Pitched voices

N

neelie

New member
They're annoying, aren't they? I can't watch Chipmunks specials because of them.

No, seriously, how many characters' voices over time have been pitched either up or down? I know the Chipmunks and Chip & Dale are the most notable examples of serious pitching-up, while Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. etc. were just pitched up a bit. (In fact, wasn't Sylvester's voice just Daffy Duck minus the pitching-up?)

Over time, the kid who did Skippy Squirrel's voice (I forget his name) had to pitch up a little as he got older, and I think I read in another post that Horvitz' voice was pitched slightly for Zim. Most of the VeggieTales voices sound pitched up too. On the other side, I can't think of any voices that were pitched down, except maybe for whoever did Goofy's voice in A Mickey Christmas Carol.

Are there any other notable examples of primary or secondary characters whose voices were either sped up or slowed down?
 
Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck weren't pitched up, unless you're talking about Mel doing a higher voice on his own.

I'm assuming you mean artificial pitching up, which I also find annoying because it can be seen as a sign that their normal voice isn't worth listening to.
 
Actually, if you listen to the Bugs Bunny Show outtakes on the first three Looney Tunes Golden Collections, the original recorder was running at normal speed, with Mel just speaking his lines at a slower-than-normal pace. The recording was sped, using a machine called a Thiatron (sp?), before the track was "read."

Anyway, the Looney Tunes today has suffered in quality as a result of this oversight, and it is noticeable in most LT productions since Mel's death. Not only was Daffy sped, but also Porky, Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Henery Hawk, the Goofy Gophers and Hubie and Bertie.

JB Warner once said on the GAC forums that the speed change is a crucial element to give those characters' voices a unique and unusual quality. I believe that this is especially crucial for the smaller characters (smaller in size, of course) like Tweety, Speedy, and Henery Hawk. Without this, Tweety sounds like a grown man talking in "baby talk," while Speedy sounds like a man putting on a faux Mexican accent.

And on a similar note--- C. H. Greenblatt may have to bust out the Thiatron when Little Nicky Jones (voice of Chowder) hits puberty.
 
I see the point. It's annoying to hear some voices chipmunkified, but at the same time, some characters just call for it (Tweety for one).

Still have yet to find any voices that were pitched down, save for the occasional deep voiced tertiary character.
 
On one of the Futurama DVD commentaries, Matt Groening talked about how, for Morbo's first appearance, they electronically lowered the pitch of Maurice LaMarche's voice, but after Maurice heard the final result in the episode, he managed to lower the pitch of the voice himself for all of Morbo's subsequescent appearances in the series.
 
Spongebob's voice is higher-pitched than in the beginning, though not annoyingly so. But as for Cosmo on FOP...holy cats. He seems to be aging backwards; he sounded like a male in the show's beginning. Now he sounds like a helium balloon would sound if it could talk. His voice makes my teeth hurt. :eek:
 
Speedy IS a man putting on a faux Mexican accent ;). He's just a man putting on a faux Mexican accent that's also sped up to make him sound more like a mouse.



I think the reason why is that it's easy to find voice actors who can speak with naturally deep voices if that's what you want for the role. It costs time and money to electronically process a voice, so unless you're married to it (as they were with Mel's Tweety, for instance), it's easier if you can cast an actor who can do it without the effects up front. There are some characters who get pitched down to give them that extra-deep voice (I'm pretty sure the Lion-Turtle in the season 3 finale of Avatar was slowed down), but there are lots of actors who can give you that extra bass rumble without using effects. The example Monterey Jack cites about Maurice LaMarche is one example.

Zach Tyler Eisen's Aang was also pitched up by the end of Avatar, since his voice was beginning to change. I also want to say that Chip and Dale were electronically sped-up, but that's purely a guess rather than any underlying knowledge.

Mel Blanc's Porky Pig was also sped up, but Bob Bergen's Porky isn't because Bergen's voice is naturally higher than Mel's.

If I had to point to anything that irks you about this, it's that you notice the Chipmunks because they don't bother to hide the fact that their voices are just artificially sped up (I'd say it's like a 33-RPM record played at 78, but I'm afraid that in our digital era, not enough people here will have any idea what I'm talking about :)). It's like the difference between seeing a shot in a movie and going, "That's a cool shot" vs. "That's a cool special effect." The fact that there were so many other electronically sped-up voices in animation that you never noticed just shows that they matched the voice to the character rather than just layer on an obvious electronic effect. If you speed up any song or voice line, you get a Chipmunk version of that song, but you don't get a Tweety or Speedy Gonzales version of the song.

-- Ed
 
I have heard that Hun's voice (TMNT 2003) was pitched lower, and that is the reason why his season five and six voice sounded different as it was not pitched in those seasons. This I have heard as a different report from the common one that he got a new voice actor for those two seasons. I have heard he actually has the same VA for every season and that's why his voice sounded so different. That might not be true though.
 
No really, I saw in a documentary once, Trey Parker said a line, then a computer electronically raised it to become Cartman's voice.
 
High-pitched voices are so over used in web toons it is extremely annoying. But most web toons are annoying anyway.

The kids in South Park's voices were pitched noticably higher in the show's first few seasons and personally I think they sounded better. It's probably because I was watching the show from the beginning and I'm old school. Cartman's voice especially gets on my nerves ever since the 5th season. It isn't pitched high enough. But Trey also learned to do Cartman's voice differently later on so it didn't hurt his voice as much. In any show the voices develop over time but I just can't get used to Cartman's voice. Oh well, it doesn't keep me from watching new episodes. :shrug:

And I agree with the Looney Tunes voices. No matter how well Bugs' voice is done it still doesn't sound right.
 
That's probably by necessity. Most web-toons are voiced by one person (either the creator or the creator's friends/relatives) because, well, 99% of them don't have the money to hire professional actors.
 
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