voice over help.

[defmem]

right i'm clutchin at straws here. i need to record the voice of a creepy child, but my throat is killing me and i  can't do any  decent voices. could i edit speech to make it sound childish (and creepy)

as i said clutching at straws

[Neil]

You could try pitch shifting it to make it child-like?  I know that the creators of South Park do something similar to their own voices to do the voices of the kids.

[defmem]

cool good idea man i'll try that. i'm tryin to get a village of the damned creepy, murdering bastard kids sound.

[Frinky]

Do as Neil suggested, and then try something like a very, very subtle flange, availble in most audio mixing programmes.

[defmem]

cool. How's audacity? i use that for recording radio shows and whatnot. but not much more really.

[Frinky]

Honestly? I dunno. I use Soundtrack for Mac and Reason and that's all I've ever bothered with.

Also, I have to stab you, becuase I'm from Watford, and then you have to stab me back, because you're from Luton. I know it's a pain, but, so I'm told, thats the way things have to be.

[Gazeuse]

Also try palying around with 'formants.'

[terminallyrelaxed]

Sooner or later, everyone listens to Reason.

[defmem]

Frinky, i accept the social responsibility of stabbing / being stabbed.

However, i'd personally prefer a rock fight. i've been collecting and modifying my rocks for a number of years now, but have never found a good excuse to use them.

I also propose we meet in Dunstable. neutral ground(ish)

[amp]

Audacity does indeed have a pitch shifter (Effect->Change Pitch) and Pitch Bend (Effect->Change Speed) which may help.
Also has a flanger if you want to take Frinky's advice.

[V]

If you want it to sound really wierd try this:-

Record your voice
Then reverse it in your editing program
Listen to it a few times and try to learn it backwards (This is hard - it's like trying to speak Welsh)
Record it again with you speaking backwards
Reverse it back again in your editing program

If you can pull off the learning it backwards bit, it always sounds great.

[defmem]

hmmmm interesting. like the spike jonze video..... i like that idea

[Bernard]

Melodyne is a perfect for this sort of thing.

It's pretty much dedicated to pitch-shifting while keeping tempo and character, or character/tempo-shifting while keeping pitch. Etc. There's really nothing like it. Its quality is completely unrivalled and I'll be darned if every studio worth its salt doesn't have a copy.

You can record directly into it or load up your audio file. It analyses it, then you see your soundwave on a time line with differently pitched notes on different parts of the vertical axis. This lets you simply drag up and down to change the key or pitch, or stretch left and right to lengthen stuff. It has lots of crazy stuff for character alteration too.

Unfortunately it's several hundred pounds so I'm not being very helpful, sorry.

[fudgemonkey]

Record your voice
Then reverse it in your editing program
Listen to it a few times and try to learn it backwards (This is hard - it's like trying to speak Welsh)
Record it again with you speaking backwards
Reverse it back again in your editing program

If you can pull off the learning it backwards bit, it always sounds great

.

What, like the dwarf in Twin Peaks?