Autotune is increasingly used, either as an effect in its own right (a la Cher), or to "improve" the vocals of inept singers.

However, it does lack a certain naturalness, tending towards Stephen Hawking.

MaxCo. has been deeply troubled by this for the last, oh, two or three minutes, and has hit upon a solution.

The surgery to affix the small bands of teflon-coated soft iron to the vocal cords is relatively straightforward, being not dissimilar to method of attaching rings to birds' legs. The rings are clamped tightly enough that they won't wobble around or (and this is quite important) drop off during a sneeze or a hiccup.

These bands will, by themselves, just lower the pitch of the voice a little. With practice, the singer will adapt to this change.

However, the bands come into their own when the AutoTuneCollar (tm) is placed around the singer's neck. Powerful coils in the collar are fed with the desired frequency from a synthesizer, modulating the voice into perfect pitch.

Gadulka! Pitch correction, yodel-style pitch changes, and enhanced vibrato are effortlessly attained. Of course, it is necessary that the singer's "natural" note is reasonably close to the driving frequency, but adjustments of a few semitones should present no problem.

But wait - there's more!! By singing in a low key, and feeding a higher frequency to the coils, the singer will produce their own harmony! Like Tuvan Throat Singing, but less unpleasant and much easier.

Best of all, if you stand close enough to the speakers at a karaoke, you'll be bang on.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 19 2013

[+]

// soft iron //

Please be more specific.
-- Alterother, Nov 19 2013


I'm a Homo sapiens.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 19 2013


I think that if you fed a modulated signal to the collar, (and perhaps also some feedback from an array of lapel mics), you would only have to stand there and say "Aaaah" and the complete song in the voice of whatever singer you selected would issue.

Incorporate the AutoPhraseWeskit into the system and you can just relax and enjoy the show!

Even works on cadavers!
-- pocmloc, Nov 20 2013


Vocal cords are remarkably uncordlike, however. They're more properly “vocal flaps”. I don't see how you could attach iron bands to them at all without severely impairing their function, and even if you could I have no idea how you'd get them to vibrate in opposition to each other by means of a magnetic field.

Sorry to piss on the parade here. Have a bun for effort.
-- ytk, Nov 20 2013



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