Vocal app with truly high-level features
There are literally tons of new apps that are supposed to make sure you always sing in tune, and often they even throw in some vocal harmonies to make it even better. The Swedish developers behind the company Klevgrand don’t want to left behind. They present their app Altitude that is supposed to fix all of this – and then some. Curious as we are, we of course have to check it out…
Some months ago, our neighbors to the south, Danish company Baby Audio, presented their variation on this theme, Humanoid, and I remember that we were very impressed. Of course, Antares has had a bunch of different apps for a long time, with its Auto-Tune at the forefront, and they are still the market leader, even though many other companies are nipping at their heels.
Klevgrand
Klevgrand is a Swedish software company based in Stockholm, where they established themselves back in 2009. Their first address was at premises on Klevgränd, in Södermalm, Stockholm. The street has existed since 1648 and was previously also called “Ormsaltaregränden” (i.e ”Snake Salter Alley”). A snake salter was in popular parlance a “cunning person”, so it might have been just as fitting, because software developers are considered to be quite cunning.
Anyway… now it was to be Klevgränd instead, and initially the idea was to produce music and film. There was eventually more focus on software, and since 2015 the company, which consists of a group of musicians, producers and developers, has created a large number of interesting plugins that have been a success with music creators around the world.
Altitude
Tove Gustafsson, one of the developers behind today’s test object, says that they simply wanted to create an app with functions that they themselves needed and wanted to use. First of all, it should of course contain good pitch correction, and they also wanted the app to be able to generate three voices based on the vocal element you feed it. Just to be on the safe side, they also created a MIDI-controlled voice module and lots of modulation options – all this with minimal latency. Said and done. Altitude was a fact.
Features
To start with, Altitude shall be able to perform pitch correction with the highest quality. It shall also be able to handle and change the formant content of voices, that is, the part of the voice that makes us perceive it as light or dark, female or male, or even a little “Mickey Mousey”.
Altitude can also create three-part harmonies from a single voice, and here you can also decide how these should fit into different keys and scales. There are also functions adapted for live use such as a Play module and the ability to control the voices via MIDI. Low latency mode, dual doubler modes, plus stereo widener for each module are additional features. Then of course, as we have previously touched on, Altitude has rich modulation options and much, much more.
User Settings
But let’s take a look at the user interface… As usual from the company, Klevgrand Altitude also shows a fairly sparse interface, but everything you need is there and everything feels very intuitive and easy to understand.
There is a long list of presets to start from, both fairly normal and completely crazy. You can find them in the upper left corner.
Below these are “knobs” for global pitch and formant, and you can also fine-tune these by holding down the option button while turning the knob.
Below these is a keyboard where you can determine the key, scale and whether specific notes should be used/avoided.
Under the heading lead we find knobs for the amount of pitch correction and how quickly this should be performed. A fast correction often gives that overly obvious adjustment (Cher’s “Do you believe” is an example) while a slower change can feel more natural. There are also controls here for widening the stereo image, and a doubler with formant adjustment.
Under harmonies are all the settings for the three parts that Altitude can generate based on the entered vocal. Here too there are doubling options and each voice has its own vibrato, its humanizer, and an auto-formant correction. Under harmonies we also find settings for speed and a humanize function, this should be mentioned. You can also determine where in the stereo image the parts should be placed, as well as wet and dry levels.
The latter controls also apply in Play mode, where you will also find attack and release controls and velocity.
Last, but certainly not least, we have a range of modulation options, where you can let different waveforms modulate things like pitch, harmony level, lead level and so on. The modulation module offers three separate modulators, each of which can modulate up to 8 different parameters.
You can also draw in the values you want in the 16 steps that the modulation module handles. There is really room for real excesses here for those who are more inclined to the more outlandish side, or more quiet modulations for those who prefer such things.
Let’s go…
I tested the different functions on a singer who worked very freely when it comes to pitch (a lot of “blue” notes). When it comes to small adjustments, most apps in this genre work in about the same way. It can be more or less difficult to detect that the app has even been at work, and the end result is oftentimes really good. This goes for Altitude as well. It’s more difficult to handle deliberately “skewed” (or blue) notes. These are often quarter notes, and the app doesn’t really know what to do. Should we correct it? Up or down? The result often feels a bit clunky. These notes are not to be found on a regular keyboard, so you can’t tell the app where to look either…
Well, this is a problem that Altitude shares with almost all competing apps, so let’s forget about it. When it comes to more standardized scales, Altitude handles these at least as well as its competitors. If we want to achieve more modern effects, Altitude has lots of tricks u pits sleeve, and I was also very fond of the three-part harmonies variant. You can either decide exactly where they should be in relation to the incoming lead voice, or – even more conveniently – control the backing vocals via a MIDI keyboard. Here you can also hide the voices a little more in the background and thus mask any side effects of the transposition. This is of course always more difficult to do with lead vocals.
But above all, Altitude is very immediate, intuitive and easy to work with, despite the enormous variety of setting options. You quickly get a really useful result, no matter what you are looking for.
Klevgrand Helper
You can use Klevgrand Helper for easy downloading, updating, installation, and license activation for all your Klevgrand plugins and expansions. Log in to your Klevgrand account and get started via Klevgrand Helper. If you want to test the app, there is a demo version available for download. The demo works like the full version, but it does emit a small noise from time to time.
To sum it up
“Unlock the potential of all voices,” say the developers, and of course they mean that Altitude should be able to help us all with this. It’s perhaps a somewhat bold claim, but at the same time one must admit that Altitude can help fix most things vocally, even if it might be a bit presumptuous to completely take Klevgrands word for it, at least when it comes to my own somewhat dubiuos voice. Altitude does a perfectly capable job with common pitch corrections, both discreet and more exaggerated ones.
When it comes to all the harmonies handling, however, it gets a really high rating from both me and myself. There, many interesting “avenues of pleasure” opened up (pardon me for the quote, Basil Fawlty). Or to put it more conventionally: Altitude is really fun to work with. Much thanks to the variety of setting options that are offered. Here you can really let yourself go and really freak out! Really fun, said Bill!
Bull had to agree. That means that we all still give Altitude nine out of ten points as a final score! Good job, all of you at Klevgrand!
Finally, I would like to encourage anyone who is interested to download the demo version, and – above all – go to either klevgrand’s website and listen to the demo songs, or go directly to their Soundcloud page: https://soundcloud.com/klevgrandproducts and check out the songs there. They really show what you can achieve with Altitude. I would also like to argue that Klevgrand makes some of the best demo songs in the industry. Listen and enjoy!
DEVELOPERS Klevgränd, www.klevgrand.com
FORMAT macOS/Windows: AAX, AU, VST3, VST
PRICE Normally: 149,99 dollars; now: 89,99 dollars; Rent-to-own: 9,99 dollars / month; 15 months for a full license
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