Intermediate Transformation

[Astro-Xana]

Is there a way of transforming one voice into another voice, or one instrument into another instrument, and on spoken words as well? I was told by someone that there was such a thing. What I'm talking about is if you were to have, for example, a man and a woman speaking at the same time. And that if you were to slowly transform the man's voice into the woman's voice so that the voice sounds in between the man and the woman. And that if you could apply this exact same effect not only on voices, but also on different instruments playing at the same time, or even different words being spoken at the same time. Like if there were to be a guitar and a piano playing at the same time, you could transform the guitar into the piano so that the instrument that is playing sounds in between that of a piano and a guitar. And you could do this on spoken words as well so that one word sounds in between being another word.

So basically, if you had two different songs playing at the same time (which consists of all these things--voices, instruments, and words being sung), you could transform the one song into the other, which would sound really cool and freaky.

[kozikowski]

Say that again and use different words. Half way between playing forward and playing backward is zero. No sound.

Koz

[Astro-Xana]

I was told by someone that there was such a thing. But is there any way of doing such (like having a spoken word, for example, 20% reversed) which would result in that entire word sounding forward, but also the entire word sounding a little reversed at the same time?

[steve]

(like having a spoken word, for example, 20% reversed) which would result in that entire word sounding forward, but also the entire word sounding a little reversed at the same time?

Without an actual example to listen to, it's very difficult to understand what the heck you are talking about

"Forward and at the same time backward".... OK, so I'm thinking of someone walking... they are walking forward, and at the same time they are walking backward... kind of 20% backward.

I think I've got it - you want an audio equivalent of the Michael Jackson "moon walking" ?

I guess that you could do something like: split the recording into lots of little bits, but make the bits from 2 copies of the track so that the parts all overlap a small amount. Each part will contain just a single word/syllable/phoneme. Select all of the segments and Reverse (so that each segment is reversed, but the order remains the same). Then use the areas of overlap to cross-fade from one clip to the next.

I think that may be the kind of thing, but it would be very fiddly and a lot of manual editing. I don't know of any "effect" that can automate the process.

An alternative may be to use a kind of "reverse reverb". Make a very "dry" recording of the voice (microphone close to the speaker in a well dampened room), then reverse the track, apply quite a lot of dense but short reverb, then reverse the track again (to bring it back the right way round). The reverb will then start before the word is spoken and stop suddenly at the end of the word creating a kind of "playing backward" sense.

Or the other option that comes to mind is to shape the "envelope" of each word so that each word fades in and ends quiet abruptly. This could be used in conjunction with the reverse reverb, and perhaps a bit of pitch warping to make each word start at a slightly lower pitch, and end at a slightly higher pitch (about 1 semitone or so each way) - Pitch warping can be done using the "Turntable warp" plug-in that I believe is included in the Ladspa effects pack that is available from the main Audacity web site.

Without knowing exactly what you are after, just have a play with these ideas and see if anything comes close to what you are looking for.

You should definitely upgrade to Audacity 1.3 for doing this kind of thing.

[Edit] OK, ignore this post - I see the original question has now been edited and changed and is now about morphing sounds.

[kozikowski]

Can you point to an example of what you want?

Koz

[Astro-Xana]

Actually, what I'm talking about is if you were to have, for example, a man and a woman speaking at the same time. And that if you were to slowly transform the man's voice into the woman's voice so that the voice sounds in between the man and the woman. And that if you could apply this exact same effect not only on voices, but also on different instruments playing at the same time, or even different words being spoken at the same time. Like if there were to be a guitar and a piano playing at the same time, you could transform the guitar into the piano so that the instrument that is playing sounds in between that of a piano and a guitar. And you could do this on spoken words as well so that one word sounds in between being another word.

So basically, if you had two different songs playing at the same time (which consists of all these things--voices, instruments, and words being sung), you could transform the one song into the other, which would sound really cool and freaky.

[kozikowski]

<<<So basically, if you had two different songs...which would sound really cool and freaky.>>>

It would sound chaotic is what it would do. You can morph back and forth between several different people singing the same song. That was done most recently in the "Let's Get Together" thing somebody did on Public Broadcasting. One single song in one key that was sung by people whose only connection to each other was they were all standing on earth. And they could sing. Well.

Another possibility is the vocoder effect made famous by Cher in "Believe" and Peter Frampton in that Geico commercial. Those let you "speak" and "sing" in guitar or any other instrument.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Keep talking. We'll get this.

Koz