Pitch Shifter in FL Studio: Vocals, Samples, Songs and Guitar

There are four ways to pitch shift in FL Studio. For an audio clip or sample, use the Pitch knob in the channel's Time stretching section with a stretch mode, so the tempo stays put. For a vocal on a Mixer insert, load a pitch shift VST. For MIDI, move the notes in the piano roll. And for a finished song or sample outside your project, a free online pitch shifter does it in a minute.

Which one you pick depends on the source, and on whether you want to keep the voice's natural character. Here's each method, plus how to handle formants and guitar.

Which FL Studio pitch shift method to use

Pitch shift an audio clip or sample in FL Studio

1. Click the clip's channel in the Channel Rack, or double-click the clip in the Playlist, to open its channel settings.
2. Find the Time stretching section.
3. Choose a stretching mode instead of Resample. Resample changes pitch and speed together, which is the classic sped-up or slowed-down tape sound.
4. Turn Pitch up or down. It moves in semitones, with finer cent steps available.
5. Play it against the beat. If the sample drifts from the tempo, check that the stretch mode is still active.

Different stretching modes suit different material. Try more than one on drums versus sustained sounds: one that sounds clean on a pad can smear the attack of a snare.

A pitch shift VST on a Mixer insert

For vocals, a plugin on the Mixer is the most flexible option. It works on live input while you record, you can automate it, and a good one preserves formants so the singer still sounds like themselves. Route the vocal to its own insert, open an empty effect slot and load the plugin. Our FL Studio plugin guide covers installing VST3s.

FL Studio's own Pitcher corrects pitch and can add harmonies, and NewTone lets you drag individual notes to new pitches, depending on your edition. For transposing a whole part, a dedicated software pitch shifter is quicker.

Our Tune plugin has Transpose (±12 semitones) and a separate Formant control (±12 semitones), built for monophonic vocals. Transpose moves the notes and keeps the formants in place, so an octave down sounds like a deeper singer instead of slowed-down tape. Formant changes the character without moving the pitch. The Deep Voice preset combines -5 semitones of Transpose with -5 of Formant for a bigger, darker voice.

For an octave-down double under the original take, Octave Down Ad-libs transposes down 12 semitones and blends the shifted voice at 60% Mix. Put it on a duplicate ad-lib track, not the lead.

Pitch shift a song or sample with the free online tool

Sometimes the file isn't in a project yet: a song you want to practice in your range, or a sample in the wrong key. Our online pitch shifter runs in the browser. Upload or record up to a minute of audio, move Pitch in semitones, and download the WAV.

• Up a Semitone and Down a Semitone move a song by one key, the usual fix for a singer's range.
• Up a Fifth shifts by seven semitones, useful for harmony layers.
• Octave Up and Octave Down shift by 12.
• Smoothness sets the processing window: longer is smoother on chords and full songs, shorter is tighter on drums and speech.

Guitar pitch shifter: drop tunings, octaves and whammy effects

Guitar is harder to shift than a voice because it's usually polyphonic: one shifter has to move every note of a chord at once. Use a polyphonic shifter for rhythm parts. Monophonic tools built for vocals track single-note lines but can warble on chords.

• Drop tunings without retuning: shift the clean DI signal down one semitone for E flat or two for D standard, then run it into your amp simulator. Shifting before the amp keeps the distortion natural.
• Octave down: a -12 shift blended under the dry guitar thickens riffs and fakes a bass double.
• Octave up: blend it low for a twelve-string-like shimmer.
• Whammy-style bends: expression-pedal pitch shifters sweep the pitch in real time. In FL Studio, automate your shifter's pitch control to get the same dive and rise.

Keep shifts within a few semitones for the most natural tone; large shifts on distorted guitar get grainy fast. Any amp simulator after the shifter works, including our guitar amp plugin, Stack.

Pitch shifting MIDI in FL Studio

MIDI doesn't need a pitch shifter at all. Open the pattern in the piano roll, select all the notes and drag them up or down, and the instrument plays the new pitches with no loss in quality. This is the cleanest way to change the key of a beat, as long as the audio parts get shifted to match.

For pitch correction rather than transposing, see autotune plugins, and for loading plugins on the Mixer, how to get autotune in FL Studio walks through the setup.