Why does our voice sound deeper when we slow-mo but sound more high-pitched when we fast forward?
In: Physics
Sound is a vibration. When you slow the speed of a recording, you slow the speed of the vibrations in it, which lowers the pitch. When you speed it up, you speed up those vibrations so it sounds higher pitched.
Think about it this way: Al has a really deep voice, and when he says “Wow.” his vocal cords vibrate 1000 times and it takes one second. Barb has a high-pitched voice, and when she says “Wow” her cords vibrate 2000 times over the course of a second. Now if you record them both, and speed the playback of Al’s Wow to double speed, then his voice vibrates 1000 times in a half second, which is the same rate of vibration as Barbara’s voice. So it should have about the same pitch.
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