I am very much looking forward to getting SV2 Studio Pro next Friday. I have not used the product before, but was extremely excited by the results I got with the free “test it” download. In addition to songs, I write musicals, and SV promises to be an excellent way to create demo versions of the songs.
My question is this: in some cases, in the middle of a song, a character is supposed to speak the words, not sing them. If I were notating in Sibelius or Dorico, I’d perhaps use cross-stemmed notes to indicate “no pitch”, although usually, the text is simply added above the staff (eg, Phil: “I can’t believe she did that!”). Obviously, in a demo, I’d like to have “Phil” speak the words.
Hs anyone tried anything like this? Or is it a bridge too far? I suppose I could use some text-to-speech tech, create a wave file with the speech, then mix it in. But that would likely result in a different voice, so I’d rather try to keep it all in the same SV universe.
Any ideas or clarifications (eg, “That’s just nuts!” ). Thanks in advance.
Chuck Puckett
“I don’t want to steal the show… I only want to borrow it for a while”
“Against stupidity the gods themselves strive in vain”
Speech instead of song is perfectly possible, not as easy as song but not too hard!
I have done just that in some of my stuff - a line or two mid-song. Just think what kind of pitch the character would speak in and use those notes, enter ‘lyrics’ as usual and then manually re-time each note, syllable if you wish and enter your own pitch line. The pitch may end up a metric mile from the original note but that’s irrelevant, normal singing does that anyway.
Another method is to record a WAV file with a microphone and import it into SynthV. You can then extract the notes from the audio and update your lyrics.
Yes, recording a speech, import into Synth V and then manually fix the words should work.
Creating the speech from scratch is also possible. For me, using rap mode gave the best results. I found the key points with speech is being very flexible with note lenghts and pitch. Using higher pitch for the strong syllabes or for gaining intensity (if you need to “raise your voice”), and lower pitch for softer syllabes and passages where your vpice speaks quieter. That worked for me.
I used a mix of both techniques in the speech I included in this song (starts approx in Min 4:09)
). Thanks in advance.