i have an idea...
velemin makes these kitshttp://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Velleman-Kit-Voice-Changer-Kit-MK171_W0QQitemZ220506707333QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Gadgets?hash=item3357395585 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Velleman-Kit-Voice-Changer-Kit-MK171_W0QQitemZ220506707333QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Gadgets?hash=item3357395585) called "robot voice changer".
i played around with one a neighbor of mine built, and it is fun...kinda junk, as far as quality, but fun. basically, a voice modulator, which picks up breath and runs it into a component mic on a circuit, and adds different effects, such as weird modulation.
here is an idea...
take an instument, such as a 70s era table top air organ, or perhaps an accordian, and connect it to something like this, and create something.
the air from the organ could be channeled into the tubing, into the mic and perhaps weirdness can begin! ;-)
hadn't thought of that.. maybe a melodica for starters?
i had some decent results hooking a casio line out to the mic input of a similar voice changer. nasssssty drumsounds..
cool! what brand of voice changer? the vellemen stuff is junk, really. i am thinking of getting one, since they are kinda cheap...maybe replacing sensor switches with toggles and stuff.
oh, but this one is definitely junk as well ;)
the cheapest japanese black blob stuff. no idea what brand it is, but it came in 2 parts: a ridiculously sad white plastic mask which sported the mic, and a loose module in which to plug it. the mini jack makes it real easy to try other stuff - guitar is no go, and it really works better on the casio than on voice as well.
its 3 modes are basically the same: a comb filter in different pitches. pretty boring, but hey, there's lots of flashing leds on the thing :P i might actually try to use those as LFO replacements or something.
then again, it's one of those things that've been lying around opened here for ages, but i don't seem to get round to bending it - i just hook it up as is every now and then just for a giggle. maybe one day.
no experience with the velleman kit, but these are pretty good though:
http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211.htm (http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211.htm)
i housed five of these in old computer speakers for a performance piece. with a decent speaker these things really come to life.. and they're pretty loud! pitch modes are slightly up (no buttons pushed), then up, down, and 1 mode which uses a pot for instant pitch changes. plus a robot voice which can be used with all three. haven't tried those with other inputs though, but my guess is a simple pot before the input might already do the trick.
just looking at the velleman kit - if you thought that was junk, the one i linked is just as much. ;D
(and i'm not even talking about the one i have at home, that's garbage compared to these two.)
if you swap out the flimsy switches and trimmers and give it a sturdy housing, at least it'll be useable.
too bad the velleman only has fixed pitch change- different chip than the linked one.
http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211a.PDF (http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211a.PDF) in true japanese style, that manual is wrong. there's no such thing as a vibrato on that chip, even though the manual says so. i had to track the data sheet to find out what is actually happening, so i wouldn't yell 'Quality!' too soon.
Quote from: jamiewoody on December 29, 2009, 01:51:51 AM
a voice modulator, which picks up breath and runs it into a component mic on a circuit, and adds different effects, such as weird modulation.
I thought the Velleman works simply by listening to sound and processing it in near-real time? You must be getting it confused with a talk box, which is a similar idea but uses a long tube connected to a microphone. A breath operated instrument is more like a harmonica, recorder or accordian.
Did the Velleman you played with have an air tube connected to it?
dude, i am telling you, i have messed with one of these vellemen voice changers!
i looked out in the garage and found a plastic tube, and fit it over the mic element on the board. it worked like a charm!
i know it is different from a talk box or a vocoder.
so, if breath through a tube manipulates this voice changer, then perhaps a wind instrument (harmonica, melodica, air organ, etc) would do the same, if forced through a tube to the mic element?
this might be cool: get a tin can (like greenbeans comes in, etc), poke a hole in the closed end, feed a piece of tubing, air tight through it, feed to mic element.
mount a small computer fan into the other side. maybe the speed of the fan can be changed with a reistat? (or something for lower voltage, similar).
i really doubt its pressure sensitive. that would be too sophisticated for such a cheap toy. i dont know if you guys had them in the uk, but sharper image used to sell a pretty sweet digital kazoo that changes your voice into a sax, clarinet, or tuba and could transpose. i have one that i have been meaning to bend. just been waiting for the right application.
(http://media.createdigitalmedia.net/cdmu/images/storiespre2k6/saxxykazoo.jpg) btw, thats not me in the picture ;D
these voice changers do just that: they change/manipulate the sound coming in from the mic.
pitch it, warble it, whatever. no more, no less.
that does not mean you can not run anything up close to the mic that makes a sound, so the mic can pick that sound up now does it? and if the mic can't come near any sound source, wind instrument or other, a piece of hose fitted over the mic sure can. that's all we're talking about - or i am, at least.
and yes, it works like a charm - i tried it myself. with a tube from an actual talkbox, incidentally.
have to add that i don't know whether fan speed changes would make a lot of difference, unless you can hear a pitch change. afaik the thing works on frequencies the mic picks up, not how much air pressure is on it, so i'd tend to agree with noystoise. although you might prove me wrong, jamiewoody, in which case i'd be happy to hear your results!
i have no idea what i am doing, really. i either poke around and discover new sound, or dream about stuff. i am no engineer, but i imagine that imagination is the first step in the process.
Quote from: noystoise on December 30, 2009, 09:24:36 PM
btw, thats not me in the picture ;D
Hahaha... classic! :D
But seriously though... that digital kazoo looks so cool! Where can I get one?? :o
Quote from: Remork on December 31, 2009, 01:58:53 AM
and yes, it works like a charm - i tried it myself. with a tube from an actual talkbox, incidentally.
Hmmm... I had a feeling it would work the same as a talk box, because it makes perfect sense. But that Velleman kit doesn't come with a tube, which means this principle was discovered by sheer accident... which would also mean the Velleman can be turned into some kind of fake, budget talk box/vocoder. But is it really a similar principle? I would think that if the Velleman didn't work by air pressure alone, then it must be because the tube acts as a voice-thrower and 'throws' your voice into the tiny space around the mic. I guess you could talk into a 50 metre long tube and your voice would still appear at the other end, vibrating only those air particles surrounding the end of the tube...
Anyway, nice discovery there ;D
the principal of the voice changer is different than talkbox and vocoder.
mic element mounted to circuit board. it is very sensitive, picks up a lot in the room, which makes for feedback, etc. the tube seemed like the perfect idea. i think it is supposed to be there, not sure but it seemed plausable.
i wonder, instead of using a speaker in the circuit, use a line out into an amp, which should make it more sensitive. i think after some experimentation, it can be manipulated nicely.
i actually never mounted the mics on the PCB, out of necessity.
i just threw in some shielded wire and mounted the mic on the end with some heat shrink around it (see second pic.)
the transparent minitubes are heat shrink containing the mic elements. works fine.
by the way, a vocoder or talk box uses the SHAPE of your mouth as a sound transformer - you get sound shot into your mouth through the tube, and that gets picked up by a mic going to an amp/PA. by changing the shape of your mouth you get different overtones - you're not even supposed to make sound w/ your voice.
the voice changer totally works the other way around. apart from the both of them having a tube in this discussion, there's no resemblance whatsoever..
are you familiar with these guys, they make some pretty nice instruments using a combination of hacking, bending, acoustics and wanky enclosure design: http://folktek.com/ (http://folktek.com/)
They occasionally do similar things to what you're describing jamiewoody - just thought it may be of interest ;)
Quote from: Remork on December 31, 2009, 01:44:14 PM
by the way, a vocoder or talk box uses the SHAPE of your mouth as a sound transformer - you get sound shot into your mouth through the tube, and that gets picked up by a mic going to an amp/PA. by changing the shape of your mouth you get different overtones - you're not even supposed to make sound w/ your voice.
Exactly as I said... a fake talk box, only with a real talk box your mouth becomes an additional sound chamber. The Velleman kit in question has been set up to work in a similarly perceived fashion, but you are right... it is not the same principle at all. In the case of the Velleman kit, it appears that the tube is being used as the sound chamber to direct the sound to a small space surrounding the microphone. All microphones respond to air pressure, so even just blowing air silently through the tube would trigger the Velleman and cause it to make sound.
I can see how these kits would look very similar to a talk box or vocoder, to the untrained eye.
how many varriable resistors are there? there are potentiometers. there are photo resistors.
could there be a resistor (or is there) which could respond to breath or wind?
wouldn't this be a cool control on a circuit bent synth?!
Actually, a vocoder doesn't really directly have much to do with the shape of your mouth - it's entirely electronic. What you have is a pair of filter banks, a bit like a graphic equaliser. One is fed with the modulator input (usually from a mike, but other sounds work well - use drums to get an effect like the chords at the start of Royksopp - "Remind Me (Geico Mix)"). This gives a bunch of control voltages, one for each channel, which feed the VCAs on the output of the other filter bank effectively turning the "graphic equaliser" up and down really quickly. Feed a harmonically rich (big fat pads are good) signal through the carrier filter bank, and it will give that classic "talking" vocoder effect.
The upshot of all this is that you are shaping the spectral content of the carrier with the spectrum of the modulator. Another way to think about it is if you took a snapshot of the spectrum from the modulator, and used it to "mask off" the bits in the spectrum of the carrier.
Bah, I'm not explaining this terribly well. Have a sample:
The bright, broad-spectrum Solina pad provides a lot of harmonics (but not quite enough really high ones, which is why the sibilants are a bit "thick"). The vocal has rapidly varying harmonic content, which is fed into the vocoder and gives that talking effect.
Shameless self-promotion - I wrote the synth plugins and extensively hacked on the vocoder plugin used on that track ;-)
http://www.gjcp.net/~gordonjcp/mp3s/kelly.mp3 (http://www.gjcp.net/~gordonjcp/mp3s/kelly.mp3)
my mistake - bit overenthousiastic there. make that 'talk box' exclusively ;)
so these kits we're looking at here are doing exactly what a 'regular' vocoder does, only worse? :P
The voice changer seems to be more like a pitch shifter than a vocoder. I went to get one, but Maplin didn't have any. I'll let you know what it does once I get my hands on one...
i like what this guy is doing! he is pretty proliffic!
this is hardly acoustic, but still very mechanical:
http://www.adachitomomi.com/a/sminst.html (http://www.adachitomomi.com/a/sminst.html)
check out the instrument named "tomoring"!
pure genious!
funnily enough, I came across that dude yesterday, I'm actually designing some simple synthesizers at the moment using similar methods (he's using the 40106 I think, I'm using the 4093) I was pretty impressed by the range of sounds he gets out of a hex schmitt trigger!
i was pretty impressed by the range of sounds he gets out of a zucchini.
i looked at the first page...i'll look deeper a little later.
i just had a though....
what about some things, non-electronic, totally organic, which would actually be ACOUSTIC?!
remember that toy called "THE FORCE LIGHT SABER"? it was a molded plastic tube, which looked like luke skywalker's light saber? when you wave it, it made a deep "woosh" sound?
other tube (not-vaccum) based instruments: the digeridoo, pcv tubing, etc. (similar to BLUEMAN GROUP, or much earlier EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN!).
what about bluegrass instruments? a flimsy saw? a washboard? (off the subject a bit, but what if one were to connect piezos to a washboard?!!
other things, sheet metal, etc make cool sounds too!
Quote from: jamiewoody on January 06, 2010, 05:34:31 PM
what about bluegrass instruments? a flimsy saw? a washboard? (off the subject a bit, but what if one were to connect piezos to a washboard?!!
easily done... it would probably sound cool, leafcutter john has done some cool Piezo stuff: http://leafcutterjohn.com/?p=894 (http://leafcutterjohn.com/?p=894)
I'm a big fan of leafy J, you should definitely check out his site, software and music!
Quote from: Gordonjcp on January 05, 2010, 06:53:20 PM
The voice changer seems to be more like a pitch shifter than a vocoder. I went to get one, but Maplin didn't have any. I'll let you know what it does once I get my hands on one...
they are out there. i think B&G electronics has them, at least they did a couple of months ago.
the voice changer does a pitch shift, reverb, modulation, and some other things.
they are not all that great...i mean the veleman one isnt. supposedly they are cheap, and there are others who make better quality voice changers.
i have thought about getting one, building it, then trying to make my own later without the kit and just the components. i am sure there are some groovy bends on it!