Newbie question: Voice editing

I am new here and have seen a lot of posts about voice editing. But here is something I have not found that I would like to know about. I have listed two points here so please feel free to respond to whichever you can help with.

Point Number 1:

I know how to shift voices up or down an octave. I want to add voice recordings to my music sheet videos and I chose Audacity because of the reviews I saw.

When I shift the voice up an octave, the result sounds like the chipmunks’ voice even when I sing with a low voice. A G3 shifted to a G4 sounds so piercing to the ears. I mean, I know what a G4 sounds like and what Audacity gives me is not it. So please, I need help on fixing it. Maybe because I was singing and Audacity is made for non vocal instruments? Or what is it that I am missing?

When I shift the voice down an octave, the pitch is perfect but I hear no words at all. A G3 shifted to a G2 sounds so…well, it is as if I was mumbling some words in a really low voice. Again, maybe because I was singing and Audacity is made for non vocal instruments? Or what is it that I am missing?

Please I really need those two to work. Most of the time, my voice hits low and high notes but for the purpose of some effect I want to convey, I need to go lower than a G2 and higher than a C4 and my voice breaks at that point. Until I get there, I want to use Audacity.

Point number 2:

Anyone knows how to make a voice sounds like a crowd? I am not sure these are the right terminologies but…if I sing, anyone who listens will know that it is one person and only one person singing. I want to make it sound like a chorus. If I am singing the tenor part, after singing, I want to make it sound like it a tenor chorus singing, not just one person singing.

Oh by the way, how do you make a sound font? I will see this one on Youtube but still, if you know, please point me somewhere.

There we go. My system is ×86_64 GNU/Linux Ubuntu. I downloaded Audacity from the Ubuntu Store.

Thank you!

Even Antares AutoTune can’t make an octave shift sound natural, and they throw $millions and thousands of hours of developer time at the problem. A generic pitch shifting plug-in has no chance of sounding natural with such a big shift.


Multi-tracking. Record the thing many times, preferably altering your voice each time.
You can also use effects such as “Chorus” and “Delay” to thicken the sound, but mostly go for multi-tracking if you want it to sound convincing.


On Linux, take a look at “Swami”: http://www.swamiproject.org/
(it is available in the Ubuntu repository)

“Multi-tracking. Record the thing many times, preferably altering your voice each time.
You can also use effects such as “Chorus” and “Delay” to thicken the sound, but mostly go for multi-tracking if you want it to sound convincing.”



Thank you very much. I really appreciate your help. You have shed a bit of light on this. Thank you!