Little AlterBoy

Little AlterBoy combines vocal pitch shifting, formant manipulation, and a saturation model in a small interface. Pitch moves the musical note, while Formant changes the resonant character associated with the voice. Keeping those controls independent allows a shifted performance to retain a more recognizable vocal character; linking them produces a more speed-change-like transformation.

Its modes have different musical jobs. Transpose shifts the incoming melody without automatically correcting it. Quantize snaps it to chromatic semitones for an intentionally obvious tuning effect. Robot replaces the changing sung pitch with one fixed note while preserving the performance's articulation. Drive then adds harmonic edge to the altered voice, and Mix can combine it with the original for a doubling or harmony layer.

The intended source is a clean, isolated, monophonic vocal. Insert it before other vocal effects so the detector is not distracted by delay tails, modulation, or a mixture of voices. Establish the mode and pitch interval first, adjust formants by ear, and introduce distortion only after the transformation is working.

Manual, The Basics, p. 3; The Little AlterBoy Control Panel, pp. 4–6.

Pitch and vocal character

Pitch moves the vocal up or down by as much as 12 semitones. In Transpose mode this is an interval relative to the input, not a target key or scale. Small offsets can create a thickened double; larger intervals produce an explicit harmony or special effect.

Formant changes the vocal resonances independently of musical pitch when Link is off. Lower values darken and deepen the apparent vocal character; higher values make it lighter and more exaggerated. For a more restrained transposition, use a smaller formant change than pitch change and compare against the dry voice.

Link makes Pitch and Formant move together, producing a character closer to speeding a recording up or down. Turn it off when a musical pitch change and a timbral change need separate decisions.

Modes

• Transpose is the normal interval-shifting mode, without automatic pitch correction.
• Quantize rapidly moves the performance to the nearest chromatic semitone. It is designed to be audible, and it does not provide a song-key selector.
• Robot fixes the vocal to a single note. Pitch chooses that note; at 0 it is one octave above middle C, as specified in the manual. Moving Pitch changes the fixed destination rather than merely preserving the sung melody at an offset.

Drive, blend, and performance

Drive adds modeled tube saturation to the altered signal. Introduce it gradually when the pitch effect is already clear, since strong distortion can change intelligibility as well as texture.

Mix combines original and processed voice without a separate parallel bus. Use it to keep the original melody present underneath a transposed part. The manual also describes mapping Pitch to a MIDI keyboard for performed intervals or robotic melodies; routing and mapping depend on the host.

Manual, Pitch/Link/Formant, pp. 4–5; Mode and Drive, p. 5; Mix, p. 6.