Hello,

from time to time i'm working with some acapellas and then sometimes want to change the character of the voice. I think there are tools to make a deep voice sounds like a smurf - i'm not talking about pitching the voice - i think plugins like the mouth do mostly add overtones and stuff like that - so it's getting brighter; But in case of Thom's voice i want to go the other way.. want to sound it darker & deeper (and what would be realy cool if the result just wouldn't sound like Thom only sings deeper or has a deeper voice).

Are there any plugins that can to this? How would you do that?

Thanks in advance.


Greets,
Jack

 

@ Jack,

Well, one solution could be to get a somewhat 'unbridled' life as he has did for many years... but not sure that most of the human bodies can withstand that over the long-term ! Effectively, this implies a lot of smoke and hard liquors to swallow... *yes*

Nowadays, you can find several Plug-Ins that emulate analog circuitry and its behaviors almost well, but at my knowledge, it still doesn't exist a 'Joe Cocker Emulation VST'... *no*

Now, the more serious part... The use of some filters can help you within your processes to filter unwanted frequencies and enhance/lower some others all along the spectre of the treaten voice, till you get the desired timbre or characteristics for this voice.

 

Let me know when you'll got it, i always wanted to sounds like justin bieber.

 

You may be able to accomplish this with an EQ, cut/boost the highs/low.

Or, you might be after a formant shifter. Izotope Nectar and QuikQuak Pitchwheel have modes which allow you to hold the pitch, but shift the formant.

In the other case of 'making the voice brighter', you could try an exciter. examples of exciters include provoc exciter and Izotope Ozone4/5

 

I got some fair results from mixing his dry vocals with 'dark' vocoded ones.

 

Try waves doubler, mix in the vocal an octive lower to make it deeper.

What about Melodyne? Never used it but I thought it was good for altering vocals?

 

Thanks for your feedback.

Sure that stuff will/would help but i doubt this will work with Thom's voice.

I don't want an emulation. Might we should expand our knowledge. And take a look for example: Physical Modeling Vocal Designer, Extreme Voice Designer, Digital Talk Box - oh and you wrote about smoke - Aspiration Noise Processor.

Yes, that's what i thought too. But the results aren't that good. Also i don't have much EQ plugins. Any recommendations? I guess you might get some better results with better EQ and correct settings but they won't do the full job.

Oh and if you don't know thom's voice then you might check it out.

I will let you know and hope for you that you are a boy or a girl/woman - even if i never have listen to a song of justin b.

If possible i'll check out this tools.

I would like to listen to the result. How did you feed up the vocoder - with midi (chords or melody) or wav?
Oh and the other interesting question how did you mix them? I'm missing some mixing methods, maybe i missed out something but as far as i know there is only the additional way... So in this case you would hear (in the mix) his and the vocoded voice. But what if you want it sound like one voice?

Which vocoder do you use? I liked the orange vocoder (but don't have it anymore) and tested this acapella with the other old vokator. But i moved over - even if i think you would/could get good results with the vocoder more serious try outs will follow.

I took a doubler too (the one that is included in guitar rig) - if you use low values it's okay. I guess waves doubler has more then three knobs?! I'll try to check this out too.

Melodyne gave me the best results but also worse... not sure if melodyne should work easily/corretly with one octive changing. With less extrem settings you get good results. Oh and with dry vocals the result should be also better. Also if you clean and fix up the note informations will also lead to better results - but take care some parts (in the DAW) might look like silence but aren't and melodyne analysis every part even if it sound like silence..

It looks like that the biggest problem, melodyne has with his voice or with resynthese, is, when a note is holden for a longer time.


If there are any other or some more ideas please let me know. First i'll try out some of this appz maybe also them which seems to be specialised for such case.

Greets,
Jack

 

If you want to manipulate human voices, the Antares AVOX Evo Bundle is what you need.

You have amazing possibilities with it. You can, for example, change the troath length of the singer, which changes the tonal character totally. You can add more breath, or even make "Alien" sounds...

Of course, if you want the result to still sound naturally, you have to do minor manipulations.
But if you want drastic effects, like horror movie sounds, that is also possible with this bundle.

http://www.antarestech.com/products/avox-evo.shtml

Check out the audio demos on the site

Besides the special vocal sound manipulation tools, like the Mutator, Throat Designer and Articulator, there are also more usual plug-ins included for vocal, like a doubler, de-esser, saturation.

The Harmony Engine is also great. You can add four voices (and a choir) to the original.
One octave down und up, the third and the fifth.

The generated voices don't sound natural on their own, but if you blend it with the original voice in a band context, it is ok.
I seldom use it in a final song, though. But it's great for trying out rapidy, which voices might work well (or not well) with the original vocals, and then actually record the additional voices.

 

Give my best regards to Thom (I was at university with him). However I am very puzzled, why does he want to sound like Joe Cocker?

 

Who doesn't want to?

Well, maybe Anna Netrebko...

 

I used NI Razor's vocoder - in Reaktor. And mixed it in - additively I guess. The vocal loses a lot of definition if you distort it a lot, so mixing it with original helps keep it sensible. I probably used one of the presets, though I messed about quite a bit - and put it through stutter-edit too. lol

I guess one might say it sounded a little like Joe Cocker....if IBM had made Joe Cocker :D

Anyway, there's obviously some dry signal of Thom in this, and it at least hints at what might be possible via vocoding. Just an idea:

http://soundcloud.com/the-last-name-left/crepe

[I didn't say I was very good at it tho! It was done on headphones too, so sounds pretty duff. It sounds better on headphones.....but no much. lol was an experiment - proof of concept type thing :D i wanted to play with vocals, vocoder, stutter edit etc and to see how plausible a dubsteppy Creep might be. I found it a painstaking process, even doing it very roughly and as quick as possible, it took an age - but I'm a real newbie, so....with more experience and some real ability I reckon some good results possible.]

 

Thanks for your feedback.

Have found that infomation too. But havn't worked with this software yet. If the demos don't need ilock i'll give them a try. The examples sounds good. And as the tools are exactly made for voice design - this should give better/best results..

May he want to have older groupies.

Thanks for the information and the track. Don't take my words about mixing to serious - it's based on a wish but (i guess) not at technical standards. I guess 99% of the DAW only mix in the additional way. Yes you processed the vocals a lot. It's hard to criticize a song which style you normally don't hear. There are many elements. It's intereting to hear the different interpretations. Like Voiceediting and for me it's positive you didn't use that dubstepbass (but that all a personal note). May we should ask him to do the job.

even if he sounds a bad cocker i like his version also his strumming.


Greets,
Jack