Help me find a cover of L'Internationale, in French, with a female singer?

March 2, 2011 11:41 AM

One of my goals this year is to be able to sing The Internationale—in French—and well enough to do so in public without my face going as red as my politics. Difficulty level: I'm neither a singer nor a Francophone.

With everything that's going on in my state right now, it's probably a good time to start...

I've got the lyrics, the cover by Les Sans Culottes, and sheet music—but I learn a song best by ear, singing along with it. I've been all over iTunes/Amazon/Google/YouTube, and can't find an acceptable recording with a female singer. The only one I've come up with is Rosalie Dubois, and while it would be close to useful, the orchestration behind it is so gawdawful that there's no way I could deal with hearing it the many, many, many times necessary.

Surely there are decent versions somewhere sung by a (contralto) woman?

posted by mimi to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Not sure about the contralto version, but you'll have a lot of success if you use a time stretcher which lets you play the song at half speed without changing the pitch. Just google winamp, speed/tempo or some such equivalent.

If you sing along like that for awhile it'll be way easier when back at full speed.

In terms of a female singer, you could always take a version with a male and turn the pitch up one octave.
posted by fantasticninety at 2:11 PM on March 2, 2011

I've used the audio controls menu in Quicktime to mess around with both speed and pitch of things I'm trying to learn. Take a version you stylistically like, and crank the pitch up to your range. An octave is a long way, more likely you'd want a fifth or so. Alternately, find a male bass version that's low enough you can sing along up an octave.

For working on words, yes, slowing things down helps a lot. However, if you're slowing the tempo, and compressing the waveform to bring th pitch up, the audio will go super-wonky. To make it listenable you may need to shift differently (for example instead of up a fifth, go down a fourth and sing up an octave).

I wish I could tell you how to save the file as the modified version so you could play it the new pitch/speed in the car, but I don't know how to make Quicktime do that.

I'd also suggest to take the lyrics on paper and be sure you know what all the words are and what they mean. Unless you're imitating a French singer exactly, it would be really helpful to know the word structure: pay attention to which adjacent syllables go with the same word, where the words/phrases break, why there might be a subtle emphasis on a particular word/syllable, etc. Once you think you've got it, try to find a French speaker you could sing for. Go on Craigslist (or similar) if you have to, or find someone who teaches and ask for a single French lesson (i.e. this song).
posted by aimedwander at 11:05 AM on March 3, 2011

Response by poster: Maybe it's time I start writing fan letters to all the Yé-Yé girls, imploring them to record it! Sandie Shaw would be awesome. Or, OMG, LIZA.

Thanks for the technical path. I played around with pitch changes in Audacity on the version I liked, but everything came up MilhouseChimpunks. Instead, here's how I minimized the nasty orchestration on Rosalie DuBois'; spelled-out so that someone else who is also not a recording engineer can follow:
1. File > Open
[select all if it's not already]
2. Effect > Vocal Remover (for center-panned vocals)
3. Audacity > Preferences > Interface: select "CleanSpeech Mode"
[this is the only way to get it to save what you're doing in the next step, at the moment]
4. Effect > Noise Removal
[with whole song selected still, hit "Get Noise Profile"]
5. File > Open
[re-opening your original audio in a new project window]
6. Effect > Noise Removal
[do not hit "get" button again; just "OK" in step 2]

It's not great, but it'll do. Thanks!
posted by mimi at 8:43 AM on April 14, 2011