Here’s a sysex with the sounds. They’re named with the track they’re supposed to go on. Again, the easiest way to use them is to add them to the sound pool, write a melody on track 1, copy the pattern to tracks 2 and 3, then do your sound locks on each trig across all 3 tracks to get the formants going.
Side note - there may exist an easier way to do this in unison mode with play track sounds enabled but I haven’t gotten that to work well for me.
If you want to alter the melody or add vibrato you only need to change track 1. You can adjust volume and amp envelope settings on track 3. For a formant shift performance control set a performance macro to apply a negative amount (around -25 works for me) to f2 cutoff on all 3 tracks. For formant stretching do the same but apply different amounts for each track.
Since formants have more than one amplified peak in the spectrum of harmonics, I use synths with two filters and with two different resonant settings.
With the A4 this can be done with one synth voice and the two filters. If the cutoff frequencies and the resonances are set right, a “vowel”-like sound will be generated. If the cutoff frequencies and/or the resonances are modulated, formant-like transitions can be generated.
Listening to the track of the OP I would guess, it has been done with a 24dB LP filter that has a beefy character by itself and it’s cutoff was slowly modulated and with moderate (50-60%) resonance. I think a Moog filter (Voyager) would sound like this, if feeded with a 32’ VCO, without much of an effort. Just checked this out and it was surprisingly close to the example.
But on the A4 I would try the multimode filter, used as LP, for the resonance, because it is much more prominent, than the 24db LP … the 24dB LP could be useful to get rid of the higher harmoncs, because the mulitmode is 12 dB only.
But it’s only a guess … and there are so many ways …
If I still had an A4, I would try routing one voice into the filter of a neighbor track, use modulated notch filters on both tracks, and FM the filters with the new tunable LFOs. Aren’t formant filter usually a series of notch or bandpass filters?
hey folks,
thank you for the tipps but yeah i think im too stupid to get the sound im searching for
i played around with pitch mod / freq lfo’s the filters, separated and combined, using 1,2,3 or all 4 tracks in unison, reset, rotate. I changed envelopes and osc but i can’t find the correct recipe… (for the last 2 weeks trying)
im feeling kinda dumb T-T so i call out in despair for a idiot proof solution…
Wait … it should be easy, really … if you are searching this deep growling voice. I can’t say that this has been done with an A4, because I would make my bet on a Moog (Voyager or one of the Phatties) … this smudgyness sounds very familiar to me. I think, one track and one or two filters could do the job on an A4. Maybe tonight I have some time to try it out myself, because I like this sound too!
This would be my approach…
get a bass note, C3 or C2
use a LP filter with decent amount of resonance, but not going into selfresonance, you don’t want to get too much of squelching right at the beginning
set the influence of the envelopes to zero to work with sustained sounds
now play the bass note and listen, while you’r moving the cutoff-frequency - manually - and slowly
if you get some singsong while moving the filter cutoff, that seems similar to your sound, you are beginning to hitting home
consider that the LP (first filter) has less characterful shaping of the sound then the second Multimode filter. You can use both and emphasize the effects of resonance.
Now, if the gritt is not smudgy enough, you can apply FM-modulation to the filter-cutoff with very low - but suited - frequencies. Best would be to use subharmonics of the original note and get this FM following the keys.
I hope that can give you some direction. Your desribed approach is almost there …
EDIT:
Well, have tried it myself now … honestly … seams not that easy as I thought. My approach seams to go in the right direction - but - I got something that I like and I will use it, but it’s not the same sound. Maybe the A4/AK filters just sound somehow differently …
Could it be that this sound has been made with a vowel-filter - or - at the end - could it be a sample played back at reduced speed? A belching male voice for example?
seriously coo thread!
Big thanks to everyone who shared their patches and notes! So cool to know how the Cutoff Midi values correspond to actual frequencies!
Native-Instruments/Reaktor/Razor/Leads/Percuvox, played at C2
It’s not the same follow-up of vowels, but from the timbre it seems quite similar. The sound is made by a narrow PW and the VOWEL-filter. Even if it’s not the same, Razor has some very intersting gritty and wet sounds that would gladly fit in the audio example of the OP.
Anyone know any tips for changing the vowel shape of a choir patch on A4/AK? Wav of where I’m at on a choir/strings patch in soundcloud link below…
At the moment it sounds ok but the choir kind of part is doing ‘eeeeeee’ and would like to have more traditional vowels sound (ooh and aah) patches too and then multimap different ones to different octaves on the AK…
Might need headphones to hear the choir ‘voice’ clearly. The strings element of the patch is quite loud.
Thanks
Not easily in my experience. Better programmers maybe know differently tho? That video confused me - Did he mic up his modular so he could capture the switch clicks?? Odd…
