Changing voice to a different voice? help!

[Supermariostar]

What I want to do is have a different person replace the vocals of another song/recording. Basically, I have this Weird Al song, but I was wondering if I could change his voice pattern to make to sound like someone else (like say, someone from the Beatles or someone famous) singing it. Is that possible? Please help and tell me if there's a way.

[steve]

You could try the "Center pan Remover" (often called Vocal Remover) effect to try and remove the original vocal (may or may not work - it depends on the original recording), http://audacityteam.org/download/nyquistplugins and then adding a replacement vocal

[alatham]

supermariostar,

Almost certainly not. At least, not in the way that you're likely thinking.

If you have access to the original multi-track recording from Weird Al and access to one of the beatles then it would be easy. But if you don't then it's not going to happen.

[kozikowski]

No hope.

The Center Pan Remover takes the original voice out according to some very strict rules, and then destroys it. If everything goes well, it also leaves you with a mono orchestration. If things don't go well, you get a mono orchestra track and a bubbly, distorted voice.

You still need the original mix tapes to do what you want.

Koz

[Supermariostar]

Alright, I'll try with the center pan remover and see what happens. Although, how do I put the center pan remover in my effects section? (it has .ny at the end when I downloaded the zip, it is different then the others, how do i put it in there?)

[kozikowski]

Didn't it come with a ReadMe? I think mine did.

In Windows, it's Program Files > Audacity > Nyquist or Plugins.

In Mac, it's the same two folders wherever you put them.

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... al_Removal

Here's way to do it without the tool.

http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=edit ... ove-vocals

Koz

[kozikowski]

Oh, one more. Sometimes you have to restart Audacity for it to catch on to what you did.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Do you more or less understand what all these tools are doing? Any singer in the exact middle of a stereo show has electrical waveforms that are identical on both left and right. If you cause one side, say Right to be inverted and then smash Right and Left together, the singer will vanish.

I made a sound clip that illustrates this. Download "Left-Right" from here. It's 38 seconds.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

If you magnify the "center performance" waveforms a lot (segment three), you will see that the wiggles are exactly the same on left and right. The last segment I engineered my voice to be "flipped" on the Right channel. This is an engineering test, so there's no guitar or anything back there. Blow that up and look.

If you make a mono track out of this clip or listen on a mono mix speaker, my voice will vanish in the last segment.

The important point is to notice that any instrument not in the middle will survive. My voice on segments one and two goes right through.

The problem is what happens when my voice is not in the middle. I won't go away with this process. Unless the singers are in the exact middle, you lose. If the singer's voice is in the middle, but their echo or special effects isn't, only the special effects will remain. This gives you the singer performing out in the parking lot or down a long hallway.

If the drums are in the middle (usually), they go, too. This isn't as easy as you would think.

Koz

[Supermariostar]

Thanks, Well, I'm able to get rid of the vocals to make it sound sorta like an instrumental, but now is there any way to change the voice pattern to make it sound like someone else is singing the same song? if possible, how would i do that?

[kozikowski]

<<<is there any way to change the voice pattern>>>

The down side of all these tools is that they don't take the voice out and put it somewhere. They take it out by destroying it. They work by vocal cancellation.

You can play the voiceless orchestration back into headphones and then sing or ask somebody else to sing along. Record that using your local microphone and Hardware or Software Playthrough for cuing. Once you have the new voice on its own track, then you can throw all the effects at it and change it around to do what you want. Do a mixdown in Audacity to integrate it with the original show and export as a new song.

Because of latency problems, you may also have to slide the orchestra or voice sooner or later a little to match it up.

Actually, what I would be doing is capture the new live performance before I took the original vocal out. That's much better for cuing.

Koz