How can one person sound as a complete choir?

[OscarLagoa]

I need to add some kind of chorus to my voice it sound like a group of football supporters.
I dont know anything about audio editing (just change volume,cut,paste and some really basic things).

Any tips for a noob like me?

[steve]

I need to add some kind of chorus to my voice it sound like a group of football supporters.
I dont know anything about audio editing (just change volume,cut,paste and some really basic things).

Any tips for a noob like me?

Bribe all of your friends and acquaintances to come round and record them several times. This will be your source material - then use the tips and techniques mentioned previously.

For getting familiar with basic functions in Audacity, try out some of the Tutorials (see link at top of page).

[codad]

Here's a short solo vocal smaple that I grabbed off YouTube, then repeated with "choir".

The choir was made from multiple copies of the first sample with changes to the pitch, speed, start time and pan position. The sustain of the note was also adjusted by editing (cut and cross-fade) to provide two versions of the voice. The whole lot was then mixed and stereo reverb (Freeverb) added.

where-were-you.mp3

Message for Steve: I know it has been a couple years since you did this, but the result you got is pretty much the whole reason I just downloaded Audacity. Would you perhaps have any of the settings details from your work here? I've tried following your recipe, but without knowing the quantity of pitch, speed, start time, pan position, flour, eggs and water, I am just making an un-listenable bowl of mush. Many thanks for any help, and thanks for the cool demo work.

[steve]

As a rough guide -

Pitch change needs to be within 2% of the original or within 2% of a harmonising note otherwise it will sound out of tune.
A basic "chord" consists of intervals of 5, 7 and 12 semitones. Pushing a note up or down by 12 semitones is a big change (double or half the original frequency) and can sound a bit weird unless it is made not too conspicuous in the mix.

Very short differences in timing (less than 30 milliseconds) can cause a weird flanging effect unless the notes are also pitch changed. This is similar to the optical effect of looking through two layers of net curtains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern).
Timing changes much more that about 100 milliseconds can sound "out of time".

The "Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift" effect produces much better sound quality than the standard "Change Pitch" effect, but it is rather slow. "Change Pitch" is much quicker so this may be better while experimenting.

As a starting point, try making three copies of the original voice. Shift one up by 5 semitones, one own by 7 semitones, and the other down by 12 semitones.
Adjust the levels using the Gain Sliders so that the original note is the loudest and the other notes a little quieter. Ensure that the level is low enough to avoid the mix distorting.
Mix these down to one track (Select all of the tracks then, "Tracks menu > Mix and Render").
Make two duplicate copies of this track.
Shift one later by about 70 milliseconds and the other earlier by about 50 milliseconds.
Use the Gain sliders to drop the level of these duplicates a little, then use the Pan sliders to pan one a bit to the left and the other a bit to the right.

Mix the whole thing down to one (stereo) track and apply a little reverb. You should now have something close to a choir.

[zwag]

Well, if I'm being too lazy to read something already on here, let me know please. My concern isn't necessarily if my voice can sound like a choir in a studio recording kind of qualily I don't think. My concern is that my 3rd voice desn't drown out my second and first voice because that's what happens when I use the plain old voice recorder the computer has.

When I was growing up I'd take a cassette recorder and a small tape player and sing with myself. By the time I had maybe a quartet or more, there'd be this big roar, but you oculd hear all, or most of the voices. I got a Kerioky with a tape player and recorder, and it would give me good quality voices without drowning any of hem out or making a roar. Is that what it would sound like if you did that in a studio? I do want to sing with myself like that again. I'd spend hours and hours doing that when I didn't have to do school work. I did do it on a nice boom box, with a bult in dual tape deck, but it still gave a roaring sound when I recorded a lot of voices, but the Kereoky could be adjuest to not do that.

[Trebor]

When I was growing up I'd take a cassette recorder and a small tape player and sing with myself. By the time I had maybe a quartet or more, there'd be this big roar, but you oculd hear all, or most of the voices.

Using tape the noise floor doubles with each duplication , so for a quartet you've increased the noise-level by a factor of eight , which is the roaring noise you report.

Using digital audio, rather than analogue-tape, the increase in the noise floor with additional layers does still occur but is not as severe because duplicating a track digitally does not add noise , (analogue-tape does).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_loss

[zwag]

It works! I could have been doing this for years probably, and it sounds almost as good, or maybe just as good as it does on the Kareoky. All you have to do is keep adding voices! I made a quartet, so I'm happy. That's what I usuallydo anyway, so if I can't make many more than that, that's fine. I'll juskee copying. Just put all thevoices in one file though.

[zwag]

I'd love to show you proof that I found out that I can make a fairly goodrecordin of me singing with myself with audactiy which doesn't have one or 2 voices completely drowning out the otherss when you have 3 or 4 voices of yourself singing. I can't however, and I guess at least one reason is these 2 messags I get when I try to save my recrding into a format that it can be played without having to use just Audacity. When I save a fike I get this message: "You are saving an audacity project file aup. To save an audio file for other programs use one of the fle > export comands."

When I click on the file menu and then click export, I"m asked tosave file again. Then it puts up this message. "C:program files (x86) audacity/come HolySpirit." Under that it says,
" You don't have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission." If you need to know what version of Audacity I'm using to answer this question, please say so and I'll see if I can find out. I also have a friend I'd like to send a song I've recorded via audacity where I"ve sung with myself, so that's why I'm asking this question. Thanks and God bless.

[steve]

As the first message says: to create a "normal" audio file you need to "Export" the audio.

As the second message says: you shouldn't save you files in "C:program files (x86)...."
When you get to the Export dialogue screen where you enter the file name, navigate to a place where you know that you have permission to write to, for example, your "Documents" folder.

[zwag]

Ok thanks. I was asked if I wanted to put the files in the "Darrell" folder instead, whish is a folder with my name on it. Maybe if I put it in My Documents, mabye it will convert. I'll check the FAQs out.