It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
Very cool OP listening to the original samples compared against the different harmonizers and vocoders.
The Sennheiser VSM201 sounds so clean, I really like the analogue sound. The TC Helicon Talkbox Synth also sounds nice.
For the harmonizers, the Digitech Studio Vocalist EX sounds the best to me, but I also like the Korg ih Interactive Vocal Harmony for its spacey vocal effects.
This is a really great deep dive, I wish I could upvote more to reward this kind of quality work.
Reading the title I thought this was about extraordinary singing techniques. But nice article anyway.
I was a bit surprised by this article as it actually contradicts the account I always heard, which was their main vocal effect was a Roland VP-9000. If you listen to e.g. Harder Faster the effect is somewhere in between a vocoder & autotune, so I assumed that was the VP-9000. That said, this guy has clearly done his homework (pun intended) so I'm inclined to accept his version of events.
If you have a vocoder, running a drum machine through the modulator won't sound all that much like daft punk, but will probably sound familiar. And maybe become part of your sound.
If you don't have a vocoder, Behringer recently released one as a Eurorack module for $99. It's fine.
Tangentially related if you make music in the box and want some simple Daft Punk breakdowns to experiment from:
https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-homework-synth-soun... https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-discovery-synth-sou...
Outstanding article, don't skip the youtube videos!
I love, no luuuurrve, this article. Just fantastic research and fantastically useful for a music project I'm workin' on.
Speaking of Daft Punk: I have been so intrigued by their decision to never show their faces, and always use masks.
Anyone here has any good article, or explanation, or theory, of why is that the case?
Ah, the Sennheiser VSM201. Just a $30K vocoder. Seems like it was $25K when it released in 1977, but also didn't get to sell even 50 units, so quite rare.
I guess you can get similar results with cheaper hardware, but if you have money and you have it around... ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Obligatory post of the legendary Bode Vocoder demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kc-bhOOLxE
I went down a similar rabbit hole at the start of my PhD and I wish Iād written more of it up. One of my theories is that they combined effects quite often. For example, āharder better faster strongerā seems more likely to be a talk box recorded for a single note, then looped, then run through an AutoTune rack unit with MIDI inputs to repitch it. I mention this a little bit in a talk I have at ADC 2022 https://youtu.be/uX-FVtQT0PQ?feature=shared
Any good software vocoders out there?
Tangentially related; here's a great example of the classic daft punk vocal synth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mXLNnZvGJw
But... Skala?!
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Marc added some extra flavor https://mastodon.social/@marcedwards/114454783708869207
> This article is the longest piece Iāve published on Bjangoās site, and it took a couple of years of research. I purchased around 25 pieces of music gear. I emailed Imogen Heap, and to my surprise, someone from her team got back to me and confirmed the exact harmonizer used on Hide and Seek.
> Itās been a huge effort, and Iām confident it contains a lot of information that is not widely known. For those of you who are into Daft Punk, I hope itās interesting.