Pitching up and down (Janne)

Dragonbane diary
Friday, March 10th, 2006
Virrat, Finland

I just finished testing a device for shaping vocals and voice for the Dragon. Well, what can I say ... I've never heard as good real-time pitch shift effect, it was truly astonishing, and by accident I managed to make myself sound like Gollum while playing with the multitude of other parameters. It was so convincing that I think they actually used this device in the movie.

But in the end I was thinking: do we really want to retort to the beaten path; we are creating a Dragon, not a processed dragon operator who has his voice pitched down by one octave or so with a little added hiss and lizardliness. It would just sound ... so like anything heard before and after a while it would become dull and expected. This device is the best voice processor there is, which is sort of a constraint too, as it's designed for twisting a human voice as realistically as possible.

I want more magic, more raw organic power, wild unexpectedness, the feeling of a massive semi-ancient animal entity, something truly unique, dynamic and convincing. My experimenting continues ...

Janne Särkelä