MOTM

Months ago when the list was smaller, we talked about Paul doing a real
formant filter. I was all for separate voltage control of each band, so you
could morph between vowels with a sequencer or something. Paul's take on it
was that you needed fixed bands, VERY accurately tuned, and would switch
them on and off to obtain different vowel sounds. I believe 15 bands was
mentioned as the number necessary to cover the known vowel sounds in various
languages.

I don't remember particularly why we were talking mostly about vocal
formants instead of acoustic instrument formants - maybe the discussion grew
out of another thread about vocoders.

I hope that Paul will get around to a some kind of formant module
eventually.

Dave

> Is someone was gonna go nuts on a filter bank, my vote is for a full
> Formant filter. I have a custom 4-band in my Moog modular, and
> it's awesome.
>
> (I know you know this Dave, but...)
>
> A Formant filter is basically a number of bands (4 is common, I've seen
> overkill at 8) where each band has a variable center freq, a cut/boost
> control, and a fine control for resonance - usually a 10 turn pot.
>
> The point is to mimic the nasal sounds of the oral cavity. The
> 10-turn pot
> on resonance is required in order to be able to hang the filter stage
> *right* on the edge of feedback - RIGHT on the edge.