The sounds of a vocoder have always fascinated me. From Laurie Anderson’s ominous voice in O Superman to the funky robot fun of Stevie Wonder and Daft Punk’s discographies, the vocoder has an intense amount of potential within itself. With this project, I decided to explore how this uniquely electronic method could extend into other fields by allowing a vocoder to play itself through MIDI information, as well as see how different source sounds other than a voice could react with a vocoder style.
In this presentational version of the patch, I decided to combine the four string parts of Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, because I can. As of right now, I am only able to use MIDI 0 type files running concurrently with each other, as the parsing of channels from a MIDI 1 file became incredibly daunting when trying to keep the patch self-contained, as opposed to working in conjunction with a DAW (in my case, GarageBand. Sad.). I allow for two different source audio sources; either an ADC~ input, or another file through SFPlay~. This allows for both the classic talk-box style, as well as the ability to turn other pieces of pre-recorded music or speech to be transformed. As a test, I used Shintaro Sakamoto’s “A Stick and Slacks” for its rhythmic intrigue and staccato nature to interplay with the legato phrases of Ravel.
I believe that this patch could become an interesting live performance technique, especially with single-voice instruments like strings, woodwinds, and brass. The opportunity for someone to create a multitude of voices from one source opens up fascinating opportunities for self-duets, trios, and more. I would have loved to find more flexibility in affecting the MIDI data outside of creating my own MIDI files that were set in stone.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1yoklE-qoguK9-JydRIqeqbp0AHKOYa3Z
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