Effects Unit

[Uncle Harvey]

I need a cheap way of pitch shifting a miked voice . ie. to make a childs voice sound lower. Is using somthink like a Mooer Pitch Shifter going to achieve anythink like the effect I want, Given the The Mooer is a guiter effect pedal.

 

[kgallen]

Do you per-chance have an X32-series (or X-Air) digital mixer? If so the built-in pitch shifter works very well for this. Last panto we did Jack and the Beanstalk and it worked exceptionally well for the giant - both for the normal deep boomy voice - and also to turn him into a squeaky mouse when we "killed" him at the end! ( OK the director didn't ask for that but we did it for fun on the last performance anyway :-D )

 

In addition to the pitch shift, you probably also want some reverb on it too (again, easily achieved on X32/X-Air). If I remember correctly I had the pitch shift as an insert and the reverb as a bus effect so I could control the level of reverb live from a DCA.

 

The actor was speaking into a stand-mounted dynamic mic offstage - and was coached to play into the effect to optimise how it came across. If your child is on-stage, maybe with a radio mic lav/headset, maybe you won't have quite as much control.

Edited October 7, 2021 by kgallen

[richard_cooper]

I'm currently doing just that with the pitch shifter in an old Yamaha SPX990 with a bit of extra weight added from a sub-harmonic syth (Hyper-bass effect on an Allen and Heath SQ). Works well, definitely an effect rather than realistic though. SPX990s are often available used on ebay for £100-150ish

[Ynot]

A regular panto gag for when the kids come on stage for the song-sheet - get the last kid in the line-up with a pitch shift down (or if an adult known to the cast gets dragged up, pitched UP).

The Yamaha SPX units have the facility certainly, and I think it's also an onboard effect on our current Midas Pro 2 desk.