I’m a huge fan of using a vocoder. I use it in pretty much all of my music, usually driving a square wave and some noise into it at super low pitch to get a nice gravelly tone to it.
Here’s an example of what I do:
So far it’s all been software for me, using the TAL vocoder that pretty much has no tricks, emulates an early 80s vocoder sound and nothing really that special other than it just works. I do know there’s a tiny touch of bypass for high frequency so you don’t lose sibilance with the voice (a really common problem), but if this is hard to implement, I could find other ways to add this back in, even just with a filter on an unaffected voice input.
Ideally I’d love to move to an actual physical vocoder, but I’m unwilling to buy a fancy module or rack mounted unit for big bucks. Being that my needs are low and I don’t use any filtering that they normally offer, keeping the voice very neutral, what is involved in an analogue vocoder?
Does anyone have any first hand experience in this? I do see some kits and some plans for modules that break out lots of filtering options, but again, if I was to keep this super bare bones, drive into my own VCO and noise source, and my amplified to synth level voice, what is involved parts/build wise?
Yep, I made a software/hardware version which runs on a Daisy Seed. It is a 31 (terts) bands vocoder as described here. I’m currently working on a display that will show the spectral info of the modulator, carrier and the stereo output in real time.
It is based on a software version that runs on VCVRack. A short demo can be found here:
This again is based on a stand alone non realtime software version I started working on around 1998.
Please do not look at the image below if you are susceptible for interface poisoning:
So yes, I have some experience with building vocoders, in software and hardware. Let me know if after checking the links provided above you have any questions.
I was thinking about a user interface in the late 90s and thought it would be nice if this had some artistic flair to it. With the then technology this was not possible, alas. So I stuck to a Motif kinda block and square interface and got inspired by Mondriaan for the color scheme.
