How much can you speed up voice before it is obvious?

LazerBeakShiek

Find Polaris..and Return
In the DAW there is a rate % , instead of a trim for ips. How fast in general can you advance before its obvious you like the chipmunks? 2-3 % 1.03? What percentage increase results in a 1 whole step change? 6%
 
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Not sure of the answer to your question......as voices can be so different in timbre....etc. As I recall......you use Reaper right? Are you aware that....in Reaper.....you can increase (or decrease) the speed of your mix without increasing or decreasing the pitch of the vocal or any of the instrument tracks. You can opt to increase or decrease pitch along with speed if you want to though.
 
In a DAW you have more flexibility than tape.

When you speed up tape, you raise the pitch.

When you speed up a track in Reaper (and there are a number of ways of doing this) you can choose to preserve pitch.

If you don't preserve pitch, speeding up the track by 6% will increase pitch by about a semitone.
 
Recently I could not get Melodyne up and running how I want. I got a lil frustrated with it. Running vocals with nothing. Experimenting. No autotune in my vocals yet..

This is more screwin around. Trying to slightly chimpmunk my voice. I cannot even do 1% rate pitch increase. I can tell its trimmed up. I do not remember it doing that. So I gotta figure where I am doing it wrong.

I have the range, but it is not worth anything. I dont think its possible to objectively listen to your own voice. Mickster could be correct that voices are too different.

I did not analuyze the file, no idea the level.
 

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So much crackle going on there on the vocal. Rice Crispy. What mic are you using?

Not being a dick, just wish to help.
 
That's the thing about pitch change - we don't know what your real voice sounds like. Look back at the early Madonna tracks. Now we know her real voice, what we got on those first tracks was noway realistic and by todays standards, far, far too much.
 
Well......the video gives us a sort of an idea of the sound of your voice. Your vocal is not very close to the mic so it's not easy to know what it sounds like if you were closer......like you might be during a more normal track recording. That being said.....it seems that you have a voice that works very nicely to cut through a mix. Not sure why you compress the upper bands though.....and not entirely sure what you want to accomplish overall.
 
A nice vocal is achieved without multi-band compression or eq.

I suggest you stop trying to manipulate sound before you capture a good one. Life will be much easier for you.

That means room treatment, proper recording levels, and mic placement. All of these are very important. It gets much more simple once you nail that down.
 
Yes...IMO....Jimmy is right about working with your vocal as naturally as possible before you work with it in the box. As for compressing the higher frequencies of your voice.....just because they're lower in volume than the other frequencies.....are you sure that method isn't contributing to a vocal sound that you may not like? There's a fine line between a vocal that's clear and cuts through......and one that gets grainy or raspy or grating. Not saying yours is that way at all. Don't give up on trying different mic positions and room or "surrounding" treatments......and......you might find that you'll get closer to your vocal track goals. The mic you're using should be just fine for excellent results.

Mick
 
Are you aware there is nothing natural about the voices on the radio?

Vocals from Journey, Queen, Ac/DC , Madonna, Taylor Swift, Carly Jespen, etc. all have multi band compression and encoding on the vocals post.

If I am looking to duplicate it, I will need to try things. Back in 1990's I was in the studio recording and nothing was natural about anything recorded. Everything was filtered, Band passed, cut, compressed, and so on. There was a common thing they did where they added 'white noise hiss' to everything mixed back with the original. Are you familiar with this? I will bring it up more when I start a recording a drum kit thread. They did it the most on the snare, but guitar and vocals too.
 
Are you aware there is nothing natural about the voices on the radio?

Vocals from Journey, Queen, Ac/DC , Madonna, Taylor Swift, Carly Jespen, etc. all have multi band compression and encoding on the vocals post.

If I am looking to duplicate it, I will need to try things. Back in 1990's I was in the studio recording and nothing was natural about anything recorded. Everything was filtered, Band passed, cut, compressed, and so on. There was a common thing they did where they added 'white noise hiss' to everything mixed back with the original. Are you familiar with this? I will bring it up more when I start a recording a drum kit thread. They did it the most on the snare, but guitar and vocals too.

Um, dude. They are all natural. I am not sure what you are referring to?

Btw, many of these were recorded before multi-band compressors were even a thing that existed.

Take a step back man. It starts from the input. There is no producer/engineer ever that would suggest a different approach.

Stop trying to frost a cake before baking it. Bad analogy, but it is correct.

Take the time to get to the first step brother. :)
 
Lazer........I think you might have missed our point. No one is saying that there was or is no post processing. The advice is sort of saying.......don't jump to conclusions or assume anything about what you might need to do to "process" a vocal later.....before you set up to get the best vocal on the way in. I'm guessing you know this already....but SO many things affect the sound of the vocal before it ever hits the mic grill. We don't know if that's even a problem with your vocals. Just sort of wanting you to reconsider all the elements.
 
The truly good singers have much less processing done than you think unless they are trying to achieve an artistic effect. Yeah, there are some like John Lennon who really don't like the sound of their own voice and get them manipulated, but I would say that a lot of the heavy duty processing done today is to fix a mediocre singer. The real test is hearing a singer "unaided".

Unfortunately with all the easy processing, there's a lot of the "fix it in the mix" going on. Those are the ones that will use a canned vocal track and a lip sync in concert (anyone remember Ashlee Simpson?). I remember one of the first times I heard DLR live for a VanHalen concert. There's no way he was lip syncing, nobody would record a track that out of tune and then use it!

I fall firmly in the "mediocre" category, so I struggle to get something that sounds half decent, but I still start with the straight shot. In most cases, it takes 5, 6, maybe 10 takes to get something close enough to start working with it. That's another reason I love digital recording. I can hit the record / delete / rerecord / delete / rererecord cycle until I get close.
 
I fall firmly in the "mediocre" category, so I struggle to get something that sounds half decent, but I still start with the straight shot.

I too fall well inside the mediocre category.

There are three reasons for using FX. Two are reasonable, while the third, not so much.

The first is as a remedial action to fix some issues.

The second is as a creative tool to generate interesting effects.

The third is because everyone else is using them.
 
I find for vocals, or at least mine, I use a compression around upper 2Ks, lower 3K region (scan to find it) to remove the harshness of it. I often use a "room reverb" to put the mix in a decent room. Then I add a splash more for the vocals.

But I will say this, after about 7-8 years of recording, I know my voice. While I still don't like it, I can work with it and figure out how to get it to sound the best that I can. But as others stated, starting with what you have and then figure out how you want to process it would be the best approach.

Experiment with where you are relative to the mic, how far back you stand, etc.
 
Unfortunately with all the easy processing, there's a lot of the "fix it in the mix" going on. Those are the ones that will use a canned vocal track and a lip sync in concert (anyone remember Ashlee Simpson?). I remember one of the first times I heard DLR live for a VanHalen concert. There's no way he was lip syncing, nobody would record a track that out of tune and then use it!

There were a bunch of weird VH shows. I remember one with Sammy haggar walking off stage and Michael Anthony taking leads for 'Dreams'. However Sammy Haggars voice track was used. The girl I went with instists to this day Dreams is actually sung by Michael Anthony.

The Metallica and Kid Rock at Hawthorne , the crowd threw water bottles on stage, they had them cause of the summer heat. It was a rowdy crowd. One water bottle hit direct on the microphone stand square. It did not make a noise. Kirks guitar continued to play after he was pointing to who threw it.
 
But I will say this, after about 7-8 years of recording, I know my voice. While I still don't like it,

So its a conspiracy? Not one person seems to like the sound of their own voice. Whats up with that? Like Freddie Mercury would not like is own voice. I watch the videos like everyone else. How cool would it be to sing like Eddie Vedder in a small club with a wild BO stankin crowd. Going balls out.


Videos not linkable anymore. OK.

It seems there are few happy with how they sound.
 
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