Why Inhaling Helium Makes You Sound Like a Chipmunk

Here’s a novel idea from the King’s College Choir:

 

In the video, one of the choristers gets help hitting a high note by taking a breath from a large helium balloon. (Obligatory warning: it’s dangerous to try this at home.)  So… does this actually work?  Does inhaling helium really make your voice higher?

In an earlier post, we looked at how the pitch of your voice depends on Read the rest

Digitally Transforming a Female Voice to a Male Voice

Here’s a recording of a woman reciting a line from the Catalan poem La Vaca Cega:

Speech-female.wav by xserra / CC BY.

Suppose that you wanted to take the recording and change the quality of the voice — change it into a male-sounding voice, for instance.  How would you go about it?  I did this recently for an online audio processing course I took, Read the rest