An 808 that is not in the key of the track fights the chords and muddies the low end. Drop the sample: the tool finds its note from the steady part of the sound, then tells you exactly how far to retune it — in semitones for your sampler and cents for the fine-tune knob.
1. Drop a one-shot: an 808, a sub bass or a tuned kick. 2. Read the note and its cent offset. 3. Choose the key of your track. The large line tells you how far to transpose the sample to land on the root, and the fine-tune that cancels its cent offset; below it, whether the sample's own note already belongs to the scale. Press Play retuned to hear the result before you change it in your sampler.
Retuning by resampling — what most samplers do — also makes the sound slightly shorter when it goes up and longer when it goes down; the preview does exactly the same, so what you hear is what you will get.
A classic 808 starts with a click and a fast pitch drop before it settles. The tool skips the first 20 milliseconds after the peak, measures the period of the sound in short overlapping slices with the McLeod pitch method, and reports the median of the confident slices — the note your ear hears as the 808's pitch. If the pitch keeps moving (a glide or a heavy pitch envelope), it says so and shows how far it swings.
Notes are equal-tempered from A4 = 440 Hz (ISO 16) unless you change the reference. Everything runs in your browser; the file is not uploaded anywhere.
Should the 808 always be on the root of the key?
No — it only has to agree with the chords. The root is the safe choice and the one most
producers start from; any note of the scale works when the bass line moves with the harmony.
The tool tells you both: the shortest move to the root, and whether the sample's own note
already fits.
Why does my kick show no note?
Many kicks are mostly a click and a very short boom with no steady pitch. If fewer than two
slices of the sound have a clear period between 25 and 500 Hz, the tool says so instead of
guessing.
Does the file get uploaded?
No. The browser decodes and analyses it on your device; nothing is sent to a server.
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