Ste69 Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 How do you get a robotic voice sound? Like the one on the chorus to here in your arms by hellogoodbye or like a lot of club songs use. I'm presuming it's a vocoder effect with adjustable settings? If so can anybody tell me what effect it is or how it's done as I can't figure it out. Cheers in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Lewis Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 You could try ring modulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ste69 Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 what's ring modulation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Langfeld Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 An effect.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ste69 Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 You could try ring modulation. An effect.... Well yeah I know that, I've just never heard of ring modulation before. I know what modulation effects are like chorus, flanger etc. Is it something along the lines of them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Everybody who watches Dr Who knows the effect - the Daleks being the obvious one in a non-musical context, but ELO Mr Blue Sky is a more well known musical one. Essentially it is a device that uses one input to modulate another. So you can play some music, or a synth or pretty well anything into one input and stick a mic into the other, and the results can be quite good and creative. So you can play a chord on a synth or even a guitar and then sing into the mic - when you are not singing,m the output is silent - when you sing the words, the output is a representation of the mic input - sounding a bit like those old guitar speak-tubes made popular ages agio b y Peter Frampton. You can sing and the guitar kind of 'speaks'. Nowadays, most people use plug-ins to do ring modulation - using bass to modulate a suynth is a good dance trick. Roland still make a hardware one too - a keyboard with a mic sticking out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
niclights Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Ring modulation Flanging/phasing/chorus are simply two sources played slightly out of phase to one another. Ring modulation is quite different - I remember the obvious use way back with synthesisers being the de-tuned sound of a bell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ste69 Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 Roland still make a hardware one too - a keyboard with a mic sticking out! Where can I find this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick S Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Korg also make hardware based vocoders. My TritonEX has one built in, and the microKorg is a great little hardware box. However, both the Korg, Roland, and other hardware equivalents are pretty expensive, and not worth it if you're just looking for one effect. You're better off using software, by far. Hardware boxes are more suited to use live. Like the one on the chorus to here in your arms by hellogoodbye or like a lot of club songs use. I'm presuming it's a vocoder effect with adjustable settings? ...however...if you're talking about hellogoodbye, that's not a vocoder. It's an auto-tuner tweaked within an inch of its life, in combination with various phasing effects. It's almost certainly the Antares tuner. The band you quote admit as much in interviews. It's a very distinctive effect that is quite different to the vocoder, since you're maintaining the original waveform, rather than using it as a modifier. The main advantage to this is you can maintain clarity of vocals. Here's how it works - you take a typical auto-tuner, and you lock it off to the chromatic scale, with no exceptions. The auto-tuner takes whatever you're singing and converts it to the nearest note without any delay or pitch-bending...effectively eliminating all vibrato, pitch bending in the vocals, slides up and down the scale, everything. In post, you can 'tweak' the effect to change notes, add notes, harmonise the melody, etc (and then take that data and use it in a live setting). You can then add various phasing filters and other effects (typically a bit-crusher or similar) to get that more 'computerised' sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 vocoder On the subject of auto-tunes, then I'd reckon the really well known effected auto-tune is the Cher I Believe song, and the awful noise Craig David used to make. I'll try to knock up a couple of examples right then - if you listen to this mp3 here you will hear a vocal line from "ticket to ride". First bit is with a ring modulator and the filters and oscillators control are being swept. Sounds awful, but you should get the idea. What comes next is auto-tune. The song is really in the key of Bb, but the auto-tune is on fast and choosy - but set to the key of D, which means that most notes it thinks are wrong - you can hear it warble - I've not bothered to make it sound good, because in this example, it won't! You should be able to spot the differences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 Or you could look at the Voiceworks from t.c.electronic (http://www.tc-helicon.com/VoiceWorks) I have used this to produce robotic type voices for Forbidden Planet and a Panto :( Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted June 26, 2007 Share Posted June 26, 2007 My old ART rack effect has a ring mod on it, so I suspect its pretty common on rack effects. I used it once with a truckload of reverb and just a shimmer of flangy chorus for a giant. Time was when you could get a kids toy that did ring mod, a little speaker combo with a 3 inch or something speaker and an nasty mic on an attached cable. I gutted one of these and built the useful bits into a robot costume (Roberta, Santa Claus in Space) years ago, along with a bit of veroboard with some 556 timers for flashing lights and a roger bleep operated by the actor having a couple of pads on forefinger and thumb. Pretty much rocked, looked and sounded the part, and was my first and last foray into the world of costumery... Edited to say: in the more general sense, ring modulation is a non-musical effect, as there is no musical relationship between what goes in and what comes out, see any Dr Who with a dalek in it, whereas a vocoder superimposes formants onto existing audio and thus can be very musical. Thinking about it, the daleks in the most recent incarnations of Dr Who sound distinctly less metallic than the old daleks, so I suspect someone had the bright idea of improving the effect... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 dbuckly is spot on when he compares vocoders and ring modulators. Some of the current batch of ring modulators available as plug-ins have some great synthesis capabilities, others simple offer a square wave or sawtooth waveform and a couple of filters. 'Proper' vocoders in the 'sparky's Magic piano' style, don't seem so popular anymore - and some so-called vocoder plug-in are really ring modulators - so it depends on what the intention is - effect or music. A good trick for a robot sound is the combination of ring modulation and pitch shift - this sometimes gives a more understandable end result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.