Vocalese Vocoder Technique

Posted on February 27, 2009 by John CS Keston

Pluggo includes an interesting device called Vocalese. Basically, Vocalese is a virtual instrument made up of a collection of phonetic samples. If you’re clever, and very patient, you can paste these samples together to create words, thereby synthesizing speech. I wasn’t really interested in doing that, nor am I patient enough, but I liked the idea of using the instrument to drive a vocoder. In order to do this I created a MIDI sequence that played each one of the phonetic samples in the instrument. Then I used a plugin to randomize the notes in realtime, so the sequence is never the same. Then I directed the output into a vocoder plugin, followed by delay and reverb for atmosphere.

Vocalese Vocoder

Filthy Rhodes Loop at 110bpm

Posted on February 17, 2009 by John CS Keston

Love it or hate, the Rhodes is here to stay. Eventually we will have the Rhodes Mark 7, maybe even this year? Perhaps, in the distant future, after the patents expire, the Rhodes mechanics will become part of the public domain, similar to the acoustic piano, and be produced by a variety of companies. There might be a nine foot grand Rhodes, a studio Rhodes, a baby Rhodes, and an upright Rhodes. This chunk of “studio” Rhodes is running through loads of processing including MDAs RezFilter, delay and who knows what else.

110bpm Processed Rhodes

Pitched Loop from Some Kind of Adhesive

Posted on February 3, 2009 by John CS Keston

Here’s a short loop from one of our live sets. This clip is used in the piece Some Kind of Adhesive from One Day to Save All Life (Unearthed Music, 2008). I applied a little bit of knob turning on a few sends while laying down this segment, which is typical of how I use this clip during performances.

Pitched and Processed Loop

Harsh Backwards Resonated Rhodes

Posted on January 30, 2009 by John CS Keston

A variety of processing went into this segment of backwards Rhodes electric piano. I started with a chunk from a loop recorded during a recent performance. I reversed the chunk and then slightly time compressed in Ableton Live to give it a bit of a stutter. This caught my attention, so I dropped it onto a track that I had been using to test some processing including gate, distortion, Live’s paragraphic eq, compression, and delay. But in between the eq and the compressor I had added MDA’s RezFilter. I had also programmed a MIDI controller for adjusting the speed of the LFO and the maximum frequency on the plugin, so this gave me the tools to have some fun by automating these parameters while recording. There are some particularly harsh frequencies here, so I recommend starting out at low volume.

Harsh Backwards Resonated Rhodes

Hearing the Ocean Ripple and Crystalize Filters

Posted on January 29, 2009 by John CS Keston

No, this is not the answer to a “before and after” puzzle in an episode of Wheel of Fortune. They are two of many Photoshop filters. These sound files are the rejects. Although not bad, I did not find the effect these filters had on my electric piano passage as interesting as the rest of my experiments. They also sound very similar to each other, which might not be the case using different sounds, or with other settings. Anyway, this is it for my first round of using Photoshop filters to process audio. Next time I plan on trying this with some more natural, acoustic sounds.