Using TAL Vocoder (free), you can make some interesting “percussive-toned beats” that sound similar to the band Plaid. But you have to use the vocoder in an unusual way. The idea came to me as I read an interview with the members of Plaid, a band I like.
Updated: 3/8/24
In the interview, Plaid members Andy Turner and Ed Handley described a technique involving vocoders they used for their album, “Reachy Prints.”
They said, “We used quite a lot of vocoder on the album, but not with voice. We ran other audio into the vocoder, and you get this quite detailed, scratch sound, which could sound subterranean.”
They used Razor in Native Instruments. “Yeah, you get a very particular effect. There are a few new types of vocoder that are out at the moment. There is one called Razor, which has a very particular and quite unique sound, and it uses a new method for vocoding, which is very nice. ” But here, we are going to use TAL Vocoder, which is just as good (if not better), in my opinion, and creates the effect very nicely (for free).
(If you have Razor and like the sound of it, try feeding it into TAL Vocoder as the carrier – it sounds really nice.)
Hawkmoth is one of Plaid’s songs that has a percussive-toned beat that makes up the melody:
How it Works
I can show you in two ways – one for the older version of TAL Vocoder and another for the newer version. But first, here is the basic concept:
Normal Use of a Vocoder: Feed a synth sound into it as the carrier and modulate it with a vocal to get a synth that sounds like it is speaking.
Percussive-toned Beats Use of a Vocoder: Feed a synth sound into it as the carrier and modulate it with a drum pattern.
It’s not really all that different from normal use, and I’ll bet you can find many other modulation sources to make things sound very interesting using the same basic concept.
Why use the TAL Vocoder? The TAL Vocoder emulates vintage vocoders, so it has a special tonality that I like, but that is just my preference. You can use any vocoder you want, and you can get similar results.
Using TAL Vocoder 1.x.x or 2.x.x
The video below is a demo of the effect of using the older version of TAL Vocoder.
For the TAL Vocoder 2.0.0, the button in the upper right of the front panel bypasses the internal carrier section on the left and allows input of your carrier signal. I use a vintage synth input, playing a MIDI melody in my piano roll. For the example video, I used a Kontakt instrument. This carrier signal must come in on the left channel, so I panned my synth melody all the way to the left and fed it into the channel containing the vocoder. You can see this in the video. The carrier is the melody that is modulated by the modulation signal.
The modulation signal I used in the video is a drum machine called Microtonic. It produces high and low sounds, so it is well-suited for this application as you want to modulate all along the spectrum for a good effect. You can see the drum channel is panned all the way to the left and fed into the vocoder channel. This is how the TAL Vocoder works, and if you use a different one, then it will work differently. You just need to know where the carrier and modulation feed in, and you’ll be all set.
Now when run the synth melody as the carrier and the drum set at the same time, the drums modulate the melody and you only hear the sound during the time when the drums are hitting. Keep in mind that you have to turn off the drums and synth from going to the master output and only allow them to go to the vocoder. If not, then you will hear everything and that may not be what you want although it does sound great too.
Using TAL Vocoder 3.0.x
With version 3 of TAL Vocoder, the layout and routing in the DAW changed. I no longer need to send in left-panned and right-panned signals for the carrier and modulator.
Now, the carrier is the audio signal, so I send it in on the channel that the instrument is playing on. The modulator (drums) is the sidechain of that channel. It is somewhat easier and more like the rest of the vocoders out there.
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Lars Lentz Audio™ 