PitchEditor

One of the Editors in Praat, for viewing and modifying a Pitch object.

## What the Pitch editor shows

In the window of the PitchEditor, you will see the following features:

  • Digits between 0 and 9 scattered all over the drawing area. Their locations represent the pitch candidates, of which there are several for every time frame. The digits themselves represent the goodness of a candidate, multiplied by ten. For instance, if you see a "9" at the location (1.23 seconds, 189 hertz), this means that in the time frame at 1.23 seconds, there is a pitch candidate with a value of 189 hertz, and its goodness is 0.9. The number 0.9 may be the relative height of an autocorrelation peak, a cross-correlation peak, or a spectral peak, depending on the method by which the Pitch object was computed.
  • A path of red disks. These disks represent the best path through the candidates, i.e. our best guess at what the pitch contour is. The path will usually have been determined by the path finder, which was called by the pitch-extraction algorithm, and you can change the path manually. The path finder takes into account the goodness of each candidate, the intensity of the sound in the frame, voiced-unvoiced transitions, and frequency jumps. It also determines whether each frame is voiced or unvoiced.
  • A voicelessness bar at the bottom of the drawing area. If there is no suitable pitch candidate in a frame, the frame is considered voiceless, which is shown as a blue rectangle in the voicelessness bar.
  • A line of digits between 0 and 9 along the top. These represent the relative intensity of the sound in each frame.

## Moving the marks

To move the cursor hair or the beginning or end of the selection, use the time selection mechanism.

## Changing the path

To change the path through the candidates manually, click on the candidates of your choice. The changes will immediately affect the Pitch object that you are editing. To make a voiced frame voiceless, click in the voicelessness bar.

To change the path automatically, choose Path finder... from the Edit menu; this will have the same effect as filling in different values in the Sound: To Pitch (filtered autocorrelation)... or Sound: To Pitch (raw autocorrelation)... command window, but is much faster because the candidates do not have to be determined again.

## Resynthesis

To hum any part of the pitch contour, click one of the buttons below or above the data area (there can be 1 to 8 of these buttons), or use a command from the Play menu.

## Changing the ceiling

To change the ceiling, but not the path, choose Change ceiling... from the Edit menu; if the new ceiling is lower than the old ceiling, some formerly voiced frames may become unvoiced; if the new ceiling is higher than the old ceiling, some formerly unvoiced frames may become voiced.

### Links to this page

- Intro 4.5. The Pitch object
- Types of objects