Pitched voices

[All Star Blitz]

They're annoying, aren't they? I can't watch Chipmunks specials because of them.

No, seriously, how many characters' voices over time have been pitched either up or down? I know the Chipmunks and Chip & Dale are the most notable examples of serious pitching-up, while Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. etc. were just pitched up a bit. (In fact, wasn't Sylvester's voice just Daffy Duck minus the pitching-up?)

Over time, the kid who did Skippy Squirrel's voice (I forget his name) had to pitch up a little as he got older, and I think I read in another post that Horvitz' voice was pitched slightly for Zim. Most of the VeggieTales voices sound pitched up too. On the other side, I can't think of any voices that were pitched down, except maybe for whoever did Goofy's voice in A Mickey Christmas Carol.

Are there any other notable examples of primary or secondary characters whose voices were either sped up or slowed down?

[mowub]

I believe all the kids on South Park have pitched-up voices.

[R-Taco]

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck weren't pitched up, unless you're talking about Mel doing a higher voice on his own.

I'm assuming you mean artificial pitching up, which I also find annoying because it can be seen as a sign that their normal voice isn't worth listening to.

[nakak]

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck weren't pitched up, unless you're talking about Mel doing a higher voice on his own.
Bugs Bunny, no, but Blanc's Daffy was indeed actually Sylvester's voice. They were sped up during recording.

[EJLD4Ever]

Actually, if you listen to the Bugs Bunny Show outtakes on the first three Looney Tunes Golden Collections, the original recorder was running at normal speed, with Mel just speaking his lines at a slower-than-normal pace. The recording was sped, using a machine called a Thiatron (sp?), before the track was "read."

Anyway, the Looney Tunes today has suffered in quality as a result of this oversight, and it is noticeable in most LT productions since Mel's death. Not only was Daffy sped, but also Porky, Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Henery Hawk, the Goofy Gophers and Hubie and Bertie.

JB Warner once said on the GAC forums that the speed change is a crucial element to give those characters' voices a unique and unusual quality. I believe that this is especially crucial for the smaller characters (smaller in size, of course) like Tweety, Speedy, and Henery Hawk. Without this, Tweety sounds like a grown man talking in "baby talk," while Speedy sounds like a man putting on a faux Mexican accent.

And on a similar note--- C. H. Greenblatt may have to bust out the Thiatron when Little Nicky Jones (voice of Chowder) hits puberty.

[All Star Blitz]

I see the point. It's annoying to hear some voices chipmunkified, but at the same time, some characters just call for it (Tweety for one).

Still have yet to find any voices that were pitched down, save for the occasional deep voiced tertiary character.

[Monterey Jack]

Still have yet to find any voices that were pitched down, save for the occasional deep voiced tertiary character.

On one of the Futurama DVD commentaries, Matt Groening talked about how, for Morbo's first appearance, they electronically lowered the pitch of Maurice LaMarche's voice, but after Maurice heard the final result in the episode, he managed to lower the pitch of the voice himself for all of Morbo's subsequescent appearances in the series.

[judyindisguise]

Spongebob's voice is higher-pitched than in the beginning, though not annoyingly so. But as for Cosmo on FOP...holy cats. He seems to be aging backwards; he sounded like a male in the show's beginning. Now he sounds like a helium balloon would sound if it could talk. His voice makes my teeth hurt. :eek:

[R-Taco]

Spongebob's voice is higher-pitched than in the beginning, though not annoyingly so. But as for Cosmo on FOP...holy cats. He seems to be aging backwards; he sounded like a male in the show's beginning. Now he sounds like a helium balloon would sound if it could talk. His voice makes my teeth hurt. :eek:

I'm almost positive those are both done naturally, though.

Then again, I was wrong about Daffy...

[cyde]

I believe all the kids on South Park have pitched-up voices.You an me both.

[Lavenderpaw]

But as for Cosmo on FOP...holy cats. He seems to be aging backwards; he sounded like a male in the show's beginning. Now he sounds like a helium balloon would sound if it could talk. His voice makes my teeth hurt. :eek:

He makes me want to take a needle and pop til' I drop. :anime:

[Ed Liu]

...while Speedy sounds like a man putting on a faux Mexican accent.

Speedy IS a man putting on a faux Mexican accent ;). He's just a man putting on a faux Mexican accent that's also sped up to make him sound more like a mouse.


Still have yet to find any voices that were pitched down, save for the occasional deep voiced tertiary character.

I think the reason why is that it's easy to find voice actors who can speak with naturally deep voices if that's what you want for the role. It costs time and money to electronically process a voice, so unless you're married to it (as they were with Mel's Tweety, for instance), it's easier if you can cast an actor who can do it without the effects up front. There are some characters who get pitched down to give them that extra-deep voice (I'm pretty sure the Lion-Turtle in the season 3 finale of Avatar was slowed down), but there are lots of actors who can give you that extra bass rumble without using effects. The example Monterey Jack cites about Maurice LaMarche is one example.

Zach Tyler Eisen's Aang was also pitched up by the end of Avatar, since his voice was beginning to change. I also want to say that Chip and Dale were electronically sped-up, but that's purely a guess rather than any underlying knowledge.

Mel Blanc's Porky Pig was also sped up, but Bob Bergen's Porky isn't (http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=24089) because Bergen's voice is naturally higher than Mel's.

If I had to point to anything that irks you about this, it's that you notice the Chipmunks because they don't bother to hide the fact that their voices are just artificially sped up (I'd say it's like a 33-RPM record played at 78, but I'm afraid that in our digital era, not enough people here will have any idea what I'm talking about :)). It's like the difference between seeing a shot in a movie and going, "That's a cool shot" vs. "That's a cool special effect." The fact that there were so many other electronically sped-up voices in animation that you never noticed just shows that they matched the voice to the character rather than just layer on an obvious electronic effect. If you speed up any song or voice line, you get a Chipmunk version of that song, but you don't get a Tweety or Speedy Gonzales version of the song.

-- Ed

[creativerealms]

I have heard that Hun's voice (TMNT 2003) was pitched lower, and that is the reason why his season five and six voice sounded different as it was not pitched in those seasons. This I have heard as a different report from the common one that he got a new voice actor for those two seasons. I have heard he actually has the same VA for every season and that's why his voice sounded so different. That might not be true though.

[Mad Mod 49]

Spongebob's voice is higher-pitched than in the beginning, though not annoyingly so.


Not annoyingly so? You're kidding, right? :confused:

[All Star Blitz]

(I'm pretty sure the Lion-Turtle in the season 3 finale of Avatar was slowed down)

Okay, now I've got to watch Avatar. I just really like the concept of hybrid animals (which makes me maybe the 39th fan of The Wuzzles).

[mowub]

You an me both.

No really, I saw in a documentary once, Trey Parker said a line, then a computer electronically raised it to become Cartman's voice.

[fartoons]

High-pitched voices are so over used in web toons it is extremely annoying. But most web toons are annoying anyway.

The kids in South Park's voices were pitched noticably higher in the show's first few seasons and personally I think they sounded better. It's probably because I was watching the show from the beginning and I'm old school. Cartman's voice especially gets on my nerves ever since the 5th season. It isn't pitched high enough. But Trey also learned to do Cartman's voice differently later on so it didn't hurt his voice as much. In any show the voices develop over time but I just can't get used to Cartman's voice. Oh well, it doesn't keep me from watching new episodes. :shrug:

And I agree with the Looney Tunes voices. No matter how well Bugs' voice is done it still doesn't sound right.

[John Pannozzi]

I think Ren's voice in the original Ren & Stimpy was pitched.

[cyde]

No really, I saw in a documentary once, Trey Parker said a line, then a computer electronically raised it to become Cartman's voice.Sure, I knew that; I had a sample of those sP voices then use my Cool Edit Pro to make them normal.

[nakak]

High-pitched voices are so over used in web toons it is extremely annoying. But most web toons are annoying anyway.
That's probably by necessity. Most web-toons are voiced by one person (either the creator or the creator's friends/relatives) because, well, 99% of them don't have the money to hire professional actors.

[DarthGonzo]

I think Ren's voice in the original Ren & Stimpy was pitched.

It's possible, considering just how different John K's Ren sounded in APC.

[Frank]

What about Lois Griffin's voice? It sounds higher pitched compared to the first 3 seasons of Family Guy. Is Alex Borstein's voice sped up when voicing Lois?

[aalong64]

What about Lois Griffin's voice? It sounds higher pitched compared to the first 3 seasons of Family Guy. Is Alex Borstein's voice sped up when voicing Lois?

No, I think the voice just gradually developed a higher pitch after a while. There's lots of video footage of the Family Guy actors recording, and she just sounds normal.
It's possible, considering just how different John K's Ren sounded in APC.

I think I read on his blog how in the original series, he pitched it up using analog equipment, and was happy with how it sounded, but on the new series he had to do it digitally, and wasn't happy with how it sounded, so they just left it unpitched. I can't imagine there being that much of a difference, but I guess there was enough for him to decide not to use it.

[EJLD4Ever]

I like sped-up/slowed-down voices, but one thought keeps entering my mind:

It's about recording songs: IMO, there has to be alot of tests that have to be performed so that the tempo and key of the pitched voice matches the tempo and key of the instrumentation and other non-pitched vocalists. I'd imagine a sound editor speeding up or slowing down a "click track" (that the musicians use to keep in sync with) to the same degree as the character voice to find the tempo, and do the same with a reference tone to see what key the VA will have to sing in before the voice is sped up/slowed down.

[All Star Blitz]

I like sped-up/slowed-down voices, but one thought keeps entering my mind:

It's about recording songs: IMO, there has to be alot of tests that have to be performed so that the tempo and key of the pitched voice matches the tempo and key of the instrumentation and other non-pitched vocalists. I'd imagine a sound editor speeding up or slowing down a "click track" (that the musicians use to keep in sync with) to the same degree as the character voice to find the tempo, and do the same with a reference tone to see what key the VA will have to sing in before the voice is sped up/slowed down.

Ugh. "Alot" is not a word.

Anyway, I know with the Chipmunks, all they have to do is sing it at half-tempo and then play it back at double speed. That keeps it in the same key as the original, but an octave higher.

Also, aren't there ways to pitch up a voice without changing the tempo?

[fartoons]

That's probably by necessity. Most web-toons are voiced by one person (either the creator or the creator's friends/relatives) because, well, 99% of them don't have the money to hire professional actors.

Then they need to learn to do voices even if they're not that great. I rarely ever used pitched voices. The only time I used it was to give a fish a low-pitched voice to mock everyone using high-pitched voices. And it's not that using high-pitched voices is a bad thing, it's that people don't know how to edit it properly or pitch it up way too much.