Voice gender conversion: DAW plugin -- any good?

[YanKleber]

Hey mates!

This is my second thread here. I didn't find a more appropriated place to start it so here we go...

I am after a DAW plugin to make gender vocal change (specifically from male to female) and that provide a decent result.

I have tried one called ReeVo but the result is not too much convincing. There is another one called VoxMorph Pro from a certain 'Screaming Bee' and that seems to work better but it doesn't work as a VST. Instead it installs some kind of virtual 'mic interface' and does the conversion of the voice on-the-fly on Skype and such).

My wife has been my 'slave singer' at my recording project but she has zero background with music. She is doing it exclusively to help me to make the project come true, but I know how it is hard for her to perform this task. Although we are doing surprisingly good with some songs others simply won't work. I don't want to push her more than I have done so far, because it is not fair with her and only will crate frustration. Well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, some of my songs were written to match specifically a female voice and I don't have a backup female singer, so the only option I have is to sing it myself (or give up about song and throw it away). That's why I am after a nice plugin that can help me with this.

Any good advice?

 

[miroslav]

I've tried a few things over the years, and unless your voice is like up there in the high-tenor range, and you're looking for something close in the female range.....none of them were convincing enough, so I either got some female vocalist to sing those parts, or I simply changed them to fit my voice.

If there is some new product that is 100% convincing, and will take a male baritone vocal and make sound like a female soprano....I would love to hear about....it would be a great tool, since I too write a lot of stuff that begs for female background vocals and sometimes female lead vocals.

 

[phriq]

I would assume all voice changers would primarily do the same thing of changing pitch and then using some EQ or filters to cut lows or highs depending on the change. Ultimately you could do all that through native or additional plugins to your DAW. Would be a manual approach, but should work. That said, I don't think you will ever get a true quality replacement of a girls voice by changing a males. Would be a lot like using a 6 string guitar and trying to make it be the bass for your songs, it may work but would never be as convincing as the real thing.

 

[Chili]

You can try Melodyne. It supposedly alters "formants" which is what makes the difference in how it sounds. I don't know the details.

 

[YanKleber]

I would assume all voice changers would primarily do the same thing of changing pitch and then using some EQ or filters to cut lows or highs depending on the change. Ultimately you could do all that through native or additional plugins to your DAW. Would be a manual approach, but should work. That said, I don't think you will ever get a true quality replacement of a girls voice by changing a males. Would be a lot like using a 6 string guitar and trying to make it be the bass for your songs, it may work but would never be as convincing as the real thing.

Actually it is not that simple. It does part of the trick but beside pitch and EQ, there are the addition of several paralell harmonics called 'formants' and that supposely gives the character to the voice. That's where mostly of such plugins fails.

---------- Update ----------

You can try Melodyne. It supposedly alters "formants" which is what makes the difference in how it sounds. I don't know the details.

Oops, yeah, that's what I was talking about. I will give it a try. Thanks!

 

[mjbphotos]

If there was a plug in that worked well (Melodyne?) then a lot of people would be using it now that way. But I wait to hear of someone who makes it work well! I want to soundlike Scarlet Johansen in the movie 'Her'!

 

[YanKleber]

If there was a plug in that worked well (Melodyne?) then a lot of people would be using it now that way. But I wait to hear of someone who makes it work well! I want to soundlike Scarlet Johansen in the movie 'Her'!

As by what was told, I don't think that there is. However, from how I see things the point of such plugin wouldn't be to sound like this or that person, but sound like yourself if you had the opposite gender.

 

[Armistice]

I can help you make a male voice sound like a female chipmunk, but not a human... Lots can't tell the difference, however.

The formants thing was what I was going to suggest. I don't really think it's going to work too well though judging by my playing around to date.

 

[miroslav]

I have the Waves Tune plug, which is very similar to Melodyne and it too does the formant adjustment.
Ain't no way it can turn a male vocal into a female vocal...unless they were very close to begin with (like those high-talker guys that sound like women).

You can get the pitch raised up (to a point), but it still sounds like a male vocal, and if you raise it too much, it sounds like a weird male vocal.
Mind you, if you are just looking to at some short phrase background vocals....or the "ooooh, aaaaaah" kind of stuff, you might be able to pull it off it there is enough masking from the rest of the tracks.....but for a lead vocal, if you find a way to do it, I would love to hear it.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Some of the Digitech Vocalist harmonizers allowed you to specify the gender of each voice. IDK if there is a VST version.

ReaPitch (included with Reaper DAW, but I think you can get it separately) has some ability to change the formants, but I haven't really done much than a quick play with it.

I think you'll find that most of these things will be okay, maybe even good, for backing vox, but will not stand up to the close scrutiny that most leads get.

Why not go out and make some friends? If there's any place around your area with an open mic night or even a karaoke night, you could find some enthusiastic amateurs who would probably be happy to sit in on your project for fun, practice or possible exposure.

 

[YanKleber]

Mind you, if you are just looking to at some short phrase background vocals....or the "ooooh, aaaaaah" kind of stuff, you might be able to pull it off it there is enough masking from the rest of the tracks.....

Yeah, last night I made some tests, and it works very well to use as couple singing together. I recorded my own voice and doubled the track. Then I put the 'female' track to sing together in some parts. I can't spot that the 'female' track is a fake one. Other than that, if you allow it to sing alone it can fool you just till certain point, but sooner or later you notice that it is a fake.



Anyway, I am reviewing my project and thinking about to use the trick to put it as a second voice. It is already something.

 

[jonny deep]

I did a duet with myself by pitching the whole project down 3 semitones, singing along, then pitching everything back up, making the second vocal 3 semitones higher than my real voice. It sounded a bit female, but mostly weird.

 

[YanKleber]

Why not go out and make some friends? If there's any place around your area with an open mic night or even a karaoke night, you could find some enthusiastic amateurs who would probably be happy to sit in on your project for fun, practice or possible exposure.

Yeah, I fully agree with you that it would be the ideal scenario.



Nonetheless I am a 110% DIY person and I always give my best to not have to insert a person into my life context just to have something I need done. Any time I need something I try first to evaluate if I couldn't do that myself with some personal effort. If not I ask myself if I really need/want that done. When it gets to that point I usually will give up about the stuff.

Anyway, the fact is: if I have to go out and pass for all the process of finding someone, build a friendship, welcome the person to my private life, and deal with the vanities and unresponsabilities and all the 'package' that comes bundled together (you know what I mean) just to have a female voice in a couple of my tunes... well, in this case I will no doubt prefer to exclude those tunes from my album.



Such behavior may be near to impossible to understand for some people. Hopefuly I know that there are others that will share my point of view.

Oh well! Let's carry on!

 

[jonny deep]

Yeah, I fully agree with you that it would be the ideal scenario.



Nonetheless I am a 110% DIY person and I always give my best to not have to insert a person into my life context just to have something I need done. Any time I need something I try first to evaluate if I couldn't do that myself with some personal effort. If not I ask myself if I really need/want that done. When it gets to that point I usually will give up about the stuff.

Anyway, the fact is: if I have to go out and pass for all the process of finding someone, build a friendship, welcome the person to my private life, and deal with the vanities and unresponsabilities and all the 'package' that comes bundled together (you know what I mean) just to have a female voice in a couple of my tunes... well, in this case I will no doubt prefer to exclude those tunes from my album.



Such behavior may be near to impossible to understand for some people. Hopefuly I know that there are others that will share my point of view.

Oh well! Let's carry on!

If you don't want to do it socially, put an ad on Craigslist for an amateur singer.

 

[Steenamaroo]

If you don't want to do it socially, put an ad on Craigslist for an amateur singer.

Or find someone you like on Soundcloud and fire them a message.
There are hundreds of thousands of female singers going nowhere who'd be glad to colab with you.

I've no idea what your voice is like but what is the result like when you sing it yourself?
If they parts are reasonably buried backing parts I'd definitely do them myself.

I can sing a good'n strong D below bass range, but that doesn't stop me clenching and doing a bit of falsetto too!

 

[rob aylestone]

My recently purchased TC-Helicon Voiceworks has pretty decent formant shifting for female v male switches, but I doubt any would be convincing on their own, when laid bare for scrutiny.

 

[YanKleber]

Hummm... yah... CraigsList and SoundCloud sounds like a nice option... Thanks for putting a light on it, fellows!



I just hope that you guys don't think that I am a caveman or such, it is just that after so many disapointments along the life, I figured out that sometimes is better to keep quiet in your own corner...



And hell, yah, I am considering to sing myself a couple ones and maybe turn other couple in instrumental tunes.

 

[miroslav]

Yeah, last night I made some tests, and it works very well to use as couple singing together. I recorded my own voice and doubled the track. Then I put the 'female' track to sing together in some parts. I can't spot that the 'female' track is a fake one. Other than that, if you allow it to sing alone it can fool you just till certain point, but sooner or later you notice that it is a fake.

Yup....I've done that occasionally..."hidden" and altered male-to-female vocal on background vocal track by doubling/tripling up the harmonies with normal make vocals, and bleing in the "femalized" harmony...but it's hit-n-miss.

 

[David Cooke]

This thread creeps me out. Been watching too much catfish lately.