Re: stretching words

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

>>> I've never heard Max Headroom but an educated guess gives that  
>>> the voice may have been created with this classic technique:
>>>
>>> 1. Keep the audio to be "stretched" as an audio file.
>>> 2. In some music software, make a playback loop of the file.
>>> 3. Minimize the loop length until only one tiny slice is looping,  
>>> making a buzzing sound.
>>> 4. Align the loop's start point and loop point to a controller.  
>>> Now regard the loop as "a window" that you can move through the  
>>> entire audio file. Forwards or backwards. When the looping  
>>> "playback window" moves by a syllable it will sound more  
>>> stretched the slower you move it.

On 21 aug 2007, at 19.38, Daryl Shawn wrote:
> Per, thanks for this info. I had actually wrote, then scrapped, an  
> email to LD a few months ago asking whether this technique was  
> possible using any kind of current technology. I thought it was  
> some brilliant idea I had come up with!...now I see it's been  
> around forever (in computer years)! I just love the idea of making  
> the dimension of time absolutely plastic, or even static, with  
> regards to playback. Do you know of any audio examples where I  
> might hear this?


No. But you can try it out for yourself with any software that will  
let you perform all four steps. Ableton Live, i guess, or maybe it is  
their sampler Sampler that can do this, I don't remember.  But I'm  
pretty sure you can quickly set it up in Bidule or Max/msp.  
Eventually Kontakt 2 can do it as well, maybe if hosted in Bidule  
which will expose all parameters and let you assign the same  
controller to "increase/decrease value for start point" and "increase/ 
decrease value for loop point". Note that this is an advice for a  
technique and not an advice for a plug-in. No plug-in can make  
anything sound the same as a human "playing" a knob assigned to sweep  
the looping window through a sample.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)