Re: formants

rakmanenuff wrote:
What I'd like to do, ideally, is to keep transients/consonants from a low pitch recording and long notes/vowels from a re-recording in a higher key.
There are two fundamental problems here:
1) Consonants also contain formants
2) A consonant followed by a vowel is always blended into single unit of speech.

Just for a laugh, try saying a voiced consonant such "d" or "b", but suppress your automatic urge to add a subsequent vowel sound.
If you can achieve this, what sound do you end up with? Is it discernible as a distinct consonant or just a noise that seems to form no part of speech?

Of course I can ask the singer to retain the weight and punch of the lower key whilst singing in a higher key, but I'm not sure if that's natural or possible.
Wouldn't it then follow that if you tried this exercise artificially, that it would also be either impossible or unnatural? :-)
I'm not happy with what the pitch engine in Logic 8 is giving me on this particular occasion.
Not surprising
I like what the Vocal Transformer plugin is doing but it sounds too artificial.
Also, not surprising
I'm familiar with Melodyne but I doubt that it could give me what I want on THIS particular occasion.
Given the options of available tools and the task at hand, I think Melodyne is your best option. Do you have the Studio version?
I could also attempt to do some really precise editing
??? Using what tool?
or accept that you win some, you lose some.
Yup
Or, use the vocal take in the higher key, then lower the formants slightly to give it more weight.
You'll need to be very careful here. It is easy to produce a very unnatural sound if you start noodling around with just the formants.
Another potential application would be to keep the transients from someone with really strong, clear, heavy diction, like a rapper or session singer, and keep the tonal characteristics/wovel sounds of a singer with weak attack/diction but nice tone. Or, indeed speak/rap the words clearly like you would into a vocoder, then do a separate take focusing more on the notes and less on the clear diction, and finally layer the two.

Good luck!!

The problem here is that in addition to the formants carrying the vowel information, their formation is specific to the shape of the individual singers' throat, larynx and chest. These physical differences are what give us our characteristic voice sounds.

If you then combined elements of speech from two different people, you could end up with a sound that will be recognisable as speech, but might loose the distinct attributes that allow the listener to perceive it as male or female.

To be honest, this just sounds like alot of hard work to me. In terms of time/effort/cost, I think it would be quicker (and much simpler) to find a vocalist who can sing the part the way you want.

Chris W

--
The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.
---
.

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