I had my fingers crossed that the 1.3 version of Audacity would have this, but it doesn’t. I figured there might be a plug-in out there that does this, but the only ones I found were for midi, not for your live recording like vocals. Any way to simulate this?
I don’t know if it has another name, I just know it as sustain. It’s when a sound is drawn out, lingering and fading instead of just going away. It’s not an echo, delay, etc. The sound doesn’t repeat, it’s just held longer. Any way to reproduce this in Audacity? I’ve tried Gverb but I can’t get any combination of settings with it that makes notes sound like they’re being held longer yet doesn’t change the way the notes sound.
If I sing a note for one second and then I sing it again for two seconds, the only difference between the two is that maybe the second time, there was a change in volume towards the end, maybe a little trill in my voice depending on how I sing, but it’s not like the note is going to all of a sudden sound like I’m sitting in a brass tub or underwater or in an opera house compared to the shorter note just because I sang the note longer. All I did was expel more air.
So when I say “without it sounding different”, I mean it extends the note without causing any extreme, noticeable, relevant changes to the tonal quality or timbre or whatever you want to call it. That’s why none of the Gverb tricks I’ve found on the net work for me. There are ways to get notes to seem like they’re being extended, but they change the note itself so much that it “sounds” completely different in ways that in essence make it no longer the same sound anymore.
I asked about it because it’s such a common thing in music, but I don’t ever really see it in music software except for the midi stuff. I figured there might either be another name for it I don’t know or just other ways to achieve it with stuff that’s common in software nixing the need for it to be separate.
I use FL Studio and it has different effects and parameters depending on the sounds and what you’re doing that mimic sustain pretty well, like using the “release” setting on a channel. Shrink it and the sound gets more staccato. Increase it and it sounds like you stepped on a sustain pedal. I think it has some that can be applied to vocals to get that same effect, but I’m not sure.
I don’t expect to get the same exact effect digitally as I’d get in a real world setting, but if I can get closer to it, that’d be great. I’ll check out the suggestion forum and suggest it too. I think it’d be a great addition to Audacity, which is already great software itself. If others are requesting it too that’s good, then they’ll definitely have people making use of it.