Originally published at:
Author: Snyxol (Alexander
Eslava)
English translation: vanHouten
(Fabian Logemann)
Final English proof: Carbon111
(James Maier)
"...how to make your MWII sing, moan or belch..."
Do you wish to create mystical, ghostlike or even angelic, wispy female to deep male "oooooohhhhs" and "aaaaaahhhs" like those popular in trance and ambient tracks? Consider yourself lucky to have an MW II/XT at your side as its a sublime tool to handle this - even better than a sampler. Its no surprise indeed, as you should bear in mind its an heir in the dynasty of the PPG-Wave-series, legendary for their synthetic choir sounds.
This article will explore several possibilities of synthesizing vocal-like sounds, from natural-human to alien-like and even metallic voices. Once in a while after you turn the knobs at random for a while, a more or less human sounding voice emanates from your machine. Every time this happens, you create (intentionally or not) the dominant formants like those of a human voice speaking a vowel. Formants are specific peaks in the frequency-spectrum that build up a kind of signature in the sound. For the synthesis of vowel sounds, only the loudest of the formants are relevant. If they were not expressed this way, people with different voices would hardly be able to understand each other because of the differences in their voice spectra. This vowel recognition paradigm paves the way for us to simulate vowels more easily. The vowel-formants are independent of pitch, which means while singing an "aa-aa-aa-..." melody, the "aa"-related formants always remain at the same frequencies.
Let's start at the most obvious place:
We'll use wavetable #64 ("chorus 2"). This is kind of a pseudo multi-sample of a spoken "Aaaa" in 61 different pitches, such a collection of waves is necessary to make our "Aaaa" a realistic sounding vowel. If we played back a single wave using different pitches, it's formant would be shifted as well, resulting in a mickey-mouse or monster-like voice. This wavetable was set up in the following way to counteract this:
Make a Fourier-analysis of a deep male choir sample and derive a wave from the resulting spectrum using Fourier-synthesis (these waves sound like the original choir, but produces only a harmonic, thin and sterile tone). The other waves were made in the same manner, with their formants
being shifted accordingly within the spectrum. For each note there is the correct wave, so each formant stays in tune. For an example, let's have a look at the patch "Stenzels Chor". This pad plays the right "Aaa" on each note, thus modulating Wave1 and Wave2. In this case it is useful to link Wave2-Startwave
to Wave1-Startwave (using the Wave2-menu), to do that you only need to modulate Wave1, Wave2 will follow automatically.
There are two ways of Modulating Wave1 :
* Wave1-menu: keytrack: +100% (elegant)
* ModMatrix: keytrack/keyfollow +56 -> Wave1 Pos (keyfollow also considers pitchbend and glide as well as tracking, thus its better)
Reasonably, both Startwaves are set at 30 to cover the whole wave-range
of 0-61; and don't forget to "limit" the wavetable (Wave1/2-menu) to avoid triggering the analog waveforms at the end of the each wavetable! Let's get to work and tune "Stenzels Chor" a little bit:
Let's choose the 2nd method with n=45. Set osc1Detune=-15;
trigger2Menu:detune=15
More stereo? -> De-Pan=64-80. (Don't show off by De-Panning too much,
'cause it thins out the floating sensation!). By engaging Pan-Delay for our purposes, the sound gets even thicker! Going from thick to thicker - there are two ways to get there; the first, UnisonoAssign, has the advantage of being extremely dense & fat sounding - and you still have some effects to play with! Its disadvantage is the loss of voices you might need for other purposes!!! The second method is to engage both chorus effects which may help you to get along quite well even with NormalAssign but you sacrifice the ability to use delay.
b)UnisonoAssign
Considering this method, one osc should be sufficient, so turn down Wave2Level in the mixer first and enter
Trigger2-menu: Detune=40-55 ; De-Pan=127
By turning Wave2Level up again and detuning it slightly from Osc1, it
becomes more dynamic and smoothly morphing:
Osc1Detune=-2 ; Osc2Detune=+2
Add some Pan-Delay and you should now have a really dense, deep
choir. The beautifull "floating" is pleasent if the voice is triggered with short notes.
c)Engaging both chorus effects:
Even a monophonic, constant, sterile tone can be widened without
increasing the number of voices by making use of the (Insert-)Chorus of the effects-section, combined with the (Send-)Chorus (the one without parameters). The latter one is fed by the output-sum of the first one (serial), thus you get effectively 8 delay voices added to the original voice. Well, it´s not really the same as with Unisono because the pitches
of the echoes are shifting, but the result might be even warmer, more dynamic and wider in stereo seperation than using UnisonoAssign. So don't be afraid to be a miser when it comes to effectively sparing voices.
In our case we will work with NormalAssign:
Osc1Detune=-15
Osc2Detune=+15
Chorus: Speed=65, Depth=127, Mix=0:127
->the more Speed, the more fat and wobbly it gets. Use values up
to 68 for short notes, while slower pad-sounds go better with
lower values about 53.
In the case that lower frequencies have too much tremolo, decrease
the mix-ratio or engage Filter2 as a HP.
That's all Folks!
...to be continued!
