Hello. I make theory vids and deep dives into the Alien franchise on YouTube, and I am very desperate to emulate the malfunctioning voice of Ash from the 1979 movie Alien. Link below:
I’ve recorded my own voice and have spent many hours playing around with duplicate tracks and applying effects like Distortion, Phaser, Vocoder and Pitch Changer. Sadly, all to no real effect. I’ve come close to something akin, but am simply too unfamiliar with audio techniques to achieve this effect by myself.
It’s asking a lot, but if there are any experts out there who know exactly how to create this sound effect and apply it to my voice, please, I beg you, help me out if you can. I’d be extremely grateful, especially as my upcoming video is quite special to me, which explains what the blue mist is that we see floating around the alien eggs in the first film
Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks. I take it you ran the clip through Audacity and checked its waveform? Thing is, I’m just not good enough with sound manipulation to know what to do next.
You mention phaser and list two options, but in Audacity, there are several, and I don’t know which I should change and to what, etc. Ideally, I’d need someone to test it and let me know what settings to apply. I know it’s a big ask, but I’ll definitely work on the Phaser and Telephone preset in the meantime. Thanks
Excellent, thanks. I noticed that Ash’s voice is removed of bass and treble, at least to my ears. Therefore, with the Phaser plugins you shared with me and maybe somehow sorting the telephone EQ, this might hopefully work. I’m editing right now, but I’ll make another attempt very soon. If I manage to do it, I’ll post the settings and finished clip here.
It isn’t perfect, by a long shot. However, it feels close. I used Audacity’s EQ preset for Telephone in the curve list. Once I move it into Davinci Resolve and apply my normal settings, I usually use, it should give it a bit more life, etc.
Nitpick #1. The effect in the movie is oscillating ~1.75x faster, (e.g. try 1.25 Hz rather than “0.73 Hz”).
Nitpick #2: In most of the movie clip the effect is still faintly audible between Ash’s words.
If you generate a pink noise track and mix it with your recording, then apply space modulator, then it will be more like the movie. [ and/or disable the noise-gate which makes the gaps between tour words silent ].
