Bend the voice your way

Plug-ins to alter the pitch, time and tune of a voice are widely used in pop music today (even TIME is writing about it!)  The Time article notes that Cher's 1998 song Believe is the classic example, but more recently we've been hearing artists like T-Pain, Akon and Kanye West using Autotune to give their voice a more distinctive sound. Plug-ins like Autotune are used not only to give vocals a perfect pitch and time but also to create sounds that wouldn't exist otherwise. 

We've used a similar technique here at überblend with Melodyne.  The goal is the same: alter the pitch and rhythm of already recorded voice tracks. Often, we use it to subtly adjust the pitch of certain syllables or slightly change the rhythm of a word.  Other times, we use it to create sounds that will sonically define the whole piece.

Here are three examples. They all start with the original read, followed by just the voice after we used Melodyne, and finally, the altered vocal elements incorporated into a production piece.