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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Make Her Sound Like I Love Her

Sexual attractiveness may be partly a question of ear candy.

The film involved a magic potion that made anyone who drank it instantly irresistible to the opposite sex. Since movies don’t transmit pheromones (yet), he indicated someone was using it by mixing the sound of a tinkling bell tree with their dialog. It was a nifty, sort-of-magical audio treatment that needed no explanation. It’s also an easy effect to achieve - just use a slightly delayed version of the dialog to key an expander on a bell tree recording (the delay is so the sounds don’t fight). I even wrote a version using digital bells for the latest Eventide DSP processors. But I don’t think it would have been right for that early commercial.

Now, science has discovered what the agency producer might have had in mind. According to the July 2008 issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, researchers at State University of New York, Albany, have found a “a significant increase in voice attractiveness” when a woman is most fertile in her menstrual cycle. The effect wasn’t found in those women during other times of the month, or at any time in women who are on hormonal contraceptives. They suspect there are naturally occurring changes in the shape of a woman’s larynx during ovulation. That’s where the basic buzz of the voice is generated.

I don’t know how to create that effect artificially, or if there’s an equivalent one for male voices. (If there ever is, expect a flood of spam in your mailbox selling shoddy rip-offs.)

I have found that you can make many voices sound more relaxed, and often be perceived as being more honest, with a bit of 20 Hz frequency modulation. That’s fairly easy to do with some delay plug-ins. Exact settings are tricky - it has to stay subtle - and more research is certainly needed. But it’s a neat trick to try on dialog tracks. You can also make voices sound more relaxed by editing out any glottal shocks, a trick that’s in my books about sound and one I’ll get to in a future blog entry.

Audio •

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