What I'd like to do is...

cornbb

...chop up some vocal/speech samples to make them unintelligible yet rhythmic. Sort of glitchy but not quite. Like Boards of Canada do? I'd like to use the human voice only without any words... Preferably I'd like to use some sort of VST to accomplish this. I've tried this cool VST called LiveCut but its too automated/not flexible enough. Anyone got any ideas? Or any idea what I'm talking about?

mike65

So you need a sampler through which to 'play' formant sounds? Hmmmm!

Mike.

cornbb

I''ve just started messing around with Kontakt 2, trying to make an instrument I can use to play weird crap with using my keyboard. Its fun actually, but I can't seem to come across much cool vocal source material.

eddyc

Are you using the beatmachine mode in kontakt?

frobisher

I'd say just record yourself speaking at different pitches then chop it into individual samples and change the attack on them to be either later than the original or quite slow so that the sounds are just open vowels. A filter or two could make it interesting too. Another possibility could be to record long vowel sounds and then trigger them with an arpeggiator for an interesting rythmic effect. Whatever you do I'd be quite interested in hearing it when it's done!

squibs

FL Studio's granuliser sounds like just the ticket. Go google freeware VST granulisers and see what you find (if you don't have FL studio)

cornbb

Are you using the beatmachine mode in kontakt?

No, but I must check it out. I think I'm falling in love with Kontakt, its an amazing piece of kit.

Another possibility could be to record long vowel sounds and then trigger them with an arpeggiator for an interesting rythmic effect.

Sounds interesting, can you recommend a free VST to accomplish this?

FL Studio's granuliser sounds like just the ticket.

I'll give that a spin too! I've only used granulisers for doing random noisy stuff before...

Has anyone heard Telephasic Workshop by Boards of Canada. Its on the Music Has The Right To Children album and sounds kind of like what I'm trying to do. There's a sample here: http://www.last.fm/music/Boards+of+Canada/_/Telephasic+Workshop although the effect gets much better later in the tune.

eddyc

In kontakt, throw your vocal sample onto some key like erm C3 or something, select the zone, change to beat machine mode, you can use the transient detection sensitivity slider or manually add your own transient splits to the sample , hit expand and it will map out all the different transients in this case syllables to each note going from C#3 onwards, then you can play around with them as you want, to get really far out you can move each transient sample zone to its own group and place different insert effects on each group.

cornbb

eddyc wrote:

In kontakt, throw your vocal sample onto some key like erm C3 or something, select the zone, change to beat machine mode, you can use the transient detection sensitivity slider or manually add your own transient splits to the sample , hit expand and it will map out all the different transients in this case syllables to each note going from C#3 onwards, then you can play around with them as you want, to get really far out you can move each transient sample zone to its own group and place different insert effects on each group.

Hats off - I've got exactly what I wanted. I found an audio book recording of The Hobbit, sliced it up with Sound Forge then Kontakt and played the slices bongo style with some trigger pads. Sounds great - thanks!