Remix complications

[SteakJohnson]

So I'm experiencing a bit of an issue while working on a remix...

The bassline and mix overall sound much cleaner and heavier when they are pitched up a few semitones, but the vocals of course are then out of tune and or chipmunk-like (which is sickening to me) when I pitch them up to match.

Anyone have any suggestions on what might be done other than dropping the vocals and making it an original track? or is there a way to pitch vocals up non-chipmunk-like fashion...?

[Back-From-Purgatory]

If you use FL Studio, you might be able to make use of Newtone or Pitcher to tweak the vocals in a way to get rid of some of that chipmunk like quality. How exactly? I'm not sure, because I don't do a lot of remixing, so I've never really had to try "un-chipmunkify" something.

But yeah... that's my best guess.

Or maybe you could throw some EQing on there to add more low end to the vocals and cut out the highs.. I'm not sure if that'd make it sound any better or not, but maybe worth a try. My theory is that EQing it back to more around the mid frequency range might help make it sound more natural... I dunno... I'm just talking out my ass right now.

[JoshuaHughes]

You want to look into a program that allows you to control the pitch as well as the formant of the vocals. The human voice produces certain EQ peaks in the frequency spectrum. These peaks usually stay around in the same spot, even when someone is singing in different pitches. The reason you get the "chipmunk sound" is because the program you're using transposes both the pitch and formant to frequencies similar to a small child, which gives you the effect you described.

There are several programs that allow you to work with the formant of a sample. I would recommend Melodyne.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAINeIGxMc

Keep in mind that it helps to have the vocal sample as dry as possible (no reverb, delay, etc.)

[neBSounds]

Time stretching or formant shifting, if your DAW has the functions vagina