XYmod (making female songs sound male)

[Dermot]

This project of I started four years ago, and I've converted many songs to this format. Some have been fantastic successes, and others have turned out...horrible-sounding.

The conversion process has three goals per song:

• It should sound realistic.  You know, believable.  I didn't always succeed.
  
• It should sound masculine or gender-neutral.  Eh, hit and miss. Sometimes they sound like drag queens.
  
• It should sound GAY.  This was just too fun not to do! :lol: If it has some charming camp value, all the more.
  

Here are some of the better-sounding ones.  Whether they're the most believable is not always clear, but they're still fun.

• All I Want Is You
  
• Are You Ready to Fly
  
• Believe
  
• Big Socks
  
• Boogie Oogie Oogie
  
• Caramelldansen
  
• Conga
  
• Everybody's Free
  
• Holding Out for a Hero
  
• I Will Survive
  
• It's Raining Men
  
• Let's Hear It for the Boy
  
• Lovin' You
  
• Mickey
  
• My Immortal
  
• Sitting Up In My Room
  
• Stronger Than Me
  
• Turn the Beat Around
  
• The Way You Love Me
  
• What's Love Got to Do With It
  
• What's Up
  
• Who Do You Think You Are
  

Here's how I made them. :3

• First, I took existing MP3s, and imported them to a fabulous little utility called Audacity. :3
  
• I selected the entire clip (Ctrl-A), then went to menu bar -> Effect -> Change Pitch.
  
• Now here's the tricky part.  You have to lower the pitch, preferably in entire semitones - for example, -1 means one semitone down, -2 means two, -3 means three, etc.  But you don't know beforehand which number of semitones lower will work best for which singers.  Most singers sound believably male just 4 or 5 semitones down.  A few more masculine-sounding singers (like Cher) need only 3.  But a few singers need as many as 6, 7 or even 8 semitones down (especially if they're Asian women).  And some singers (such as Chaka Khan) still sound feminine at any pitch, so you don't even bother trying with them.
  
• Anyway, change the pitch, and then listen to the song.  If it sounds good, you can save it.  If not, undo (Ctrl-Z), and try a different number of semi-tones down.  Even if it sounds fairly good the first time, you may also want to experiment with other pitches until you find one that sounds best.
  
• If you have succeeded, you can save the clip to a new file.  If I recall correctly, Audacity has its own MP3 and ogg vorbis encoders, but I never use them - I prefer to save directly to a new WAV file, and encode them to MP3 or ogg vorbis myself on the using the lame and oggenc commandline utilities.
  

[Guest DRL]

If you have succeeded, you can save the clip to a new file.  If I recall correctly, Audacity has its own MP3 and ogg vorbis encoders, but I never use them - I prefer to save directly to a new WAV file, and encode them to MP3 or ogg vorbis myself on the using the

lame and oggenc commandline utilities.


Actually, the problem is that there are legal issues with the MP3 format
(you need a license to distribute the format, ect.) As far as I know,
Audacity does have .ogg support, but not MP3 without a plugin.

Oh, and thanks for sharing this.

...On a side note, is it possible to do the
reverse? It would be quite fun to, too. :lol:

[Dermot]

Actually, the problem is that there are legal issues with the MP3 format

(you need a license to distribute the format, ect.) As far as I know,

Audacity does have .ogg support, but not MP3 without a plugin.

Oh, and thanks for sharing this.

...On a side note, is it possible to do the

reverse? It would be quite fun to, too.

The reverse is much more difficult to pull off in Audacity and sound good.  You can raise the pitch, but it ends up sounding choppier.  I think (not certain) that lowering the pitch involves some sort of audio stretch-and-tuck, which leaves less of a choppy sound.

[Guest DRL]

The reverse is much more difficult to pull off in Audacity and sound good.  You can raise the pitch, but it ends up sounding choppier.  I think (not certain) that lowering the pitch involves some sort of audio stretch-and-tuck, which leaves less of a choppy sound.

Oh, ok. I will give it a try.

For the lol. :)

[Dermot]

Out of curiosity, do you like any of them?  Which ones? :3

[Guest DRL]

Out of curiosity, do you like any of them?  Which ones? :3

This one:

Caramelldansen


It sounds like real!! + + :D

[Dermot]

This one:It sounds like real!! + +

I didn't mean to let this thread go derelict already, but I seriously thought it would have more attention than it did.

Anyway, do you have thoughts on any of the other songs?  Or are all of them older than your time? :3

[CrypticQuery]

Whoa! These sound great!! Especially Caramelldansen and Boogie Ooggie Ooggie! :D

[Guest DRL]

Whoa! These sound great!! Especially Caramelldansen and Boogie Ooggie Ooggie!

Yeah, those ones sound like real

records!

Say... I would try the english version of

Caramelldansen, too, it could become a

remix-hit. :wink:

[Dublinthefox]

I remember someone doing this to the opening to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3stzsmUOEiM&playnext_from=TL&videos=jf4br_wTX5c

[Guest FoXXX]

No offense, but do you really dislike women?

[Dermot]

No offense, but do you really dislike women?

No. I just like the way some of them sound as men. :3

[Robert Monroe]

A fellow Audacity user, awesome.

Yeah, pitch altering can give some lol results. Even my masculine voice I've made sound effiminate with it. Kinda funny really.

[Ris Grestar]

Try Kelly Clarkson's "Miss Independent".  Worked well for me XD