AW: VP-330 (analog speech synthesis)

[Mark Smart]

Thanks to everyone for the info and recording suggestions!

> Played one a few months ago, and I was really impressed.
> Planned to build these filters, too, but all I've done so far are a few
> Spice simulations.
> What has kept me from building it so far is that in the original it's not
> just feeding one input signal to a filter bank. Different partial filters
> of a certain preset are fed by different footage signals from the
> divider circuitry. But maybe I should build it nevertheless and 
> experiment with different input signals.
> 

Wow. Sounds like a really involved design! Makes me even more curious to
see it. Also a bit disappointed, since I was hoping to be able to run other
stuff through the same filters and have it sound as good. Maybe that's not
possible. I still want a VP-330, though! 

I can believe that the input waveform is vital.
I've spent some time recently trying to get vocal sounds like these
out of my JD-800, using three voices, each one going thru a bandpass filter
set at a different frequency. I got the frequency values out of a book on
speech synthesis. I was able to get something kinda VAGUELY vocal sounding
using a really narrow pulse wave as an input (I read somewhere that that's
how they do it in speech synthesis). But I found that by changing to a
different waveform, a "vocal" waveform on the JD-800, it became MUCH more
realistic. And the vocal waveform alone didn't sound nearly as good as it
did with the filters. The problem was that, since it was a sample playback
machine, and the recording had formants in it, I got a chipmunk/Jabba
effects playing up and down the keyboard.

It would be great to be able to combine the cool VP-330 filters with the trippy
"pitch random" feature on the JD-800 for making Ligeti sounds minus the
chipmunk/Jabba effects. I can already do good Ligeti sounds WITH
chipmunk/Jabba effects.

> Another speciality of the VP-330 is its bend slider. Very effective for
> making vocal sounds more realistic. Different from other bender devices.
> 
> JH. 

I just checked out the Laurie Anderson "Let x = x" that was suggested
earlier, and this pitch slider appears to be in use. Sounds like she's
using it to tranpose the whole thing up and down a fourth. Cool!



************************************************
*     Mark Smart                               *
*     Electronics Engineer                     *
*     NovaNET Learning, Inc.                   *
*     smart at medusa.nn.com                      *
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