HEllo, I have a weird mixing/production question....

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rickhebert

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Hello,
I have a small home studio that consist of Presonus gear and Studio One Pro with a handful of 3rd party plugins, and a fairly straight forward and basic suite of tools provided by Studio One Pro.

Here is the question, and it's a bit off-topic, so please bear with me.
I have been asked to produce a vocal track for a horror machinima video.

The story is based off of an HP Lovecraft story named "The Thing on the Doorstep" and in effect this character is zombie like, has been dead a few weeks and his vocal chords have pretty much deteriorated and his voice is garbled sounding, I imagine maybe almost like talking while gargling.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas I might try to achieve this effect?
 
Get the voice over man to fill his mouth or gargle while doing the voice over.
Mind you it can't be too incomperhensable or the audiance won't get what he's saying anyway.
 
You could copy the voice to multiple tracks, play around with various ways of hacking them up, and mix them back together. Sounds like a fun project. You get to play 'sound designer' and just have fun experimenting. Just record a few sample lines and then play around with it. I hope you're not in a hurry. And don't forget to add a lot of throaty air.
 
Thanks for the replies!

If I recall from the story, the thing calls the main character on the phone, and the speech is broken and unintelligible (I think) I will be re-reading it this weekend.

kip4 - about recording while gargling, I will be doing the voiceover and I will try that.
It would add some interesting quirks to the sound. I am wondering since you mention it of recording just some gargling noises, and then mix bits and pieces of that with the voiceover

notCardio, Yeah I agree! I think it will be fun to play with, and I have plenty of time to try something new. The guy who wants this originally suggested some echo or reverb, but I want to take it a few steps further to produce something unusual and disturbing lol.

I like the suggestions about multiple tracks and hacking up bits and pieces. I imagine moving them around in time and then pitch adjustments might have some interesting effects also.

The throaty air idea is great! imagine having to force air through oozing, broken and rotten vocal chords!! I might record just some gutteral noises too like when I am having a sinus attack yechhh lol

Oh and a good bit of wheezing too!!

I think applying a wee bit of echo here and there to individual pieces might give interesting effects, and then an overall echo/reverb maybe to give it an overall "ethereal" effect, not-quite-but-almost ghostly

Your ideas have helped grease the wheels of imagination! Thanks!
 
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Just use a high impedance microphone like a green bullet or cheap $5 microphone from ratshack - the low quality will convey the feeling your going for here plus you could be scraping the microphones headbasket with your fingernail while recording etc. Get creative. scrunching cellophane while talking is a good effect.
 
Talking through a Kazoo would be kinda cool sounding!
 
lol @ Bob Dylan quip

When I posted here I thought I might get advice on unusual plugins or tricked out filter settings, but you guys gave me some great ideas for taking the sound design approach instead and is exciting and I can't wait to try some things.

Thanks for the input guys.
 
rickhebert said:
I thought I might get advice on unusual plugins or tricked out filter settings
Click to expand...

hmm... I advise you to avoid turning to unusual plugins, tricked out filter settings, or other production trickery as your first option! :D
 
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