Both digital and analog pitch shifting have been used for years by musicians to alter the sound of original musical material. Be it Ross Bagdasarian’s recordings of “The Chipmunks” , DJs using pitch shifting on a turntable to speed up or slow down a record in order to make it sync up with another record, or someone composing on a computer using digital pitch shifting software, the technique is widely used across musical genres.
One recent application of pitch shifting has popped up on You Tube with people pitch shifting pop songs and attempting to shift the pitch of the song until the voice sounds like another pop musician. Several people doing this have gone as far as claiming to reassign the gender and identity of the singer.
A post (warning that the post contains vulgar and homophobic/misogynist language at one point) on the rec.music.theory google group raises additional questions regarding gender and pitch shifting of that person’s own voice. Given the viral nature of you tube videos it is very possible that some of our more savvy students are already experimenting with pitch shifting their own music collections. Why not experiment with these techniques in our own classrooms? While introducing ideas and concepts such as pitch and timbre – issues of gender and sexuality may become present as well. How do we approach these issues in our classrooms? What are the implications of students shifting the pitch of a vocalist who is singing gender specific lyrics? Are we prepared to deal with the questions and comments that would arise in this environment? Are our classrooms safe places for these issues to be discussed? If not, how do we prepare ourselves, our students and our classrooms to discuss the issues that students may already be dealing with in their own lives or may be completely new for them to think about. What are our responsibilities when it comes to these issues and new ways our students may or may not be dealing with music and technology both in our classrooms and in their lives outside of school?
i remember being struck several years ago that acid pro had a function called “womanize” that would pitch shift a male vocal into a higher range (while presumably making some other modifications as well). what an odd choice of a name, somehow appropriate in its connotations of exploitation too.