YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

How exactly does this work?

@mrgravyman My laptop's mic. is picking up the sound of pen-tapping, coin sliding, and indeed anything I put near it. The sound goes through FL Studio to its Vocoder effect, where I've also added a delay effect. Overlaid is a background loop. That's all there is to it! :)

mazza558 6 months ago

@mazza558 It's really impressive actually, thanks!

mrgravyman 6 months ago

@mazza558 My brother (mrgravyman) showed me this video on a possible piece for my dissertation, I must say it's impressive. I was curious how you can control the filter of the pen/coin or is this simply done by the velocity you hit it on the table? Also what's the carrier signal for the vocoder, I'm assuming this is the modulation signal, as it's modulating the vocoder to essentially "turn on". Did you create that specific sound to go through the carrier signal? Sorry for all the questions aha!

Diviwack 6 months ago

@Diviwack Thanks! The vocoder I use to create the filter effect actually adjusts its filter threshold based on the volume of the audio input, thus a loud or forceful hit will be less 'filtered' than the quieter ones; that's just a function of the vocoder I'm using; nothing to do with the pen itself (if I turned it off, you'd just hear me tapping a pen on the desk). In addition, I have a looping single chord giving the pen some 'tone'; if I had 3 hands I'd be probably playing a chord progression.

mazza558 6 months ago

@Diviwack As for the audio routing itself, as far as I know, the audio input (microphone of me tapping the desk) is routed through a 'send' signal into the vocoder, and the vocoder adds the chord 'tone' (which is obviously why it sounds musical). The vocoder-treated audio is then routed through a Delay, and then a Reverb effect, and that's what you hear. Not entirely sure about whether it's the modulation signal.

mazza558 6 months ago

@Diviwack Out of interest, what's the topic of your dissertation? I've never studied music technology (it's a hobby), so it's interesting to hear someone taking an interest academically.

mazza558 6 months ago

@mazza558 Cheers for the quick answer! Aye your system seems pretty awesome, I like how the volume of you hitting the pen etc is connected to the filter frequency. As for my dissertation topic, I'm still working on it, I've had multiple ideas, some being about the industry and how could networking has the potential to make the industry nearly all freelance. However I wanted something more production based as I'd like to go into that, my brother sent my this video as a reference to an idea I had.

Diviwack 6 months ago

@mazza558 The idea I had was using music technology to create music out of natural sound, in this case the elements, earth, fire, water and air. I was thinking of making an aeolian harp for the air, where the air controls the sound. As for earth I was going to get some logs, hollow them out and then use Reason's NNXT sampler to not only sample the sounds, but put them into a key, as well as shorten the sound to make them percussive (as i'd be hitting the logs) Fire I had no idea...

Diviwack 6 months ago

@mazza558 and water I was thinking of making something along the lines of a hydraulophone, or something like it. Although I was excited about this idea, realistically it's too much for a dissertation and there's not much music technology involved, only the amplification on the aeolian harp and the use of sampling the logs, which isn't enough for a piece. This, however, is awesome as it's using vocoders which are bloody awesome and I love the idea you can use anything to trigger the sound.

Diviwack 6 months ago

@mazza558 (Stupid youtube comment length) I'm bloody impressed, I love you how have the system configured. With your permission, I'd like to chat to my tutors about creating a dissertation around this, making my own system, similar to this, maybe with like multiple outputs. For example you could maybe have a the microphone signal split to multiple outputs that are linked to different drum sounds. Then you could somehow arrange a noise gate so that different volumes triggers beats.

Diviwack 6 months ago

@Diviwack Good plan! By all means use this in your dissertation! :) As a musician, it's unfortunately impractical to do something like this at a gig; there needs to be almost no background noise, or some very fancy technology and directional microphones, which, being a student myself, I can't afford!

mazza558 6 months ago

@mazza558 Awesome, thank you very, very much. I'm going to send an email to the lecturers anyways. I've already come up with some ideas about the percussion aspects of this, and being able to loop it all through ableton live. As for being impractical for a gig, if you used the vocoder as a fully wet signal, percussion through triggering and had simple microphone like an SM57 as your sound input, I really think you'd be able to do it! I could pay to see you anyways haha! :P

Diviwack 6 months ago

@Diviwack As I'm also now a Live user, let me know how you get on, and how you route audio around that, too! I'm intrigued as to how you'd go about doing it in Ableton.

mazza558 6 months ago

@mazza558 Sure, I've just started using it myself, I'm confident with Reason and Pro Tools but I know Live's a tad different. We have lectures on it next year like, if you wish I could forward you the notes, should they help?

Diviwack 6 months ago

@mazza558 So yeah, would this be ok with you? If I my tutors said this would be a sufficient topic (topics for music tech are hard :P ) then this video would probably be my first point of reference hah, so, if i were to go through with it, you wouldn't go unnoticed. Anyways, is this a cheeky thing to ask? I'm sorry if it is, it just looks like an absolutely awesome idea (effort on it!) :)

Diviwack 6 months ago