I’m using Cantabile in a couple of cover bands now. Since Vocoders are problematic live for a few reasons, including multiple tracks overlaying each other, I’m recreating some of the vocoder tracks and sampling them instead.
Based on feedback in the forum I got the TAL Vocoder and have been working on getting some of the cover tunes put together. Unfortunately I’ve never used a vocoder before, and after giving up on Vocalizer Pro I found that TAL worked pretty well.
However, here’s the rub - While the lyric track clearly says “Get lucky”, the vocoder output sounds far more like " “Luck You” (or a variation of that phrase than “Luck-y” . Maybe my brain is hearing it oddly, so I’m hoping that someone can listen and confirm what I’m hearing and offer some ideas -
I use a vocoder live for Get Lucky and honestly people love it. I obviously can’t nail it as cleanly the way Daft Punk did it in the studio but it’s still worth it for the effect. If your audience simply wanted just the best sound they could put on a CD.
I dug a bit deeper. The Carrier sound (mini V) didn’t have enough overlap in-between notes. I updated that (via MIDI - gotta love a technology that’s 37 years old) so that the note butted up against each other and it resolved most of the issue.
The Reddit group is pretty cool - I signed up this morning and have been reading a bit… I’ll be posting after tonight’s gig (piano - a Sinatra tribute show ).
Just my 2 cents.
Listening to the unvocoded sound, the synth is actually producing the ‘Eyoo’ sound from the (apparent) filter in it…‘Ow’ or “Ah-oo.” If you could flatten out the synth, or even manipulate the filter to have it mimic the vowel/diphthong of the ‘luck-ee’ word, or ‘Uh-EE’ then it would be better. Also, carry out the ‘ee’ syllable about 300ms+ longer. And, as always in vocoding, it’s always the consonant sounds that are so faint. I’ve dealt with splitting the voice into two channels/tracks; then putting audio filters on the non-carrier voice so that it only sounds the consonant sounds, then turning the volume up a bit. The other channel/track will take in the vocoded audio content.
Thanks Brion. I came to the same conclusion - resonance was really interfering with the consonants - a lot. I played with it some more, and was able to get better results.
Thanks for all the help everyone. The Vocoder thing is coming along, as is most of my other sound design work for this band gig.
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