this is a sonic vibration generator that allows you to trigger a crack in your voice or someone else's voice at the push of a button

the device i envision could be housed in your cell phone and when triggered would send an inaudible sonic pulse that would alter the vibration of your vocal chords enough to cause a crack in your voice.

such a device could be used to fain sincere sadness or disrupt singing competitions
-- vfrackis, Jun 18 2010

there's also an app called I am T-Pain, similar to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune
[jaksplat, Jun 18 2010]

I don't understand how the inaudible sonic pulse bit works.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 18 2010


sp.: "fain" = "feign" in this context
-- jurist, Jun 18 2010


cute... and how can this be done ? or should it just be added to the list of phone apps on the way...

- erection on demand
- hiccups on demand
- cough/sneeze on demand
- fart/other on demand
- etc...
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 18 2010


I kinda like this...
-- blissmiss, Jun 18 2010


I thought this was going to be a device to audibly warn others of ass exposure.. on demand, of course.
-- daseva, Jun 18 2010


i struggled with feign vs fain

a focused sonic beam can do this and you wouldnt be able to hear it if it were the right frequency

i kinda like you Blissmiss
-- vfrackis, Jun 18 2010


//a focused sonic beam can do this and you wouldn't be able to hear it if it were the right frequency// can it make me lose weight and dye my hair too ? HOW is that going to do that.

[marked-for-deletion] WIBNI (bad science)
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 18 2010


I've no reason to believe that focused sonic beams, which do exist, may not be capable of affecting vocal cords. Isn't there an mfd, kinda like bad science, which rests on terms that the science is not bad, but it is beyond our current collective understanding? Maybe this could go for that. Anyways, there probably isn't an MFD as such, as I've never seen it on any of beany's posts.
-- daseva, Jun 18 2010


I think you have to make the vocal cords jump from one harmonic to another. For that, I'd guess, you need a closed loop system, something like: The device computes an "instantaneous" (i.e. short time window) power spectrum, identifies some suitable peak, & pumps acoustic energy into your larynx at some higher harmonic of that frequency. To know what frequency that'd be would require some computational model of the acoustics of your larynx, but I can imagine that, with lots of empirical testing, a computationally tractable simplified model would be feasible. Might be able to brute-force it with an artificial neural network, if all you cared about was results. If the target frequency could be predicted only approximately it might just sweep through a suitable range of frequencies until it hit the sweet spot. ( It would need to recognize a crack in the voice, but that seems feasible.)

I wonder what this would feel like to the person using it.
-- mouseposture, Jun 18 2010


Did you ever experiment with ninja chopping your classmates in the throat when you were a kid? Just like that. ... I hope that wasn't just me.. hmm.
-- daseva, Jun 19 2010



random, halfbakery