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THE BASICS - ABOUT LITTLE MICROSHIFT
Little MicroShift — Version 5
Little MicroShift brings us back to the early days of pitch-shifting, and
in fact our very own early days working at Eventide.* In those days, we
(Ken and Bob) were asked to create a stereo harmonizer, what would
eventually become the H3000 Multi-Effects Processor. The H3000
became an absolute effects monster, with dozens of effects algorithms
and hundreds of presets. The hard work paid off, and today you’ll be
hard pressed to find a studio or venue that doesn’t include a H3000 (or
later variant) in the rack.
As cool as all that was, the thing is, when we would walk up to a rack
with an H3000 in it, it was almost always set up for only small pitch
shifts to thicken and widen background vocals or instrumentation. The
idea behind this trick is fairly simple; dial in a few cents up on the left,
and a few down on the right, add a dash of delay, and voila - instant fat
stereo sound! Of course, it’s been used on lots of other things but that’s
really where the whole thing got started.
Micro pitch-shifting is still a vital part of most mix engineers “bag of
tricks” a couple of decades or so later, especially on guitars to get
crazy wide walls of sound. For this reason, vintage pitch-shifters like
the H3000 as well as the Eventide H910(x2), and AMS DMX 15-80 are
still in demand. In fact, some of the earliest plug-ins we developed,
SoundBlender and PurePitch, were designed to bring this trick into the
burgeoning digital domain.
Simply put, Little MicroShift will make your tracks anything but little.
Be it vocals, synths, guitars, backing vocals or whatever you choose to
run through it, Little MicroShift uses this classic studio widening trick to
spread out, thicken up, and give a new space to any track you hit with it.
With three pitch-shift modes, Little MicroShift combines the classic
sound of hardware coupled with advanced new features, all in a very
intuitive and easy to use plug-in. Little MicroShift is the go-to tool for
making things wider and bigger in your own virtual effects rack.
* Note: Eventide, Harmonizer, and H3000 are all trademarks of Eventide
Inc. AMS is a trademark of AMS Neve Ltd. These are mentioned for
historical purposes only. AMS and Eventide in no way endorse this
product, and are not associated or affiliated with Soundtoys.
