South Park: An Analysis on the Pitch Effect in Music

Written By: Keith of Earth

I love this show and have been a fan since I was a kid and my parents wouldn't allow me to watch it, but there has been something about the songs in South Park that has been bugging me. The question I had was; how are they able to sing their songs and have it pitch perfect with the rest of the vocalists and instruments?

If you didn't know, the way that they voice the kids of south park is they record themselves doing the voices in their natural tone, then pitch it up to sound like a child.

For example, let's use Cartman.

In this video you'll see Trey Parker voicing Eric Cartman in his natural voice, and then again with the pitch up.

When changing pitch, you deal with cents, semitones and octaves. A cent is a small shift, and an octave is the same note but a higher or lower pitch. Think of a semitone as a key on a piano. Each key you move up is also moving up a semitone and if you move up 12 semitones, you reach an octave. So when you're hearing Cartman's voice, you're hearing it at around 4 or 5 semitones up from the original.

But wait, if he's pitching up 4 or 5 semitones, how are the voices on key with the songs that are being sung? Wouldn't he have to pitch up an entire octave to make it work? What if there are multiple children singing in that song?

It's a little mind boggling when you first think of it, because having Cartman sing in harmony with a regular adult voice while changing up his semitones enough to actually achieve Cartmans voice would generally sound really off. I then realized their method for doing it is quite useful and not often talked about. In fact, I don't think I've heard anybody break down how they do it. So here it is.

If you listen to this clip, you'll hear Trey Parker voicing Cartman in his normal voice to a song. Sounds about right. Well it turns out the entire song is actually pitched up in the final version. Every note you hear in the clip is pitched up to sound like this. So do they write the songs at a few semitones below the norm and pitch everything up in the final draft?

No. What they do is actually just basic math. For example, their parodies are generally perfectly on pitch in every form. There are no weird warping issues or anything.

Poker Face, above, is sung and played exactly like the original, and this is their method:

First, they will write out the song with all the instruments and keep in mind what it would sound like with the boys singing it. Once everything is finished and ready to lay down the vocal tracks, they will pitch it down 4 or so semitones to do Cartman. It has to be pitched down exactly the amount they need to produce Cartman's voice. They'll then record it normally then pitch the entire song back up to it's original, giving you Cartman's voice and the normal song's key intact.

What if you had multiple boys voices in a song and they all required different pitch adjustment?

You would then pitch down the song to the lowest extreme, so if Kyle were 6 semitones, you would drop it six, record the voice, then back up two semitones to -4 where Cartman would be voiced, then back up to normal pitch to provide you a seamless South Park vocal track.

I believe this analysis can prove quite useful to many voice actors, animators and general nerds a-plenty. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments and I'll be sure to answer them.