[sdiy] Alex sings Geddy with formant envelope synthesis?

[Marc Jordan]

Yah, I've seen him sing backup before (plus he sang on his solo album) but
you could always tell it was him.  This time it was definitely Geddy's
voice, though.  I did a double-take.  Double-takes are so cool :)

-----Original Message-----
From: j vallier [mailto:peff2cv at hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 12:17 PM
To: MJordan at SigmaTel.com
Cc: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Alex sings Geddy with formant envelope synthesis?


Keep in mind that Alex has quite a high voice too. He's done occasional 
backup vox during their whole career--when I saw them during moving pictures

tour there sure wasn't formant synthesis then!


>From: harry <harrybissell at prodigy.net>
>To: Marc Jordan <MJordan at SigmaTel.com>
>CC: "'synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl'" <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
>Subject: Re: [sdiy] Alex sings Geddy with formant envelope synthesis?
>Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 22:24:27 -0400
>
>Sure it wasn't the LSD ???   ;^P
>
>H^) harry
>
>"what did the deadhead say when his acid wore off ?  What IS this awful 
>music ?
>"
>
>Marc Jordan wrote:
>
> > I just saw Rush in Houston & San Antonio & noticed that Alex was singing
> > some backup vocals on the new Rush tunes. The cool thing was that I was
> > hearing Geddy's voice. I doubt that he was just lip syncing because 
>they've
> > never been ashamed of or hid the fact that they trigger samples big time
> > live.
> >
> > I'm guessing that they were running his voice through a DSP box that 
>applied
> > formant envelopes to approximate Geds vocal characteristics. Does 
>anybody
> > know if this is being done in real-time these days? I took a synth class

>a
> > number of years ago and did some experiments with formant envelopes and 
>you
> > would be surprised how good they work. Probably good enough for 
>background
> > vocals in a loud-as-hell rock setting. I don't remember all the details 
>of
> > the computational complexity: a little bit of off-line FFT analysis of 
>Ged's
> > voice to build up the envelopes to store away, then live you'd have to 
>FFT
> > short bits of Al's vocals, apply the envelopes, then convert back to the
> > time domain. Hardware is beefy enough these days to do it real-time I
> > imagine. Heck, it's probably really not that much of a MIPs hog.
> >
> > Marc Jordan
> > Embedded Audio Software
> > SigmaTel, Inc
> > 3815 South Capital of Texas Hwy, Suite 300
> > Austin, TX 78704
> > Telephone: 512-381-3700
>
>--
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