I was listening to erotic city a couple days ago and I noticed that he has some of that chipmunky voice in there and I thought it sounded cool so I was recording some stuff over some music and added my chipmunk voice in by changing the pitch of my voice obviously but by raising the pitch I increased the speed which of course makes it not fit the rhythm right so my question is this

how do I use the chipmunk voice and have it fit exactly like it did in erotic city? Do I just sing slower?

ok. there are a few ways. I'll mention three that I can think of right now.

(1) The way Prince probably did it:
He recorded on reel to reel, so he could play with the speed of the tape. He recorded the vocal while the tape played the song slower. then turned it back to it's original speed and voila!

(2) Effects during recording:
There are plenty of pitch shfters out there that can do the same thing. it could take some work getting the right tone, but one you're there it works. the thing is, it might not be easy to sing unless it's one octave up, or else it would confuse you about which tones to sing to make it fit the song's scale.

(3) Pitch shift after recording:
If you are recording to a computer, there are a lot of effects that can change the pitch without changing the speed. But...this results in loss of quality of the recording. though for the purpose of this effect it won't be noticeable much.

I agree with number one.

The best way to capture the effect is to slow down the tracks, recording, song, whatever, and sing in the key of the slowed playback. I was goofing around with recording guitar this way. I had to find a different key, but when the song is back up to it's normal pitch, the results still make me laugh, CUZ IT WORKS!!!

Schöne Gruß!

nayroo2002 said:

One thing though. this works best when recording to analog! If you try and change pitch or time in digital, there will be a loss in quality.

Heavenly said:

Not necessarily(sp?)

I record with an 8-track digital and can still change the pitch ala anologue. I think you mean with DJ equipment? I know that from messing around with that equipment that the tempo will change, but not the pitch. Like in 'Rockafeller Skank" from Fatboy Slim.

prevch said:

#


Yeah.

You gotta sing on point. Keep the tempo. "Ride the rail"

nayroo2002 said:

If you change only the pitch without changing the speed, or changing the speed without changing the pitch, the sound quality degrades. You might not hear that well, but it does. It's pretty simple actually.
Here's an example. You have a tone that is 440 hz. You change that tone digitally to 600 hz. Since digital, unlike analog is devided to parts, the computer will have to guess and add false wafeforms to compensate for the speed that did not change. the more complex the sound, the harder it will be for the computer to fake in the sound that is missing.
When it comes to speed, if you speed up the file, then the computer will simply cut segments to make it shorter, which if you listen carefully, you might hear clicks here and there, from the cuts.
If yo try to slow it down, the computer will add false sound to compensate for what is missing. again, which means it'll sound unnatural the more you slow it down.

So what I'm saying, you might not hear it unless you really pay attention, or work with professional monitors, but it's there, and gets worse with bigger changes.
[Edited 7/3/05 14:17pm]

Sounds awesome I will give those methods a shot thanks for your help!