Vocalese Vocoder Technique

Posted on February 27, 2009 by John C.S. 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

Wind Chimes at Night

Posted on February 26, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

I recorded these wind chimes that were hanging above the door of my friend Alice and Damon’s house recently. It was early evening and the traffic was light for a Saturday night in Northeast Minneapolis, but you can still hear some motor vehicles nearby in the background. I really like the tuning of these chimes, so I may go back a record them properly soon.

Wind Chimes at Night

Joel Ryan and Keir Neuringer

Posted on February 25, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

After Joel Ryan and Keir Neuringer’s appearance at the Ted Mann Concert Hall on February 21, 2009 for the Spark Festival, I had an opportunity talk with Keir during the night life event at the Bedlam Theatre. I told him all about Audio Cookbook and he agreed to posting a segment of his performance here.

The performance consisted of two improvisational pieces with Keir on saxophone and Joel Ryan processing the sound in real-time. The sheer breadth of textures and mood produced by the duet made it difficult to decide what to include in this entry.

The first piece was 23:55 minutes long, while the second was 10:15. Here’s a fifty-seven second segment from the first piece that illustrates some of Keir’s unorthodox techniques on the saxophone as well as Joel Ryan’s approach to real-time audio manipulation.

Joel Ryan and Keir Neuringer (Excerpt)

Metamorphoses by Clifton Callendar

Posted on February 24, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

The opening piece at Spark, Concert 5 on Thursday, February 19, 2009 was Metamorphoses by Clifton Callendar for three cellos, or solo cello and digital delay. As it happens, it was expertly performed in the latter configuration by Evan Jones. The level and timing of the delay made the piece often sound as though there was more than one instrument present, and auto-panning on the delay trails sent the ghost instruments back and forth across the stage. The cellist was wearing headphones, perhaps listening to a click track. Here’s a short segment from the performance.

Metamorphoses by Clifton Callender

Filtered Synthetic Clavinet

Posted on February 23, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

I have lots more from Spark that I would like to post, but it needs some sorting through, so here’s something of my own for now. This is an arpeggiated loop of a synthesized clavinet chord filtered in real-time with the cutoff frequency on the instrument, which happens to be the Korg MS2000. After looping it I ran it through some gentle amp modeling followed by two ping pong delays. One set very short and another set much slower. The short delay has a lot of feedback and almost sounds like reverb, while the long delay is creating the echo.