This course addresses recorded vocal performances and the technologies used to highlight and support them in modern record production and mixes. Most of us know that vocals serve as the focal point of modern recordings but many do not know the tools used or when the tools are used best in modern record production. The course begins with simple vocal placement in a mix, where you will also learn the fundamentals of compression and equalization. You’ll further study delays and reverbs before moving to advanced concepts in audio editing, synthetic processing, automatic & graphic pitch correction, time compression, time expansion, flex and elastic audio. Through analysis and/or hands on projects that the students will post for peer review, the student will gain an understanding of the many choices available to modern record producers as they record and mix with a modern tool set. You’ll see, in action, the Vocoder, Auto-Tune, Melodyne, Elastic Audio, Flex Time, VocAlign, tempo based editing and a host of other file modification protocols that are readily available on most Digital Audio Workstations. This course gives students a thorough look at the expanded choices that have risen in the art of vocal production as a result of these modern tools. The goal of the course is to help interested novices understand the recordings they are listening to, performers find an expanded language for their recorded voices and for vocal producers to be able to create musically artistic visualizations using singers as their paintbrushes.
Vocoder
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Do curso por Berklee College of Music
The Art of Vocal Production
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Vocal Pitch Correction and Tuning: More tools of the Trade
In this lesson, you will learn some of the industry standard pitch correction and tuning tools. Although you will gain an understanding and appreciation of how easy the job of a vocalist can be when these tools are used, you will also learn that your first lesson in simple performance and placement is still the most potent skill in your art of vocal production arsenal.
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Prince Charles AlexanderProfessor
Music Production and Engineering
Modifying the human voice in recordings has been around for a long time,
from ways to modify acoustically, to ways to modify electronically.
There has been a rich pilot of modifying vocals in recordings from Daft Punk
to Kraftwerk, from Peter Frampton to Roger Troutman,
from Stevie Wonder to the Beatles.
Vocal modification takes our vocal performances to another level.
The vocoder is another unique instrument that
helps our vocals to bring about a different
kind of richness in vocal recordings.
Vocoders are constructed by taking a carrier signal,
which can be a keyboard, a synthesizer or a guitar, and
they modulate a signal, which is usually the human voice.
They meet in the device itself that contains multiple band-pass filters.
Those multiple band-pass filters were originally
designed to decode the human voice in times of war.
But once war was over, creative minds took some of
these devices and looked at ways to entertain people with them.
I want you to see how these band-pass filters come together
to make this interesting vocoder sound.
The uninitiated ear might think that the vocoder and
a talk box sound alike and are the same thing.
As you look at the construction of a vocoder and we listen to the vocoder
sound, you'll find out that they're two different devices that are worlds apart.
I have enlisted Lamar Mitchell to give us a look at a vocoder once again.
We'll be looking at the EVOC 20 in Logic.
So we're back with Lamar Mitchell.
Hey, Lamar.
>> Hey, what's happening, Charles?
>> Cool, when we left we had just finished our talk about the Talk Box.
And we were venturing into some of those artists that were
exploring other vocal modifier tools, like the vocoder.
I think of Teddy Riley with the vocoder, Herbie Hancock with the vocoder.
What is a vocoder?
>> Well, the vocoder is an electronic synthesizer which has
the capability of taking words, it has a carrier and a modulator.
So we could take words that have been spoken and
modulate them on top of a musical melody or a chord structure.
And superimpose it to make it sound like that voice has sung that phrase.
>> So the carrier is what, like a synthesizer sound?
>> The carrier is the melody, right, and the voice is the modulator.
>> And the voice goes through some type of a filtering process?
>> Yeah, yeah, a series of phonetic filters that
enable the synthesizer to either emphasize or
de-emphasize certain phonetic frequencies to
integrate the two together to output the sound.
>> Wow, so- >> Or for robots [LAUGH]
>> Yeah, from my research,
it seemed like it was mid-band frequencies stacked one after another,
the vocals going through that.
It lives in a gated signal and then the gate is opened up by the carrier
that says I am a synthesizer and I will marry myself with your voice.
Something like that, right?
>> I have to open up my robot's head again.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> But I'm pretty sure that's what's
inside of it, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, Logic now, so you don't have to-
>> And Daft Punk uses that instrument?
>> Yeah, correct.
>> Wow, you have one there?
I have one here, actually what I have is, I have it inside of Logic,
and I want to show you how I'm using it inside of Logic.
It's very basic, it's the EVC bar,
it's the built-in plugin that comes into Logic.
I'm going to switch to my camera.
>> Okay, you can switch the camera and we can see it?
>> Yeah.
>> You're a genius.
>> Okay, so this is the vocoder and Logic.
And basically it has this synthesizer section built in here on
the left-hand side, so I've kind of custom designed my little synthesizer sound.
And here you see the frequency of filters here that this,
actually it's your cut-off,
your low pass filter, your high pass filter over here.
>> It looks like there are ten filters there,
those yellow lines are the ten different filters?
>> Right, and you can open it up.
But I've basically had to filter off everything under 200 just
to- >> So the right-hand side is the higher
frequency spectrum and the left-hand side is the lower frequency spectrum?
>> Correct, just how we're used to looking at things and equalizers.
>> Right.
>> Top you can see I have it side chained into my input one,
coming into my Vtech audio mic pre here, which is an emulation of a 1073 mic pre.
So that's being tied into my sound interface coming into input one.
So my signal here, I put it on vocal, right,
to tell the thing that I'm going to be speaking into it.
And pretty much, those are the parameters.
If you want to go to some of the presets,
they have presets here that you can just go right to.
But I kind of designed my own, just to give it that 70s sound that I know.
>> Now the original vocoders were hardware devices and
you're currently playing a software device?
>> That's correct.
>> What does it sound like?
Okay, so I'm going to switch back to my other camera here,
just so that I could play it comfortably.
[MUSIC]
[INAUDIBLE] I'm just talking to the microphone and it's like talking to
[MUSIC]
[INAUDIBLE] You hear the sound.
Sounds like I'm singing, but I'm not.
>> [LAUGH] It sounds like the group from the 70s, Kraftwerk.
>> [LAUGH] Kraftwerk, Daft Punk,
all kind of mixed in there doing that vocoder thing.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Uh-oh,
there it goes, no, no- >> No copyright infringement.
>> That's what I was going to say.
[LAUGH] >> I just [INAUDIBLE].
>> [LAUGH] >> [INAUDIBLE]
Okay.
>> That's really cool, that's really cool.
So yeah, that's why I was using my robot to pull it out,
any big part out of my closet, write it to Logic, and there's reasons.
Basically every dog now has some kind of built in vocoder plugin.
>> Wow, so if I'm not a great singer I can pull this thing out,
get a microphone, have a synthesizer, work on some melodies and
make a record, put it out, everybody will dance to it.
>> I'll dance to it.
>> [LAUGH] >> Or you can email.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> I'll Dropbox it and [INAUDIBLE].
>> Really, we could email you and you'll do the vocal parts for us?
>> Yes.
>> Be careful what you ask for.
[LAUGH] >> Hey, this is where I'm at,
that's where Charles and I used to work.
I used to live in New Jersey and Charles had this really, really,
elaborate studio in New York City.
And I just had to get either my car or a train and schlep all kind of gear up,
now with this Dropbox technology and the- >> Yeah, its amazing.
I've got mixes that are waiting in my Dropbox right now.
It's really incredible, it really is.
>> So yeah, that's how I've been doing a lot of feeds now,
just working via Dropbox.
A lot of my clients, they email me a produce track or
Logic track and we'll knock it out and send it back.
>> Right, well, Lamar, we really appreciate the look at the talk box and
vocoder that you've given us for this lesson.
It's really awesome and much appreciated.
>> Yeah, thank you.
>> Looking forward to some new works from you and
looking forward to some new works from your boss.
And we'll see you in Boston soon, right?
Yeah, yeah, there's some surprises coming up this fall, so
look forward for him and us out there.
>> Great.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> We really appreciate it, Lamar, and we'll see you the next time.
>> All right, man, thank you.
>> All right, thanks.
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