Voice modification apps are always good for a few laughs. They allow the toughest of men to sound like squeaky wimps and the littlest of girls to sound big and scary.
Today we’re going to take a look at VoiceMod. An app that just may be the best voice-modification app around and the most fun than you’ve had in years on your iPhone.
Voice Modification Done Right
The developers behind VoiceMod recently asked me to take a look at their app. We’ve looked at one or two voice-modification apps in the past, so I wasn’t particularly interested in reviewing another, but I downloaded and fired up the app just so I could be sure to tell them that I gave it a shot.
Twenty solid, laughter and smile-filled minutes later I still hadn’t put the app down. It turns out that VoiceMod is a gorgeous and extremely well done application that is just plain fun whether you’re six or sixty.
Before you start, you’ll want to put on some headphones, preferably the set that came with your iPhone because of the built-in microphone. Since the app modifies your voice live, headphones heighten the experience by covering up much of your own voice.
How it Works
When you fire up VoiceMod, the first thing you’ll want to do is choose a voice. There are nine of these included in the app, each of which is represented by a goofy illustrated character. To start off, we’ll choose the “Cosmos” voice. To do this, simply navigate to that character in the vertical strip shown below.
Cosmos
Once you’ve chosen your character, the interface will revert to a simple metallic mesh shown above on the right. As you speak, you’ll instantly hear the result in your headset, no render time required. The quality of this and the other voices is quite impressive and is sure to elicit a laugh from any first time user.
Modifying the Voice
If this app contained static voices, it would’ve still be pretty decent, but the developers went one step further and brought the app into greatness. As you’re speaking, you can modify the voice by tapping and dragging around on the metal background. The place you’re currently touching lights up as shown in the screenshot above on the right.
Each voice has a unique set of controls that add to and modify the overall effect. For instance, Cosmos is a sort of electrified voice with freestyle modification. By moving your finger around, you can start with a fast, high-pitched voice and quickly jump to something slow and deep.
It’s hard to describe, but as soon as you start waving your finger around and hearing your voice perform impossible stunts, you really can’t help but appreciate this awesome use of the iPhone’s technology. Too see what other types of modifications you can perform, lets look at a few of the other voice.
Darth Father
As you can probably guess, Darth Father is based on a certain sith dark lord who spent too much time hanging around volcanoes. As you speak, your voice is transformed into something much deeper with a little bit of tinny reverb to achieve that mechanical sound.
Darth Father
In the middle of Darth Father’s screen are the controls for the classic Darth Vader heavy breathing sounds. Swipe your finger between the dotted blue line and the volume icons to increase or decrease the sound of Darth’s labored breathing.
Further, if you drag your finger around elsewhere on the screen, it makes the sound of a light saber being swung back and forth. Swipe your finger rapidly up into the corner and you’ll hear the light saber hitting something.
All of these are fantastic effects that are expertly implemented. I recorded a few Vader lines from A New Hope and showed them to a friend who couldn’t believe that the voice had started out as my own.
Story
Story is another fun option that is obviously perfect for narrating a tale. It’s a bit like Cosmos only the sections of the screen are labeled this time to give you a good idea of how to achieve a particular effect or character.
Story
As you can see, tapping down low will give the “grr” sound, which is a low rumble, while tapping high will give you the “chipmunk” or “fly” sounds, which are perfect for quick chatter or high pitched squeals.
Exorcist
Exorcist is one of my favorites to play with simple because it makes your voice sound so horrifyingly creepy. The super deep voice is combined with heavy breathing and heartbeat effects to really get the listener’s blood pumping. This one would be great for blasting over a stereo to freak out a friend.
Exorcist
Other Voices
As I mentioned, there are currently nine different effects to play with. Here is a brief description of those that we haven’t gone over yet.
- Megaphone: Give your voice a bullhorn effect. Three separate crowd controls give you a range of adoring or angry audiences.
- Robote: Act out the film Wall-E in its entirety.
- DJ Trip: No voice effects here, just tap and drag the screen to lay down some crazy sounds and mad beats.
- Walkie-Talkie: Pretty self-explanatory, make your voice sound like it’s coming through a distorted radio frequency.
- Idiotizer: This one is really fun and really hard to describe. Basically, it makes you slur your words like a drunk by adding a bunch of delay to your voice. When you try to speak quickly with the headphones on, the delay confuses you and causes you to frequently pause and stumble.
Recording
VoiceMod doesn’t just do live voice modification, it also allows you to save recorded messages to show off later or share with friends.
Record and share a brief message
You can share recordings on Facebook and Twitter, send them in an email or download them into iTunes on your computer.
Closing Thoughts
For the most part, I take my iPhone pretty seriously. I download productivity and note applications, file sharing tools and other general utilities far more than games or other “fun” apps. Even when I do grab a game, I usually try it for a few seconds, lose interest and forget it exists.
However, VoiceMod really broke through my boring tendencies and reminded me that the iPhone is more than a business tool. In the hands of the right developers it’s also a ridiculously fun toy that can make a grown man in a room all by himself thoroughly enjoy pretending to be Darth Vader.
I absolutely recommend spending the $0.99 to get the full version, but if you’re still skeptical, try out the scaled-back free version.