Effect pedals on CDM? Heck, yes. Electro-Harmonix may have just stolen the show in Nashville with the Freeze pedal alone. Continuing our coverage with Nashville locals and musicians Tony and Jeremy, we have some hands-on videos, images, and impressions of the gear on offer. Don’t miss yesterday’s story on how the trade show helps Nashville recover from flooding. They offered a sobering picture of the state of the show, as well, but that didn’t stop them from finding good stuff to share. -Ed.

Summer NAMM was never the size of its winter counterpart. We were still surprised by the poor manufacturer turnout at the June 18th – 20th convention in Nashville, TN. Absent were heavy hitters like Roland and Korg and innovators like Moog, ZVex, and Dave Smith. Luckily, those that did attend brought some pretty cool new gear. Here are our impressions:

TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch

The VoiceLive Touch puts the famous TC-Helicon harmonization technology and effects in a unique, stand-mountable package, with the addition of performance-oriented looping. The unit feels very rugged, locking onto the stand to give the performer all of the controls at the right height. The interface is a simple array of touch “buttons” for access to the different DSP units with display duties being handled by a simple LED matrix display. Parameters are accessed and manipulated by a touch slider below the display. The VoiceLive Touch seems designed for quick access to presets in the middle of a gig rather than for delicate parameter tweaking. For ease of use during a set, the vocal harmonizer/looper looks like a winner. TC-Helicon says that while preset management over USB is the name of the game for the time being, a software editor could be in the cards down the road. In the first video, TC-Helicon rep Laura Davidson gives CDM a hands on look at the device. In the second video, a singer-songwriter demonstrates one of the harmonization presets. – JD

Previously on CDM: a preview of the device

Numark Mixtrack DJ USB Controller

The Mixtrack is a solid little device, preset for controlling Traktor for $150. For that price, this looks like an amazing little controller – touch sensitive platters for playback control matched with the full range of DJ-mixer style playback, pitch bend, EQ, and looping controls, many of which are illuminated. It’s class-compliant USB and operates as a simple MIDI controller, so it should work out of the box with any application with a fairly minimal amount of mapping and setup. The Mixtrack supports Mac and Windows with possible future Linux support, “if the customer demand is there.” Ed.: actually, since it’s class-compliant, it will already work on Linux. It’s plastic, but it feels quite solid to lift. The encoders have a nice size and grip, with a just a touch of resistance when turning: you don’t feel like you’re going to pull the encoder off of the front panel when adjusting the EQ. I don’t think the crossfader is going to win any awards when put against a DJ battle-style mixer, but it seems like it will do the job without any complaints, especially considering the price of the unit. While the unit is obviously very portable, it may be just a bit outsized for most laptop bags; but that goes with almost every portable controller out there that isn’t named “micro”. In the video, Numark rep Eric McGregor gives CDM an in-depth look. -JD

Alesis MultiMix8 USB FX

The Multimix8 is another iteration of small mixer/USB interface device from Alesis – 8 channels, 4 with microphone preamps, a high-impedance instrument input on channel 2, and 2 pairs of stereo line inputs. Built-in preset effects with individual sends on each channel, all mixed to a class-compliant 2-channel 16/44.1 bidirectional USB audio interface. Alesis is apparently taking user feedback from their original MultiMix8 USB to improve panel layout and knob spacing, dropping 24/96 support and reducing the power consumption. We were quoted $149 street price, which is only around $10 or so off the predecessor’s street price. -JD

Beat Kangz Beat Thang

A personal highlight for me was finally getting the chance to meet Aja and the Nashville-based Beat Kangz crew. I was impressed with their end-user friendly approach to the marketplace, valuing user feedback on their products. News to me is that Beat Thang Virtual is getting an AudioUnit version within the next two weeks, with VST coming soon after. I think that getting that product integrated with existing DAWs is going to do a lot for them. Of course, the one everyone is waiting for is the Beat Thang Beat Machine. It was there in all of its prototype glory, although Aja said that the first shipment of test units at full production spec were going to be in their hands soon, with some small tweaks to the hardware (particularly with the feel of the pads) ready to go through a final beta test phase. If their goal is to make the ultimate beat production device, I think they stand a really good chance of delivering. The prototype box is solid as a rock, intuitive interface and spec’d out to be an MPC killer. At $1000, it’s hard not to be interested in this box if you do any kind of rhythmic production. In the first video Aja shows Create Digital Music the Beat Thang Virtual. In video two, Aja shows us the Beat Thang Beat Machine. – JD

Akai SynthStation25

What may be the first of its kind, Akai has released a hardware accessory for their SynthStation iPhone software. Unveiled at Winter NAMM, the controller is simplicity itself – It’s an iPhone dock with 25-key keyboard, mod and pitch bend wheels, Octave and Program buttons and 4 buttons for accessing the voices in the SynthStation application itself. Couple this with headphone and RCA outputs and USB interface for MIDI, and Akai is offering a package to give actual musical performance control to their iPhone app. The relative merits of the controller or even the use of iPhones for performance and composition aside, Akai is making a strong move here by being the first to market with such a device. Given the sales of SynthStation in the iTunes store, Akai is betting that there are a significant number of people out there that would want to have an extended musical experience with their app and that those people are going to pony up around $100-$150 for a dedicated hardware controller for it. The release date has slipped on this device at least once already, but they seem to be pushing for July at this point. Interestingly, Akai is going to make their API available to third party developers, wishing to allow opening up the SynthStation25 to other iPhone applications. – JD

Electro-Harmonix Freeze

Shipping in late June, The Electro-Harmonix Freeze sample-and-hold pedal may be my favorite effect unit at Summer NAMM. The concept is deceptively simple: press down on the footswitch and the unit sustains what you just played. Let go and the sustaining stops. In the meantime, you can layer over the frozen part with additional notes. See the video below for a great demonstration. The Freeze seems perfect for experimental music and non-guitar instruments. Homebrew modifications are inevitable.

EH showed off other new products, including the Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi distortion/overdrive (so named because of its 4 germanium transistors), the Neo Clone (smaller version of the Small Clone analog chorus), and tiny Headphone Amp. In the video below, Larry with EH gave CDM a demonstration of these effects as well as the Ring-Thing Ring Modulator. Ed.: Or, as they describe it, to be semantic, a “single sideband modulator.” The unique thing about the Ring-Thing is that you can tune it from an incoming signal and avoid the unwieldy dissonance that come from most ring mods. Of course, unwieldy dissonance is a ring mod’s main charm. But should you want it to sound more musical, you have that option. – TY

Pigtronix Keymaster

Guitar-pedal bad-boys Pigtronix debuted an innovate universal signal router at Summer NAMM called the Keymaster Re-Amp Effects Mixer. Unlike most loopers, the Keymaster has a plethora of input/output options, including xlr and 1/4” in/outs and two pedal-level effects loops. You can run the loops in series or parallel with the option to mix the two loops in parallel mode. The beauty of this pedal is the limitless ways you can use it. Power two amps at once, instantly switch between two amps on the fly, switch between two effects chains, blend two effects chains, put two instruments in the two return jacks and mix them together to a single amp, and any routing you can dream up.

In the video below, Pigtronix founder Dave Koltai gives CDM an in-depth tour of the Keymaster. The second video shows Dave Koltai sampling a variety of Pigtronix’s other innovated pedals, including the Mothership Analog Synthesizer, Philosopher King polyphonic amplitude synthesizer, EP2 Envelop Phaser, and the Echolocution. Great sounds! – TY

Glasstones

Mark Payung’s fledgling Glasstones guitar company isn’t a household name. . . yet. But that may change if the final Glasstones guitars sound as good at the prototype did at Summer NAMM. The secret of the guitar’s long sustain is a patented glass compound that the nut, frets, and fretboard are made of. Supposedly, the highly-dense material better transmits the vibrations of the strings into the wood. Mark excitedly took us over to his friends’ 3rd Power Amplification booth to let us hear the Glasstones prototype guitar through an American Dream amplifier. The American Dream amp features some innovations of its own, including a triangular speaker chamber and switchable output between 22 and 10 watts. Channel one is voiced to sound like a ‘62 brownface Deluxe; channel two, a ‘65 blackface Deluxe.

Of course, it’s always hard to tell what guitars and amps truly sound like unless you’re playing them with your own gear; but this combination under the ideal conditions of the show floor sounded fantastic. (Watch the video below to hear for yourself.) Time will tell if the Glasstones guitar is a game-changing innovation or a fly-by-night novelty. If I were forced to choose, I’d bet on the former. – TY

Tony Youngblood (story, photos) resides in Nashville, TN and hosts the experimental improv music podcast Theatre Intangible. [@tonyyoungblood, Twitter]

Jeremy Dickens (additional reporting, photos) is a native Nashvillian musician, engineer, sound designer and and producer with works on dPulse Recordings, Sony Digital and his own Discrepancy Recordings imprint. [@logickal, Twitter]

Want follow-up coverage of any of this gear? What strikes your fancy? Let us know in comments.

Sure, the vocoder may now be something of an electronic music cliché now, but it got its beginnings as a mechanism of encoding speech. It was one of the first electronic instruments. It helped inspire the conceptual model for all digital communication. And, those lofty goals aside, it can still sound terrific when used creatively. (Hint: you don’t have to use your voice as a source.)

These are heady times for the vocoder. Hosts are getting better at accomplishing the routings necessary to produce vocoding effects. Software and hardware vocoders are appearing everywhere. And of course, the great moment has been Ableton releasing a Vocoder in its upcoming Live 8, not so much because of Live or that Vocoder, but because company co-founder Robert Henke was immortalized in a remix (video above) talking about how you wouldn’t need it. I expect one of the first unofficial Live 8 tutorials may use this clip. (Apologies to Robert – especially as that’s exactly the sort of thing I might say speaking to students, and I actually agree. You don’t need a vocoder. For one thing, if you know what you’re doing, you can patch your own. But I digress.)

History and Vocoding without Autopilot

For a different take on the vocoder, let’s first take a trip back in time.

The device in the video is the 1939 “Voder” (Voice Operating Demonstrator). To me, this really demonstrates how much potential is left in the process. The original Voder was played more as an instrument.

Via the always wonderful Digital Tools.

Wendy Carlos, whose use of the vocoder in Clockwork Orange may be as significant to the vocoder as Carlos’ “Switched on Bach” was to the Moog, explains how the Voder functioned:

Homer Dudley also invented the VODER (Voice Operating DEmonstratoR), an electronic speaking instrument, which was unveiled (and demonstrated hourly) at the New York World’s Fair 1939-40. Inside the tall rack of sturdy electronic gear was a pitch controlled reedy oscillator, a white-noise source, and ten bandpass resonant filters. For a Voder to “speak” a talented, diligently trained operator “performed” at a special console connected to the rack, using touch-sensitive keys and a foot-pedal. These controlled the electronic generating components. The results, while far from perfect (it was damn difficult to operate!), were still entertaining and instructive of the principles involved.

That whole article is a must-read, whether you’re a fan of Kubrick, Carlos, vocoders, or (most likely) all three:
“Vocoder Questions” by Kurt B. Reighley, Editor, CMJ New Music Monthly (interviewing Wendy Carlos) [wendycarlos.com]

People who love playable effects of any time ought to gain plenty of inspiration from that video. (And some of the basic ideas need not be limited to vocoders, either. By the way, anyone who doesn’t like keyboards — musical or qwerty — as input devices ought to have a good, long look at the dangly things attached to your palms. There are certain designs that make a lot of sense for biological reasons.)

2008: Depeche Mode in the Studio

I’m about to hear the new album shortly (and hopefully get to talk to the band), but it seems Depeche Mode are enjoying vocoders in the year 2008 — not bad for 1939 technology. Musical instruments may last that long, but electricity-powered inventions are often more short-lived. And it’s also comforting to know that playing with vocoders makes Depeche Mode get as goofy as the rest of us.

Via Depeche Mode News.

The release of the new album isn’t due until April 2009, but I should get to hear it this week (via legal means, don’t worry).

Vocoders in Your FL Studio

“A vocoder? Big news,” say the loyal fans of FL Studio (“fruity loops”) to these Ableton Live newcomers. FL Studio has a lovely vocoder integrated in the host. Musician and Webizen Mark Mosher is happy to get you up and running in this tutorial:

Using Sytrus as the synth carrier is fantastic, as that’s a really, really gorgeous synth (and one you Abletonites can use, too).

Found via Mark’s Twitter account, because the ongoing popularity of this tutorial means people are still watching and asking questions, even though this has been up for some time.

Of course, there are many, many other software solutions to vocoding, all a bit different — and it’s well worth exploring some of your options.

Vocoders at 2009 NAMM

Vocoders still make appearances in new product lines, making this arguably the most popular of the pre-synth vintage electronic instruments, beating out the Theremin.

GearWire got an up-close demo of the cute little Voice Box from Electro-Harmonic we saw last month. I still love this little box, and if this particular application doesn’t turn you on, it still seems like there’s interesting potential for synths and the like.

Also a big crowd-pleaser at NAMM is the Roland VP-770. Now, when Roland debuted their first “vocal ensemble synth,” it got a pretty resounding “meh” from everyone who saw it — pricey, limited, and even the Roland rep at the time had a tough time wrapping her head around it. But the new VP has a new engine, phantom power input, and a USB key, and in the hands of the right person doing the demo can be a big hit. It’s not all really vocoder stuff, but it does all fit into the voice-controller or “vocoderesque” category.

You’d need to be pretty committed to these effects to go buy a VP-770 — I’m sure Roland is expecting they can leverage their huge prowess in the “worship” market. But I bring up this video for another reason: whether you’re a VP fan or not, you can’t argue with the power that someone using their voice to control a synth can command. I think we may discover new ways of doing that with unique effects and synths that are only loosely related to the original vocoder. As real-time effects processing on computers gets better (thanks to lower latency and more processing power), I think we could see new, never-before-heard effects.

SonicState got a decent demo video, though this deserves sound that’s not on a show floor:

And speaking of new products, don’t forget that Korg’s revised microKORG, the XL has a new 16-band vocoder (Synthtopia write-up). Synthtopia notes that it’s a bit steep at US$750 — though, in fairness, that’s partly because of how cheap the original microKORG is. But for live performance, even as a huge computer advocate, I have to concede that you may prefer a hardware keyboard for vocoder effects, convenience, and reliability, and this is still cheaper than a lot of less-fun “workstations.” The only problem: you can get the similar Korg R3 with a full-sized keyboard and additional controls and features in the same price ballpark, or the simple-but-fun original microKORG for half the price. Updated: scratch that, because the XL has a $500 street, which is pretty damned good even in this economy. (Especially in this economy, I’d wager. That’s getting close to USB controller cheap.)

Synthtopia took this gorgeous shot that I have to reproduce here:

And you…

What’s your favorite vocoder or vocoder technique? Got a demonstration that can prove my earlier point that vocoders don’t all have to sound the same? Send it our way…

Previously

Ableton Live’s “Secret” Vocoder; No One Needs a Vocoder

NI Gets KOMPLETE Upgrade, But Spektral Delay, Vokator No More

Tips: Vocoders + Ableton Live; Vocoder Resources, Free Universal Vocoder Plug-in

Electro-Harmonix has made a quick-and-dirty vocal effects box. Usable parameters, good fun, and $200 – sure, it may not be the highest-fidelity vocal box ever, but what’s not to love? Our friend Collin Cunningham at MAKE gets the jump on this one.

It’s got some surprisingly unique features:

• 256-band vocoder “designed by the same EMS genius who made vocoding famous,” they say
• It will harmonically match electric instruments as well as vocals.
• 2- to 4-part harmonization, at the 3rd and 5th (labeled “Low” and “High” in case you slept through Music Theory class)
• 9 programmable presets
• Gliss
• Gender bender male/female formant mod (which actually sounds decent, and could be fun with instruments, as well)
• Mic pre, phantom power, balanced XLR output (thanks for not making this like a cheap consumer toy)

And the whole thing is built in NYC. I have to go see where they’re making these things.

I think this line is hilarious: “Diana Ross had the Supremes, Brian Wilson had the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk had The Robots. You have the Voice Box.”

Well, speak for yourself. I want the Kirnaires backing me up (matching sweaters and all) and I still want a Voice Box.

Above: proof you can have a product demo video that isn’t lame. (I’m looking at you, um … almost entire music instruments industry!)

EV appear to have seeded these to other folks to make some YouTube videos. You know what that means: it’s time for a really odd and wonderful cover of Knights of Cydonia. That’s funny, “No One’s Going to Take Me Alive” is the line I last used when I neglected to return a demo hardware loaner.

For an impressive, competing line of products, check out the TC Helicon line. They’ve recently offered up the smaller, stompbox-style Voicebox line, which nicely reduces their high-end effects to a smaller form factor. It’s a good time to be a vocalist shopping for gear.