Best way to make a vocoder on a Nord Micro?

bbinkovitz

So I am still very novice at using the Nord. I have made a little vocoder that seems to work, it looks like the attached picture.

It kind of works but the lyrics are extremely unintelligible, even when spoken very slowly and articulated carefullly (I plan to use it for a rendition of the Cold Song, from Purcell's King Arthur).

Anyway my question is, what should I do to this very basic vocoder in order to make it more intelligible? Also do you have any advice for singing/speaking into the vocoder that would help?

Thanks!

vocoder-nord.jpg

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Antimon · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:32 am Post subject:

Vocoding is an artform, they say. I'm no vocoder expert either, but one thing that I've found out helps sometimes is to mix in a non-vocoded signal that's been put through a high-pass filter with fairly high threshold. The idea is that the melodic content of the filtered sound is drowned out by the vocoder, but those chaotic windy sounds you get from consonants (there's a fancy name for these that I've forgotten) will shine through - that may make it a little bit more intelligable.

Another thing is to try to make the tone source as sharp as possible, to boost the higher frequencies (the square wave you use ought to work, but you might want to try to tune it up an octave or two. Maybe add a distortion module aftwer the vocoder...

My problem is generally that I think that the vocoder throws away too many high frequencies.

Have you looked at any of the example vocoder patches, here in the Nord Modular forums or in Clavia's banks?

/Stefan

blue hell · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:38 am Post subject:

Antimon · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:24 am Post subject:

bbinkovitz · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:53 am Post subject:

Antimon · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:17 am Post subject:

Oh yeah sorry, the patch forums are G2 specific. There is an audio in patches forum here:

http://electro-music.com/forum/forum-51.html

you might be able to get some ideas by opening them in the G2 editor (you can run that even if you haven't got the hardware). The vocoder didn't change much at all between the first version and the G2, I think.

Anyway, there is a Nord Modular Classic forum here:

http://electro-music.com/forum/forum-94.html

that includes the micromodular. Tried searching on vocoder and got a few hits, I don't know if they apply. Anyway, there are probably some better vocoder wizards (like Howard) that have more insightful ideas.

/Stefan

blue hell · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:36 am Post subject:

tada (I knew they were somewhere ... I thought on my own hard disk, but not ...) : http://nm-archives.electro-music.com/010_NordModular/NordModularFolders/Vocoder/ - for example patches Laughing

bbinkovitz · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:57 pm Post subject:

bbinkovitz · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:25 am Post subject:

it was all for naught... the power to the nord was cut somehow about 2 minutes into the show Sad

just an update for those who saw the show and read this thread and were wondering what the hell happened.

blue hell · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:53 pm Post subject:

hmm ... sucks ... maybe for a next time then ... I didn't really hear it on the radio although things indeed seemed to be a bit rough edged on startup.