How to make vocals barely intelligible?

shinyisshiny

granular synth, i would say idensity. or use mirack "texture synthesizer". adjust the grain size and density to where its super wonky, use an lfo to make it stutter and get crazy.

follow this with tape delay, so you get strange radiohead pitch shifts. k7d tape delay is great for the LFO that mods the delay rate. or the new TTap Delay from k devices.

Slap on a big reverb and call it a day! have fun!

Instrumental_reason

the "texture synthisizer" in Mirack is also included in the free "Spectrum" Auv3 bundle by Burns Audio.
I will highly recommend diving into Mirack, but if it is just for that one effect consider starting out with spectrum (where it is simply called "granular")

Jonny8

I find it quite difficult to answer this in a general way. There isn't one specific way to do this as others have already noted. Compression, filters, vocoders, decimators,... but really most effects will be able to achieve this. Even extreme EQing. Filter sweeping frequency bands? Also masking and mixing it with other sounds will play a role (if this is supposed to be part of a mix). Cutting the material up into words and phonemes is also a good tip. Changing, mixing, deleting vowels, etc.
I am sure that intelligibility isn't your only concern but you also want to achieve a certain aesthetic. Distortion will sound quite different from filtering after all
I would suggest researching speech intelligibility in connection with formants and frequency bands. I am sure quite a lot of research has been done about this. Check out Trevor Wishart's On sonic art. Should be available as a free download.

For inspiration I can only think of this track right now: David Toop - Dream Cargoes from Mondo Black Chamber. I think this might be the direction you are going for?

https://open.spotify.com/track/7yeKmDd3YPSCGywx9LkZ5K?si=3C6aBXJhT6WGa0KpYEYwnA

I really love the voices in this. Rhythm and emphasis also seem very important in this example. I never could figure out what this is. Japanese radio? Made up language?
Also maybe let us know your motivation for this. If it is for legal reasons (e.g. using a michael jackson interview) then you would probably have to make more severe changes to the material than if it is only for conceptual or aesthetic reasons. I Hope that helps a bit.

dougdi

Noise gate to remove softer regions, still retaining the prosody.

Jonny8

I am loving some of the suggestions in this thread. Strangely I have never used speech with granular. I need to change that.
I just discovered the teenage engineering PO speak and think it looks like a lot of fun.

Gavinski

@Jonny8 Yeah! There's a shitload of great ideas here to explore

@TheOriginalPaulB said:
Get extremely drunk before recording it...

Ah yes! I believe the formal term is 'utilise the Shane McGowan method' 😜

bleep

iDensity: it wasn't quite as I remembered, but you get many nice results by playing around with Scanning and Jittering parameters. Put an LFO on those or do it manually.

Maybe the reverse grain idea is best done in Borderlands.

jolico

GlitchCore in reverse mode
Transient shaper to taste
Short reverb or delay
GlitchCore in reverse mode

Or vocoder with 2 unrelated vocal sources.

Jonny8

@jolico said:
Or vocoder with 2 unrelated vocal sources.

+1
apeSoft Sparkle

palms

this thread is barely underintelligibibil.

this might help cloud things up

TheOriginalPaulB

@Gavinski said:
@Jonny8 Yeah! There's a shitload of great ideas here to explore

@TheOriginalPaulB said:
Get extremely drunk before recording it...

Ah yes! I believe the formal term is 'utilise the Shane McGowan method' 😜

I didn’t want to show my age...

senhorlampada

This thread is pure gold! Good ideas, and funny things too
What did I just watch, @palms

I'm gonna throw an idea here. Not sure it would be a good one. Try recording the vocals without monitoring.
if your tempo is good, try tricking yourself with a metronome that permits variation (like Impulse)

I guess you would have to chop the vocals to fit the track right...
After that, apply the compression, gates, vocoder, layering, etc tricks everyone mentioned before.

Charlesalbert

@palms said:
this thread is barely underintelligibibil.

this might help cloud things up

Great Adriano Celentano. What a biggie😃

marmakin

I recently made a song kind of based on this idea! I sampled little audio snippets from Streemer and tried to make them barely intelligible, but audible with careful listening (albeit with some in different languages).

I first compressed them, and ran them through an increasing amount of delay. About halfway through I ran the samples through Degrader (I think...) and bit crushed the last sample into oblivion near the end.

This is a great thread and I’m loving hearing about everyone else’s ideas! 😎

Svetlovska

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@marmakin said:
I recently made a song kind of based on this idea! I sampled little audio snippets from Streemer and tried to make them barely intelligible, but audible with careful listening (albeit with some in different languages).

I first compressed them, and ran them through an increasing amount of delay. About halfway through I ran the samples through Degrader (I think...) and bit crushed the last sample into oblivion near the end.

This is a great thread and I’m loving hearing about everyone else’s ideas! 😎

Nice track, tnx.

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@Charlesalbert said:

@palms said:
this thread is barely underintelligibibil.

this might help cloud things up

Great Adriano Celentano. What a biggie😃

He’s the Italian Sid Caesar:

palms

@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

@Charlesalbert said:

@palms said:
this thread is barely underintelligibibil.

this might help cloud things up

Great Adriano Celentano. What a biggie😃

He’s the Italian Sid Caesar:

lol, spot on

DMan

You can get some serious bit/sample reduction in the distortion module in SunVox. I just checked and you can definitely dial it in right to the point of barely being able to make it out.