{"id":239,"date":"2008-06-03T09:02:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T09:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2008\/06\/03\/what_i_learned_6\/"},"modified":"2008-06-03T09:02:37","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T09:02:37","slug":"what_i_learned_6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2008\/06\/03\/what_i_learned_6\/","title":{"rendered":"What I learned: V-Vocal turns me into a female Japanese backing singer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not enough of a singer to dismiss V-Vocal, the Cakewalk SONAR pitch correction plug-in, as an essential part of my recording process. V-Vocal, in fact, helps me hear my own voice sing my own melodies properly, and that helps me develop better muscle memory.<\/p>\n

A long time ago, I saw a bulletin board post on the Cakewalk web site claiming V-Vocal is really good for creating temporary background vocals. I decided to give it a try.<\/p>\n

One of my songs, "Melt", sounds better if the third verse were doubled an octave higher, but that would put the melody far, far out of my comfortable range. I’ve attempted it and practically had to scream. The microphone didn’t like that, and the resulting recording was clipped as hell.<\/p>\n

So I tried a different tactic — I recorded a second part in unison, then used V-Vocal to transpose that part an octave higher. The results were remarkable — it sounded like me an octave higher without the near-screaming and without the clipping. Listen:<\/p>\n

Get the Flash Player<\/a> to see this player.<\/div>\n

var s1 = new SWFObject(“http:\/\/www.musicwhore.org\/mediaplayer.swf”,”playlist”,”400″,”40″,”7″); s1.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,”false”); s1.addVariable(“file”,’http:\/\/www.gregbueno.com\/files\/V-Vocal_Melt.mp3′); s1.addVariable(‘displaywidth’,’0′); s1.addVariable(‘shuffle’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘thumbsinplaylist’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘autostart’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘author’,’Eponymous 4′); s1.addVariable(‘title’,’Melt (background vocal example)’); s1.write(“player1”);<\/p>\n

If V-Vocal can create a frighteningly accurate facsimile of my voice an octave higher, what would happen if I went further into the female ranges?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Another song, \u300c\u8a00\u8449\u306f\u30cf\u30fc\u30c8\u3092\u523a\u3059\u5200\u306b\u306a\u308b\u300d (Kotoba wa HAATO wo Sasu Katana ni Naru\/Words Become Swords that Pierce the Heart), has a chorus in Japanese, and I thought it would be fun to have a female backing vocal double the melody. Thing is, I don’t know if any of my Japanese-speaking friends are singers. So I decided to experiment with V-Vocal.<\/p>\n

I took a separate take on the melody and transposed it an octave higher, then changed a bunch of other parameters. (I don’t know how to explain them technically, so just take it for granted that I did some twiddling.) The results scared the hell out of me for the simple fact they’re just too damn convincing.<\/p>\n

I managed to turn myself into a female Japanese singer. Don’t believe me? Listen:<\/p>\n

Get the Flash Player<\/a> to see this player.<\/div>\n

var s1 = new SWFObject(“http:\/\/www.musicwhore.org\/mediaplayer.swf”,”playlist”,”400″,”40″,”7″); s1.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,”false”); s1.addVariable(“file”,’http:\/\/www.gregbueno.com\/files\/V-Vocal_Kotoba.mp3′); s1.addVariable(‘displaywidth’,’0′); s1.addVariable(‘shuffle’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘thumbsinplaylist’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘autostart’,’false’); s1.addVariable(‘author’,’Eponymous 4′); s1.addVariable(‘title’,’\u8a00\u8449\u306f\u30cf\u30fc\u30c8\u3092\u523a\u3059\u5200\u306b\u306a\u308b (background vocal example)’); s1.write(“player2”);<\/p>\n

No, that really is me, processed to all get out.<\/p>\n

File under: Technology FTW?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If V-Vocal can create a frighteningly accurate facsimile of my voice an octave higher, what would happen if I went further into the female ranges?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technophilia-aural"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-3R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}