Make Adult Voice More Child-Like

[mksalva]

I recorded the voice of an adult woman, and I would like to make her sound a little more like a child.

I tried using Pitch Shifter with the following settings:

Semitones 1

Cents 15

High Precision

Splicing Frequency 10

Overlapping 5%

The pitch only changed a little, but the voice sounds distorted and unnatural. Please listen to the before & after example below:

03 Mr & Mrs Warden PITCH by Project Meatball | Free Listening on SoundCloud

I haven't been using Audition long. What should I do to make the lady sound a little more like a child without sounding too electronic or distracting?

[Bob_Howes]

This won't sound too helpful but the best way to do this sort of thing is to have your actor do her best to imitate the speech patterns of a child (and raise her own voice, perhaps a falsetto) then use Audition to just tweak the frequencies a bit.  The human voice is a very complex thing and simply changing the pitch usually results in an artificial sound rather than what you want.

I used to browbeat my son to record for me but alas his voice is changing now.

[mksalva]

I know what you mean, but I had to use an adult actress for this. (She was saying a couple of things I could never ask a minor to say.)

Can anyone suggest what I can do to tweak the frequencies a bit without sounding "electronic"?

[khmccurdy]

I would recommend using the "Stretch and Pitch" effect instead. It requires more processing time, but gives fewer artifacts, as well as having more control over formants and the like.