Voice Effects

The Cher Vocal Effect:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/a … cc3c5a7c50

2 of many Possibilities: (my Favorites)

Orange Vocoder:
[url:1sncgyk5]http://products.prosoniq.com/cgi-bin/register?service=showdetail&refno=31[/url:1sncgyk5]

Autotune:
http://www.antarestech.com/products/auto-tune4.html

Do It Yourself with Autotune:
Firstly, you’ll need to decide which bits of your vocal you want to process. This may sound rather obvious, but as I said before, less is often more with this type of effect. If you listen to the vocal on Out of Your Mind you’ll hear that only certain words and phrases have been effected

To find out which phrases will work on your song, run the whole vocal track through Auto-Tune and decide what sounds good. Auto-Tune works as an insert effect (meaning no dry signal will be present in the effected track) so insert it across the vocal track of your software set-up.

Next, select the speed that’s as close as possible to the fastest setting your computer will handle and set the other parameter to Choosy. Finally, choose the correct key signature (if you’re not sure what it is, don’t worry, just page through the list until the melody is corrected without any bum notes).

With these settings and Auto-Tune running in Automatic mode (more about its graphical mode later), it will attempt to pitch the melody exactly to the selected scale. Because singers tend to bend and modulate notes, the actual effect is slightly synthetic-sounding as the pitch is quickly jumped up or down to the next note.

Of course, the problem with this is that if the vocal bends too slowly or has a lot of vibrato, the software gets confused and pitches the note in the wrong direction! In essence, this means that some sections just won’t work (as I said earlier, this effect is a by-product of Auto-Tune and not really what it’s designed for). As always, the trick is loads of experimentation.

With Auto-Tune being an insert effect, the best way to proceed from here is to bounce the effected track to disk. This then leaves you with the final task of editing the sections that you like back into the original vocal. Auto-Tune does have a graphical editing option, so if you really have a specific idea of what you want, you can do it that way. But to be honest, tweaking the couple of parameters in the automatic mode and seeing what happens is quicker and often more interesting or useable.

This is how to achieve the basic effect, but it is worth noting a couple of other techniques used in this song. Firstly, there are various double tracks and harmony lines going on throughout the track. In the choruses there’s a high Posh harmony and Dane’s vocal is double tracked, chorused quite heavily and filtered to give it a ‘radio’ effect. In the pre-chorus section are two Posh double tracks hard-panned left and right. Another clever thing is the whispered vocal over the first line of the second verse.

These techniques not only strengthen the vocals, they also give them that phasey sound you only really get with double tracking (as opposed to using outboard effects).

With Auto-Tune patched on the insert of your audio track, set the speed to Fast and Quite choosy. Try experimenting with these two settings until you get the effect you’re after.

Auto-Tune also requires you to select a key signature. Don’t worry if you don’t know what the key is, just page through the options until you get the results you want. You’ll know if you’re wildly off the mark, because it will pick notes that really don’t fit!

Bounce the ‘tuned’ audio to a new file, then import it back into your software. Edit the parts you want back into the original, not forgetting to crossfade the joins to avoid any unwanted glitches.

or the same and more: [url:1sncgyk5]http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/vocalmagic/vocal4.asp[/url:1sncgyk5]

Enjoy
LeWelsch