Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

What are some good vocal processors for weird vocals FX? Think Brian Eno's latest, The Knife, etc. Particularly looking for affordable items.

there are about 8million variations on this thing:

If you add a couple 1/4 jacks (or just mic it if you're really dirty) this can do some cool stuff. Circuit bending also opens up alot of options. Some of them will give you pitch shift effects and others (most) will give you harsh ring mod effects. These are THE cheapest vox effects around.

well, I didn't mean that affordable... I'm talking real vocal processors, fx.

you ready?

i love f**k up vocals. just ask cruel hoax. anyhow...

Boss VF-1. has all the capabilities of the VT-1 without the insane price, bullshit in/out config, plus slicers, amp sims (which are f**k cool for vox), verbs, vocoder, tons of insanity, very programmable, and pretty cheap to find.

Alesis Ineko/Akira. having 2 is even better. chaining those esoteric effects banks is something else. very worthwhile.

Alesis Bitrman. vocals with frequency modulation? f**k yes is the answer

Alesis SmashUp. insane compression, pumping, breathing, and destruction? another h**l yes.

Zoom RFX series. an underdog, to be sure. lots of esoteric stuff hidden inside.

Kaoss pad III. an obvious choice. nothing sounds like a grain shifted vocal.

EH Frequency Analyzer. short on tricks, but different than a ring mod.

Evolver. Double duty

MicroModular. Ditto

Weird a*s old guitar pedals? who cares about fidelty, gain staging and impedance matching? save that s**t for the nerds that will sit around for hours trying their damndest trying to figure how you made those f**k up vocals.

Zoom 1201.

tallowwaters wrote:you ready?

i love f**k up vocals. just ask cruel hoax. anyhow...

Any chance you could post some examples?

otto wrote:

tallowwaters wrote:you ready?

i love f**k up vocals. just ask cruel hoax. anyhow...

Any chance you could post some examples?

if you know anywhere that will host it, i have quite a few things i can share.

Not hardware, but I got some really cool vocal effects using Melodyne for our last 7".

We had about 4 tracks of the vocal already and I took one and pitch shifted it up a fifth and an octave, and maybe down an octave too, using Melodyne, then mixed them in nice and low underneath the others so they effectivly made a chord of the vocal track. I then automated the send to the delay so it would pick out bits of the pitchshifted vocals, which brings your attention to them without really letting you know what they are.

The track's up on our myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/theemergency It's called Spending Time.

The version of Melodyne I used was the free one you get with a few different software packages. There might be a free demo of it somewhere, it's pretty good.

Because it's made for autotune-style pitch correction it doesn't munchkinise the consonants in the vocal, so it sounds more natural if you're correcting stuff by less than a semitone. The cool thing about that is that you can shift stuff by massive amounts and it sounds like someone singing after inhaling helium, rather than just like you've put it in a sampler and pitched it. Nice and spooky.

Stab Frenzy wrote: The track's up on our myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/theemergency It's called Spending Time.

just caught the "20 Jazz Funk Greats" note in your Influences. nice, one of my all-time fave albums. should also mention, i enjoy your stuff. i've always liked "We Got the Horror".

tallowwaters wrote:Alesis Ineko/Akira. having 2 is even better. chaining those esoteric effects banks is something else. very worthwhile.

Alesis Bitrman. vocals with frequency modulation? f**k yes is the answer

Alesis SmashUp. insane compression, pumping, breathing, and destruction? another h**l yes.

i second these. have and love all four of them. the akira & ineko do great pitchshifting, too. (digitech whammy kind of tops them, but they do separate outs for two simultaneous and different pitches!)

if you're not short on desktop and can find one, i'd say go for an ineko. still need a manual in front of you w/ the akira.

otto wrote:well, I didn't mean that affordable... I'm talking real vocal processors, fx.

just funnin', but they are pretty rad. Zoom GFX-707 is also in the crazy dirt cheap range and does amp sim, reverb, delay (with the ability to assign time to exp. pedal), pitch shift/harmonize, distortions, chorus, flange, s&h filter, so on. You can chain together some pretty f**k up stuff. Plus a stupid drum machine and loop sampler. It's fun, but, you know, still not very professional.

Tyler2000 wrote:

otto wrote:well, I didn't mean that affordable... I'm talking real vocal processors, fx.

just funnin', but they are pretty rad.

i second that too! they're fun, but they do completely destroy whatever's going through them. would have to mic and mix in the dry input too if you're hoping to still be able to understand the vocals.

killedaway wrote:

Stab Frenzy wrote: The track's up on our myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/theemergency It's called Spending Time.

just caught the "20 Jazz Funk Greats" note in your Influences. nice, one of my all-time fave albums. should also mention, i enjoy your stuff. i've always liked "We Got the Horror".

Hey thanks a lot! We're putting out a new 12" and CDEP soon, to be followed by another album mid year so there'll be more to hear soon. Hope you like the new stuff too.

I'm a long time user of the Digitech Studio Vocalist which has some potential for some wierd vocal sound. but you may want to look for their newer vocal processor. a used V300 can be had for cheap and has great potential and supporting features for that.

Talkboxes are a blast - check out a Rocktron Banshee or a Jim Dunlop Heil.