Adjust voice pitch

Create variety for voiceovers using a different pitch for your narrator’s voice.

You can make voices sound younger, older or more serious by changing the pitch of the text to speech voices. This page explains how to change pitch settings.

Quick video tutorial

Check out the video below for a very quick lesson on how to use voice pitch controls.

What is a voice pitch?

Pitch is the specific frequency of a sound wave, in this case the voice of a text to speech narrator. In general, lower pitch voices sound deeper and more serious, higher pitch voices sound younger. By changing the pitch of a voice a bit, you can make it convey an emotion, such as excitement or sadness. By changing the pitch a lot, you can make it sound like a different voice, or even like a cartoon character.

How to change the pitch in your script?

To modify the pitch, use the voice-pitch stage direction.

As with other directions, make sure to leave at least one blank line between the stage direction and the rest of the script.

(voice: Rodney)

(voice-pitch: high)

I can sound younger with a high pitch

(voice-pitch: low)

Or sound very serious, using a deep voice with a low pitch.

You can also specify the pitch as a number, from -150 to 150. Zero is the normal pitch. Negative values create low pitch, positive create a high pitch, proportionally.

(voice: victoria)

(voice-pitch: -10)

Negative values create low pitch

(voice-pitch: 10)

Positive values create a high pitch.

(voice-pitch: 130)

Create a squeaky voice using a very high pitch.

How to reset the pitch back to normal?

To set the pitch back to the default for a voice, just use the normal value in the voice-pitch stage direction.

(voice: victoria)

(voice-pitch: high)

High pitch makes me sound excited.

(voice-pitch: normal)

But I prefer my usual voice pitch.

Limitations

  • About 80% of our voices currently support pitch settings. We are working on making pitch settings available in all the remaining voices.
  • Some voices have a limited pitch range, so increasing or decreasing pitch a lot might not have any effect over a certain threshold.
  • Avoid using pitch changes with voice normalization, as it may create unexpected effects.