Originally Posted By: vicarn
Well that was interesting.
A little mechanical but I'd like to play with that synth.
Maybe for backing vocals. Can you humanise it?

I'm using the free version of Synthesizer V, and it's available for the Mac, Windows and Linux, so the barrier to entry is pretty low.

The only English voice is only recorded at a single pitch, so as it moves out of the "best" range, it tends to get a bit nasal. However, changing the tension parameter helps with that.

There's a lot of options for "humanizing" the sound, but I've found that you need to be careful - it's a very short distance from making the voice more "human" to making it sound like a bad singer. I'm still figuring out where that line is.

Although you can edit all the parameters to the micro detail on the timeline, I've found it's better to start with a higher level approach. For example, quite often a singer will embellish a note instead of singing a note straight. So adding embellishments (say, a 16th note grace note to a syllable) can help make it sound less robotic.

I think I mentioned that I didn't spend a lot of time "tuning" those parameters on this song, although I did spend a time replacing phonemes so there was a more American pronunciation. There's also an option to adjust the relative duration of each phoneme at the syllable level, which is also really helpful for making words sound more natural.

I'll be happy to answer any questions about it that I can.

Thanks for stopping for a listen!

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?