Music of Sound

If you are a bit squeamish then this might make you feel a little bit weird, but you do get to see someones vocal chords from the inside! And no, they dont have a disco in there! The strobe is to slow down the means by which tone is generated… It is equal parts freaky & beautiful…

Thank god for that calming music in the background! Replace it with discordant tones & I would almost expect a fright from Aliens or something!? Thanks Danijel for the link!

And heres Mel Blancs vocal chords in action while he does some of those fantastic cartoon voices

I dont use that interweb expression LOL much/if at all, but I am about to – simply because this actually made me laugh out loud as I observed my brain & perceptions do a little twist inside out. If you have never heard this effect then you may be about to experience the same.

Synthesis via resynthesis is a fairly technical but straight forward process of taking a naturally occurring sound, analysing it & then re-creating it using many sine waves at different pitches. When it is done very high resolution (eg with a Kyma system) it effectively gives you the ability to ‘play’ the spectrum of a sound, but I have never considered applying the approach to dialogue, until now…

Matt Davis of the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge has a thorough article here about the process & how our brain interprets it, but to illustrate the cognitive effect clearly, listen to this:

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sounds like R2D2 right? now listen to this:

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ok, now play sine speech 1 again – notice any perceptual shift between now & ten seconds prior? I laughed out loud… sorry LOL’d

Heres a few other examples:

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got it?

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how about that one?

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any different?

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From The Philosophical Magazine 4: 9 (1799): The effect of hydrogen gas on the voice:
“The Journal Britannique, published at Geneva by Prevot, contains the following article :– “Maunier was one day amusing himself with Paul at Geneva, in breathing pure hydrogen air. He inspired it with ease; and did not perceive that it had any sensible effect on him, either in entering his lungs, or passing out. But after he had taken in a very large dose, he was desirous of speaking, and was astonishingly surprised at the sound of his voice, which was become soft, shrill, and even squeaking, so as to alarm him. Paul made the same experiment himself, and the same effect was produced. I do not know whether any thing similar has occurred in breathing any of the other gases.”

I bet after they got over being ‘astonishingly surprised’ they laughed themselves silly! But wow that dense gas the Mythbusters dude inhales in the second half could be VERY useful for demonic/creature ADR! We’ve achieved a simialr result in real time using a Sennheiser 80X0 mic that goes up to 50k, sending it through the PT TDM Pitch plug dropping it an octave or so & then sending that back to the headphones of the performer, so the sound affects their performance – works very very well!

Hmmm where to buy sulfur hexafluoride?

I know, it sounds like it should be related to the MacGuffin, but it isnt… Whether they know the name or not, the McGurk Effect is very well known to most ADR Editors eg when a director wants to change an onscreen line & tries to put different words in the mouth of an actor… No matter how well performed & edited the new line is, your brain just doesnt accept it as true/real/honest, and that is dangerous territory to be in for any film maker as it can abruptly destroy suspension of disbelief, or even worse just slowly undermine it…. As a very simple example watch this video & take particular note of what the actor is saying:

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Ok now play the clip again, but shut your eyes & listen with your ears only… See?

The McGurk Effect also explains why I would much rather read subtitles on a film than have it dubbed into english – no matter how good the sync is!

Thanks to Carl for the link!