Voice transformation at Ircam

Introduction

The following sound examples were made while I worked for Ircam and were presented at the 35th International AES Conference (Audio for Games) in London, UK, Feb 2009.

Signal transformation

Using a phase vocoder, time and frequency aspects of the signal may be modified nearly independently. It has been improved in a number of ways to make modification with no or little loss of quality and naturalness. From an original recording, we can make a number of elementary modifications:

• original recording
• decreasing the pitch
• increasing the pitch
• modifying the vocal tract: timbre 1 and timbre 2
• voiced contents
• noise contents and
• glottal source

Transformation of sex and age

• Examples of transformation of one author to 12 voices in the musical installation of Jean-Baptiste Barrière (May 2007)
• Examples of transformation of the male actor to a woman in the film "Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon" by E. Rohmer (Jan 2007)
• Transformation of monologue to dialogue (recorded and synthesized speech)

See also demo below.

Transformations of voice quality and speech style

• original
• breathy
• whispering
• creaky
• softer voice
• trembling
• dull and eager speech
• drunk

The video below shows the effect of applying four different voice transformations (man, old woman, little girl, and young man) to a single voice and assigned each to a cartoon character. Play the video first, then listen to the original: .