Octatrack & Variphrase

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#9

Oh, that rules! Misusing variphrase can get some really crazy sounds.

Is there any simple software (I’m sure CDP can do it) that can analyze an audio file and render the formant and non-formant components to two separate files? Some superficial Googling didn’t turn anything up.

If there is, you might be able to get some variphrase-like sounds in the OT by having the formants on a separate track so you could manipulate them independently. Even if it didn’t sound like variphrase it would probably sounds interesting.

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#10

21st century Roland is a mystery.

#11

Thanks everyone. I’ve just spent a couple hours working with the OT and have been able to get pretty close to what I was doing with vocal samples on the V-synth. As sezare56 mentioned setting RATE to TSTR is an important step. After that I’m using the LFO’s to modulate AMP-RATE & AMP-PITCH (along with a “neighbor” machine with 3 LFO’s modulating DELAY-TIME, DELAY-FDBK & DELAY-SEND) and am getting some wonderfully messed up and mangled random twisting and bending of the vocal sample. For my purposes, controlling the Formant would also be nice, but not nice enough to justify dropping $2000+ on a used V-Synth GT :upside_down_face:

I’ve bought and sold many synths over the years since my first, an SCI Pro-One back in 1981 and there aren’t many I wish I had held onto, but the V-Synth is one. How was I to know Roland would completely turn their back on Variphrase? I did look at the SP-404 mkII but it didn’t float my boat. Maybe Behringer will make a knock off B-Synth with Baraphrase :laughing:

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#12

Result at 1m50…

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#13

It’s not Variphrase and it’s no longer cheap (all the Reverb listings are about 4x what it was when I got mine) but the Roland EF-303 has the original Boss VT-1 algorithms, and those let you pitch shift the formants independently from the main audio in real time. So that’s another option. The Roland VT-3 was a decent reissue from what I remember, too. The drummer in a friend’s band had one and it was definitely in the ballpark of the old versions.

The thing with the EF-303, though, is full MIDI implementation, so you could sequence it from the Octatrack (or its own internal sequencer, which is what I do) and use it to do formant shifting on your cue outputs. Plus all of the other stuff it can do.

Excellent in a feedback loop, too.

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#14

Man… :joy: So much (irrelevant) stories and walls of text… fieeeuw

All you had to say was Serato Sample or Serato Pitch ‘n Time.

#15

I used to love my VP9000 and V-Synth XT, I also had the VariOS rack unit which was pretty cool too. The new E-4 uses variphrase in a limited but still useful way, mainly suited as you’d expect for vocals though, but I bet it can be repurposed for weird mangling too, albeit in a more limited way than the former.

#16

Thanks OP. I was seriously considering putting my original V-Synth and two v-cards up for sale. This has snapped me out of it. Why Roland abandoned this technology is beyond me.

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#17

The V-Synth was pricey upon launch so it never had mass appeal. Roland, I think, has a habit of releasing killer bits of tech that are poorly timed in some regards. The MV-8000/8800 came out at the time and both were quite expensive to develop and purchase. The market for high end digital synths and samplers was shrinking at an alarming pace in that era so I’m not shocked they remained niche products.

#18

I think as well it suffered from poor marketing, in that the demos released at the time didn’t really show the synth used for its intended purpose. I’m sure I’ve read posts by some of the original preset designers outlining their frustrations about this.

#19

Which aren’t Variphrase?

There are tons of cheap and free formant pitch shifters that sound great, but Variphrase has a really unique sound to it when you push it outside of its intended use case.

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#20

I think part of it was also that the VP-9000 was something like $4000 on release, but they gave Daft Punk access to a prototype a year earlier and it was used for a lot, maybe all, of the vocals on Discovery (the stuff that people think is a vocoder or talkbox), and that was such a huge album that by the time it actually hit market it was already overused.

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#21

There are tons of cheap and free formant pitch shifters that sound great, but Variphrase has a >really unique sound to it when you push it outside of its intended use case.

Exactly. I suppose the primary use of it is to tidy up vocals in the studio that are a bit off pitch or time, but I was only interested in pushing it to process/stretch/mangle my vocals. This is a song I recorded back in 2005 using the V-Synth Variphrase to process/stretch/etc the vocals. Check out the vocals from the 1:45 to 3:45 mark to hear what I mean.

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#22

That’s really cool!

For this OT formant filter, did you figure out the mapping of frequency (Hz) to frequency value on the filter/EQ (0-127)? Or did you just go by ear until you found the formants?

I don’t really know the mapping of OT frequency parameters to Hz… It kind of sounds like 64 (default value on the EQ) is around 350Hz, but I don’t know for sure. It’s actually nice to not know the actual frequencies so we can just use our ears, but I’m often still curious.

#23

And of course there’s already a thread about this!

I wasn’t too far off apparently.

#24
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#25

Untitled

And there’s my question answered!

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#26

Picked up a V-Synth recently (2.0 base model) after hearing what the variphrase stuff could do on the SP-404mkII - and wanting to mess with that tech further. Was stoked to find one for less than $1k.

The V-Synth is absolutely wild. Beyond the variphrase stuff (which is more fleshed out and flexible compared to the SP-404mkII), you can also audio-rate FM/PM samples, including with other samples (and I think external signals iirc). This can lead to some really out there results. I can’t think of many other samplers that can do this outside of modular (Rossum Assimil8or comes to mind).

Some kind of modern equivalent would be amazing. The variphrase encodings on SP-404mkII are great, but it is definitely not a V-Synth successor (barring further firmware updates). I’d be into anything from a variphrase/V-Synth inspired groovebox like the MC-707, a V-Synth Boutique, or even just a software version.

Definitely need to try that RATE to TSTR trick on the OT.

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#27

So, just wondering…I’ve read of many software solutions to this Variphrase quest, but I’m a hardware guy and besides the SP-404mkII no one has mentioned other modern hardware solutions. But what about something in a Eurorack or other modular format? Perhaps a stand alone dedicated vocal processor?

I’d say at a minumum I’d be looking for something with knobs/sliders for real time independent control over pitch/stretch/formant and at maximum the ability to also control those 3 parameters with LFO’s or some type of modulation. Any ideas?

#28

Variphrase is great and imparts a really curious character onto things. The V-Synth continues to be a source of inspiration.

In recent times, it’s been fun to make complex tones on the V-Synth then sample those onto the Akai s5000. From there, that sample can be part of other complex patches made up of samples of variphrased content plus content from other machines.

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