Vocal Modification

This lesson is part of the Electronic Music & Sound Production category.

Objectives

• Students will be familiar with the concepts of pitch shifting, vocoder, autotune and other vocal modification.
• Students will be able to modify a vocal track to create a given musical effect.

Resources

Readings

• Pitchfork: Reynolds, "How Auto-Tune Revolutionized the Sound of Popular Music"
• Kreider, Autotune in the Music We Love
• Haas, Introduction to Computer Music: "Phase Vocoding (PV)"

Listening or Videos

• The New Yorker: Lavey and Yang: "Object of Interest: The Vocoder"

Class Activities

• Discussion and demonstration of electronic vocal modification
• Analysis of vocal modification in music of different styles
• Use of software to modify a vocal track
• Improvisation using vocal modification

Assignments

• Identification and analysis of vocal modification in recorded music