The consonants in the vocal (analysis) signal are detected and passed through, or used to generate a separate noise signal-this lends greater clarity and articulation to the “singing synth”. Since the synth is holding notes and chords, it appears to be singing those words-and there it is, the “singing synth”. The Vocoder captures the changing envelopes of these Formants with its narrow Frequency bands, and the Envelope Followers apply those envelopes to the synth sound, making the synth, in effect, produce vowels, as if it were speaking the words of the vocal signal. As we speak or sing, we’re changing the formants, each of which occupies a narrow frequency band, as we change vowels-that’s how we form words.
So why does this make it sound like the Synthesizer is singing? Well, a human voice produces a number of resonant peaks called Formants-several of these combine to create the different vowel sounds. This superimposes the shape of the analysis wave-the vocal-onto whatever the synthesizer is playing (chords, melody). Each of the analysis bands is coupled to its own Envelope Follower, which controls the envelope of the corresponding Synthesizer band. The Vocoder works by breaking up an analysis signal (the voice, in these examples, but it could be anything) into narrow frequency bands the included Synthesizer is broken up into the same, corresponding bands. There are actually two filter banks-the Analysis and Synthesis banks. Looking at the EVOC 20 front panel (Fig 2), you’ll see these in the center-more filters means a cleaner effect, fewer, a more pronounced artificial quality (somewhere in the middle (8–10–12) is a good choice). It encodes the characteristics of the voice using a bank of narrow-band filters-the EVOC lets you choose anywhere from 5 to 20. The term Vocoder is short for VOice EnCODER. Both can take a vocal and superimpose it on music-the PolySynth version uses its own synthesizer to provide the music (chords/melody), while the TrackOscillator version lets you apply Vocoding to an existing Instrument track (I used an organ in my example).įig 2 The EVOC 20 Vocoder-the PolySynth (Instrument) version Of the three versions of the EVOC 20, two can be used for the classic effect we’ll be looking at here-the EVOC 20 PolySynth (the Instrument) and the EVOC 20 TrackOscillator (audio processor).
SYLENTH1 PLUGIN LOGIC PRO HOW TO
For this article, I’m just going to show how to get that one classic “singing synth” effect, so I’ll cover a little of the basic theory and only the most key settings.
SYLENTH1 PLUGIN LOGIC PRO FULL
These are fairly deep, complex processors, so I’m not going to explain them in full detail (that would be more of a book then an article!). In fact, Logic has not one, but three versions of this effect-two audio processors and an Instrument, which incorporates its own synthesizer. Logic has been good enough to include a Vocoder in its collection of effect plug-ins-the EVOC 20 (the E comes from the old days (Emagic) and the 20 is the maximum number of frequency bands- see below). The vocal doesn’t have to be sung (though it can be)-even a spoken word recording is fine-the pitches come from the instrument or synth. The effect requires two signals-the instrument or synthesizer, which provides the tone and music-chords and/or melody-and the vocal, which articulates the words. Blue Sky” (middle and end), and The Cars’ “Dangerous Type” (at the very end). This is where a vocal is superimposed on an instrument, so it sounds like the instrument is singing-some classic examples of this particular effect are ELO’s “Mr. But the classic Vocoder synthetic voice effect is the “singing instrument” or “singing synthesizer”. Vocoders are capable of quite a number of effects, from harsh, metallic Robot Voices (Cylons), to a quantized pitch effect similar to the Auto-Tune effect.
More recently, Vocoder effects have been incorporated into music by various artists, ranging from Coldplay to Daft Punk. The Vocoder has been around for a long time-originally developed in the 1930s (!), and used for voice synthesis and even encryption (in WWII), it was adapted for musical use (by Bob Moog, among others) in the ’60s and ’70s, where its range of effects was heard on recordings by artists like Kraftwerk, Wendy Carlos (the Clockwork Orange score), ELO (“Mr Blue Sky”), Styx (“Mr Roboto”), and even Doctor Who (at least one version of the theme music).