Darth Vader voice synth? -and a noob hello.

Greetings,

I've been a member for awhile but haven't been a participant. Recently, the misses and I have been getting into film making (get your mind out of the gutter). I've been looking for a tutorial or guide listing software or a good method for reproducing a Darth Vader type of voice.
Has anyone had any success with this? If you know of a method (effects) to do this I would greatly appriciate it. I use cakewalk and soundforge to record homemade tunes so I know a little bit about effects but not a whole bunch.

Any help would help a heap.
Thanks,
Dave

 

Do you know anybody that has a deep, resonant voice? 'Cause you can't really fake that part.

 

Well, I could fake it with my own voice...to an extent. But I thought maybe by lowering the pitch, adding tons of reverb, ring modulating, or something I could get closer. There is a fan film which has a vader and his voice is really good, perhaps they used an actors voice but I don't know.
Maybe some type of vocoder or something?

 

You can fake the effect itself with some chorus and some tasteful use of reverb, but the voice itself is extremely difficult to fake without somebody who can do a James Earl Jones impersonation.

 

Yeah, I suppose you're right. I was just hoping that there would be someone that has done it successfully. Other than using the Darth Vader helmet and voice changer that my stepson has

 

People here have done a fairly good job at it in the past. Not great, but good enough for a fanfilm. More or less what Funk has said, find someone who has a nice deep voice.

 

I'v tried a few different methods for reproducing the voice.

1. Vader Voice Helmet
2. Pringles Cans
3. Digital Modulation

1. Don't use this ever. Period.

2. This method isn't half bad if you already have a semi deep voice, although I found that the dual-can method works slightly better. Hold the two cans at a 80 degree angle from each other, hold them about 2 inches from your mouth, and talk with a deep voice.

3. This method works quite well. Use any sound editing program (Goldwave, Audition, Wave Editor, blah blah blah...) Apply effects in this order. First lower your voice to the correct pitch by either using a pitch shift effect, or by talking fast and then slowing it down. Not a lot of correction is needed here. Then use a distortion filter set to overdrive, or just an overdrive filter (that is cranking up the gain so that the audio distorts) Don't over do this one. Just give it enough distortion to make the voice buzz a little tiny tiny bit at the loud parts. Then add a slight chorus effect (or a delay effect set to chorus) That pretty much does it. But...

To properly sell the Vader voice, you have to use the JEJ inflection and accent. Watch the movies about 50 times to get the inflection down. The accent is sort of a very light British and African American. Listen to how Vader says the words, FORCE, DISTURBING, EMPEROR, NOT, GALAXY, FATHER, TOLD, ALL. That said the accent is very very very very light. Listen to the way that he speaks sentances, where the pauses are, what the rhythm of the words are, where the high point is. In ANH Vader says:

"Leave that to me. Send a distress signal, and then inform the senate that all aboard were killed."

Hear how on the the word "Leave" his voice goes up and then down in pitch? The word "killed" is spoken louder and more forcefully than the rest. Last but not least. Try to give Vader some Vader-like dialog. Vader rarely uses contractions (isn't, won't, i'll), has a grand way of saying things, and is very concise.

Example bad line for Vader: "Hello Obi-wan. You used to be the Master, but now I'm the Master."

Good line: "We meet again at last, When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the Master."
Well there you go.

Be Excellent to each other, and Party on Dude!
May the Force be with you,

Bgii_2000

EDIT: I found this test I did a while back. Although it doesn't exclusivly feature vader, I did use the #3 technique for this. Oh, and just for reference, my normal voice is the Luke voice, albiet slightly lower.

 

eeeeeeeeeew.


[comic book guy] worst. sidious. ever. [/comic book guy]


that vader sounds a little more like grievous


but the voices seem pretty good.



what's more important than the voice is the accent.

 

Yea, this question pops up every once in a while here.

Bgii said it best. More importaint than the tonality is the accent and inflection. DV dialogue spoken in a DV-like manner will sell the effect best, even if the SPFX aren't perfect.

Apply pitch shifting very sparingly. Lowering the tone by more than a major third will begin to sound goofy. If you apply any distortion, use a TINY bit of (soft-clip) tube simulated distortion. It sounds much more natural and doesn't stand out as an effect.

Chorusing can help, but not really necessary. Creative use of reverb can help quite a bit though. A single delay tap with very heavy diffusion can pass as the "talking inside a helmet" sound and if you use any reverb use a very short reverb time, short pre-delay, tweak the mix to the desired level and set the high frequency rolloff as high as it goes to give a muffled effect.

As far as making your actual tonality match JEJ, unless God granted you nasal bone structure and a chest identical to JEJ, it can't be done without hard-core synthesis software to isolate his natural subharmonics and tonalities and replicate them. I'm not even sure that such sw even exists.

But, as stated above, the most importaint part is the delivery of the lines in a DV fashion and nailing the inflection and accent.

 

I can do a fair James Earl Jones impression. Not as good as the original or Ben Fletcher, but its a decent start to tweak in an audio editor. Let me know by pm if you need help.

 

Whats so bad about a voice changer. I'd say use a voice changer and record it, then in post-production put the voice in.

 

Hey neo, what's the ewwwww for? It wasn't THAT bad. Ok sidious is a little off. And he sounds like a little girl when he laughs. Hmmmmmm. DV = Darth Vader, DV = Digital Video, DV = DVEditor. Too many DV's, this is confusing.


EDIT: Dude, the voice changer helmet makes you sound like a monkey talking into a megaphone. Seriously though, I've heard it before, and you can hear your own unproccessesed voice underneath the processed one. And the proccessed version sounds nothing like JEJ.

 

In Knightquest the voice of Darth vader was very nicely done

 

"Hey neo, what's the ewwwww for? It wasn't THAT bad."


maybe not, but i have a tendancy to remember things i hear exactly as they should be. like the hearring equivalent of a photographic memory. even if it's slightly off, it grinds on my nerves.

 

True, true...

 

I for one have never been able to reproduce Vader's voice accurately. Just look at all my reviews on Atomfilms to read how picky people are about the Vader voiceovers.

 

I've made a tutorial for thebrb.com using Goldwave to achieve the effect. I included a test of the final version. Granted that was a while ago...

CHECK IT OUT

 

would like to put a shout out to Ben Fletcher for doing our Vader voice in our film...Thanks again mate.

 

Too bad he's dead now.

 

Dunno if it's been said... Welcome to TFN, ob_GYN!

I mean cuz you know... this is your first thread N all

 

Funk-E.....say it isn't so....

When did this happen? how? I had no clue? One of my editors contacted him back in 2003 to help us out on our fan film..he did an amazing job nailing Vaders voice IMO. We sent him the script the break-down of the scene and he sent us wave files that we edited in post.

Well I might be out of the loop here on the forums from time to time ..but I have to say if Mr. Fletcher passed away we lost a very good voice talent.

 

Yep. Spam overdose.

 

Yeah, he just got too many requests, for too many films, and he did not wish to waste his time on films that would probably not get done. So he kinda just quit respoding, and has been lost to us since.

 

I was talking about the canned stuff.

 

Funk-E - Why do you keep claiming i'm dead? It's most disturbing

I am really busy these days with family / work (3 kids now), but sure I can do a few lines here and there if anyone needs them.

thanks,

Ben.