorder with a dying battery, and had to speed it up progressively. Track-to-track recording lets you record pitch changes in real time as you play with the pitch, although you have to do it in small steps (there's no varispeed "knob").
 
3. If you can cope with "stepped" changes instead of continuous linear ones, there's Melodyne as well as the slice pitch bend change option in the Loop Construction window (see the Friday's Tip of the Week for Week 63).

What are you wanting to do?
As Craig said, there's different types of pitch bend. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
 
1/ There's pitchbend like speeding up the record player. But this causes shorter times.
 
2/ There's the same without shorter times. But to make the time the same again, the length is corrected by inserting extra samples. An algorithm must guess where to insert them, and depending on the type of music material, you can get unpleasant side effects like very short stuttering or at the very least a kind of flanger pedal sound. And you still get the "mickey mouse" effect (size of mouth and throat seems to get smaller).
 
3/ To do it without the "mickey mouse" effect you need formant correction. This is what Melodyne/V-vocal do for you.
 
But even those tools have their limits. Too much pitch shift still sounds odd, no matter how you do it.