Computers and Singing

[Grantith]

This is a very strange topic, but I'm trying to find more info about how the music industry uses computers to help tweak or change singers' voices. I think it's pretty common these days for the music industry to use computers to help "improve" singing when people record new songs. I've been looking all over trying to find any kind of info at all about it, but I haven't much luck. I can't find anything so I just wanted to see if any of you have found any info about it. I greatly appreciate any help you can give me!

[ayumi_pukka89]

i dunno about helping peoples voice...never heard that until now

but they do [well at least i think so] fix up a persons voice on a computer or whatever so its sounds good when they make the CD

[SurrealDreams]

Yeah. Computers can be used to enhance vocals, do special effects to it like turning it into a robot voice or whatever, the creative posibilites are endless, cut it up/re-arrange takes, and (with recent-ish technology) can even help get out-of-tune singing in tune as well.

Read this as what for example a software like this can do to vocals, but not just limited to vocals. http://www.celemony.com/melodyne/

[jerms]

i dont think that they "improve" people's voices on the computer. what they do is record the song and have the singer sing it like a hundred songs(literally) and then go back and listen to all the takes and put parts of each recording into one song. for instance: if a singer wer singing "mary had a little lamb" (first thing that came to mind) then the singer would sing that line a whole lot of times. then maybe on the computer they'll edit out the "mary" part of it and put the "mary" of a different take into it. get it? so when u hear the overall record and u hear the singer say "mary had a little lamb" it's probably a mix of like 30 different takes. i was watching MTV(US) and christina aguilera was having a diary or soemthing..i forgot. anyways, she was in the studio recording a song. after singing it over and over, they sat in front of a computer and picked which parts of which words they like in each song. she liked the "whoaAaAaa" part of "whoaAaAaaAaaAHH" but she didnt like how it went so far so they cut the "AaaAHH" end of it off.

if this isnt what your talking about, are u talking about like..making the voices stronger? because an example of that is in the instrumental of "ourselves". if u listen to it, u hear the backup singing. this makes the singer's voice sound louder and more powerful. without it she wouldnt sound as good. =\ i hope this helps.

[Giga_Man]

They still use those big switch boards where they alter sound frequencies and other stuff... computers do cutting, pasting, mixing, croping, etc... its expensive too.

Originally posted by jerms
what they do is record the song and have the singer sing it like a hundred songs(literally) and then go back and listen to all the takes and put parts of each recording into one song.

Yeah. This technique is called "comping." It is also used with instruments.

Literally all vocals are processed in some way in a computer program (for example Pro Tools and Logic). Reverb and compression are two of the most commonly used effects (could use reverb to make it sound as if the vocal is in a big hall; compression can make it sound fuller, fatter).

As Giga pointed out, the frequencies of a sound can be changed. If a vocal is muddying up a certain part of the stereo spectrum, they can put said vocals through a filter to cut out those specific frequencies. This doesn't just appy to vocals either. These are production techniques for all instruments.

SurrealDreams made a good point in mentioning how such things can be used creatively. Just take a listen to one of BT's vocal tracks. Some of the stuff he does is just insane.

The point of using all of that stuff is indeed to make everything sound as good as possible. This isn't anything new though. It's just that the platform in which it is being done on is moving in the direction of software, rather than hardware.

[jerms]

basicallly almost anyone can be as good of a singer as a famous person when it comes to computers.