Best way(s) to create microtonal choir?

I'd like to make a choral recording of a Henk Badings 31-ET score,
including the Dutch words, and have been investigating freeware
vocal synthesizers like MBROLA, Flinger, etc., and also have Digital
Performer on the Mac, which is supposed to be capable of gender
bending a voice realistically. I also have a Kurzweil K2000 in my
studio.

My goal is to arrive at a maximally realistic & artistic recording
by whatever means, and hopefully without an enormous effort in the
studio. And since I'm competent in several computer languages, I
could be willing to play with ugly command syntax & text files if
necessary (but hopefully not have to write my own code)

I myself could sing most bass, baritone & tenor parts, and should be
able to retune certain notes as needed.

I discovered in the past that if I sang the same vocal part with
slightly different vowels from my usual, and layered these together,
that I could arrive at a realistic tenor or bass section sound.

I would also welcome opinions on commercial OS-X compatible software
synths that might make this easy, but I'm currently ignorant of that
stuff & VST plug-ins, etc.

Your ally for the future of music,
Harold Fortuin
www.geocities.com/harold_fortuin

Hi Harold!

>I'd like to make a choral recording of a Henk Badings 31-ET score,
>including the Dutch words, and have been investigating freeware
>vocal synthesizers like MBROLA, Flinger, etc., and also have Digital
>Performer on the Mac, which is supposed to be capable of gender
>bending a voice realistically. I also have a Kurzweil K2000 in my
>studio.
>
>My goal is to arrive at a maximally realistic & artistic recording
>by whatever means, and hopefully without an enormous effort in the
>studio. And since I'm competent in several computer languages, I
>could be willing to play with ugly command syntax & text files if
>necessary (but hopefully not have to write my own code)
>
>I myself could sing most bass, baritone & tenor parts, and should be
>able to retune certain notes as needed.
>
>I discovered in the past that if I sang the same vocal part with
>slightly different vowels from my usual, and layered these together,
>that I could arrive at a realistic tenor or bass section sound.
>
>I would also welcome opinions on commercial OS-X compatible software
>synths that might make this easy, but I'm currently ignorant of that
>stuff & VST plug-ins, etc.

By far the most realistic voice synthesizers are those based on
Yamaha's Vocaloid technology, but I'm not aware of a Mac version
at this time. Also, it is quite time-consuming to get a realistic
performance with it.

Celemony's Melodyne is something to consider for gender-bending
your own voice. Melodyne doubles as a DAW/sequencer, runs on
OS X, and is very flexible in the microtonality dept. (adjust
any part's tuning in cents). But it's not cheap.

-Carl

Harold,

{you wrote...}
>I'd like to make a choral recording of a Henk Badings 31-ET score ...
>
>My goal is to arrive at a maximally realistic & artistic recording by >whatever means, and hopefully without an enormous effort in the studio.

Well, anything that is attempting to recreate a choral piece without a choir is going to require some effort! :)

>I would also welcome opinions on commercial OS-X compatible software >synths that might make this easy, but I'm currently ignorant of that stuff >& VST plug-ins, etc.

Educate yourself on the VSTs, etc (this forum is a good place) and then I would recommend you check out the recent vocal synth Cantor:

http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_CANTOR/e_cantor.html

I doubt it would be 'realistic', but you can certainly enter the lyrics to be 'sung', and it can be tuned via Scala .scl files - that certainly eases your workload!

Cheers,
Jon

Can someone verify that there are ways to record male singing an octave lower
at half speed, then play it back at full seed, sounding twice as fast, an
octave higher, and then change the formant structure so it sounds female,
instead of like Alvin and the Chipmunks? Aren't there plugins/apps that do
just that?

-Aaron.

On Saturday 30 October 2004 02:23 am, Jonathan M. Szanto wrote:
> Harold,
>
> {you wrote...}
>
> >I'd like to make a choral recording of a Henk Badings 31-ET score ...
> >
> >My goal is to arrive at a maximally realistic & artistic recording by
> >whatever means, and hopefully without an enormous effort in the studio.
>
> Well, anything that is attempting to recreate a choral piece without a
> choir is going to require some effort! :)
>
> >I would also welcome opinions on commercial OS-X compatible software
> >synths that might make this easy, but I'm currently ignorant of that stuff
> >& VST plug-ins, etc.
>
> Educate yourself on the VSTs, etc (this forum is a good place) and then I
> would recommend you check out the recent vocal synth Cantor:
>
> http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_CANTOR/e_cantor.html
>
> I doubt it would be 'realistic', but you can certainly enter the lyrics to
> be 'sung', and it can be tuned via Scala .scl files - that certainly eases
> your workload!
>
> Cheers,
> Jon
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.dividebypi.com

A,

{you wrote...}
>Can someone verify ...

I can't verify that, but I've certainly heard octave shifting and formant tweaking that was very convincing using Antares Autotune. If I can find it I'll post a couple of example mp3s of just this from a recent Computer Music magazine.

Cheers,
Jon

a harmonizer can do this without the speed changes

Aaron K. Johnson wrote:

>Can someone verify that there are ways to record male singing an octave lower >at half speed, then play it back at full seed, sounding twice as fast, an >octave higher, and then change the formant structure so it sounds female, >instead of like Alvin and the Chipmunks? Aren't there plugins/apps that do >just that?
>
>-Aaron.
>
>
>On Saturday 30 October 2004 02:23 am, Jonathan M. Szanto wrote:
> >
>>Harold,
>>
>>{you wrote...}
>>
>> >>
>>>I'd like to make a choral recording of a Henk Badings 31-ET score ...
>>>
>>>My goal is to arrive at a maximally realistic & artistic recording by
>>>whatever means, and hopefully without an enormous effort in the studio.
>>> >>>
>>Well, anything that is attempting to recreate a choral piece without a
>>choir is going to require some effort! :)
>>
>> >>
>>>I would also welcome opinions on commercial OS-X compatible software
>>>synths that might make this easy, but I'm currently ignorant of that stuff
>>>& VST plug-ins, etc.
>>> >>>
>>Educate yourself on the VSTs, etc (this forum is a good place) and then I
>>would recommend you check out the recent vocal synth Cantor:
>>
>>http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_CANTOR/e_cantor.html
>>
>>I doubt it would be 'realistic', but you can certainly enter the lyrics to
>>be 'sung', and it can be tuned via Scala .scl files - that certainly eases
>>your workload!
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Jon
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>> >>
>
> >

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles