Hummingbrrd

A light-hearted vocal tune/experiment - all sounds are from my own voice, including the potentially craptacular quasi-beatboxing in the middle. Enjoy!

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by gsalad (14 comments total)

That's pretty neat. It sounds like you have some range.
posted by epimorph at 1:13 AM on July 1, 2006

I like it. I was thinking of doing something like this.

How'd you record it? I'm having trouble recording my voice with this clarity.
posted by JZig at 2:02 AM on July 1, 2006

Thanks! I don't actually have that kind of range - I made extensive use of Melodyne for pitch-correction and transposition, and assembled the whole thing in Digital Performer.

I used a Rode NT-1 mic, in my home studio, with a tiny amount of slapback delay on the vocal to give it extra punch. That's about it - a simple setup.

More info is on my website.
posted by gsalad at 7:35 AM on July 1, 2006

: >
posted by amberglow at 10:47 AM on July 1, 2006

Nice. I tried something like this once using Acid Pro and Cool Edit. Needless to say the end result is not for public consumption.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:22 PM on July 1, 2006

Yea, I like it. I could see this being in a movie or tv show.
posted by snsranch at 10:14 PM on July 1, 2006

I could see this being in a movie or tv show.

It'd be the perfect soundtrack for a well-cut heist montage.
posted by cortex at 11:27 AM on July 3, 2006

That's catchy.
posted by raedyn at 7:44 AM on July 4, 2006

Why oh why does this have to be so catchy........ sweeeet.
posted by ryran at 10:08 AM on July 5, 2006

Nice. Reminds me of Bobby Mcferrin's Circlesongs which I may have to break out of the CD storage bin when I get home. Thanks!
posted by redsnare at 12:38 PM on July 11, 2006

As the only other person with a song tagged with acapella, I dig. I dig muchly.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 4:19 PM on July 12, 2006

I love this unreasonably much.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:06 PM on July 27, 2006

Yeah, it's awesome.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:55 AM on August 15, 2006

Man, I downloaded Melodyne's demo to try it out. That thing is totally sweet. I can't sing so I wanted to see if I could do some other cool stuff with it.

If you record a single guitar line VERY cleanly (pretty much you need to do it all on on string and make sure not to get any notes going on other strings on accident) you can import it in and go wild. I made some cool 3-part guitar harmonies with very little effort and time. It doesn't really deal that well with chords and stuff though. There is a video on their website which includes showing someone making a long, nice, trumpet solo out of a 5-second trumpet clip.

If you sing, and record digitally I think it could save you some serious time.

Oh, and you can get a pretty good/interesting chorus effect by taking a recorded sample, in all it's imperfection, copying it, and allowing Melodyne to clean one of them up (or you can take one clean one, and have it apply small random frequency offsets).

The ability to take a sample and edit/modify *individual notes* easily is so badass. I had a lot of fun playing with the "formants" of notes and passages. What Melodyne calls a "formant" basically seems to be what overtones get accentuated, and how much. For voice I think it has to do with where you're singing from, like chest or head, for instruments more like what size of resonating chamber you have on your instrument.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:22 PM on August 18, 2006