Vocoders are so awesome, but they are rarely used to full advantage. Everyone immediately goes for the robot voice thing, which is cool and all, but hardly the most creative use of these devices. It's kind of like using a sampler to only play songs using a dog barking or something. You can get more interesting results when you start running guitars or anything other than a voice through them. I remember my music collaborator and I using a PAIA vocoder in the early 90s where we used a guitar as the carrier, and a sequence from an Ensoniq EPS as the modulator. It turned the guitar into an otherworldly gurgling, bubbling water sound.
Totally agree. 👍👍👍 I was honestly a bit surprised when I noticed that most people thought that putting drums, guitar, etc thru it was a new thing. I’ve always had two things I tell people who just started and wants new inspiring gears: Get a reverb/echo. And get a vocoder. -And experiment!
I read the first article on the ETI vocoder and desperately wanted to build one. However, I had several things working against me. Firstly, I was still at school at the time with only my allowances to save up from. Secondly, I lived (and still live) in Denmark, and electronic components were hard to come by. Thirdly, I never got my hands on the issue holding the second article in the series, and when I finally managed to track down a copy of it, ETI had gone out of business! However, I did learn a lot about the inner workings of a vocoder by studying that article. Thanks for sharing this!
While it was an expensive project back in 1980 (£175 in 1980 is about £1000 today!) I had a friend who played keyboards and other electronic instruments and he had had it demoed to him at a show and thought it was a bargain, a commercial instrument of similar quality would be 3 or 4 times that. Powertran produced some amazing products, I only wish I had the money and skill at the time to build one or two of them!
Good old ETI. I built several kits. I built the ETI 480 50watt amplifier as my first guitar amp, and a little 5watt one as a practice amp. Used it for years.
I built the ETI 499 amplifier - and I also built the Electronics Australia Playmaster 3. I ended up with 4 of them in a surround sound setup. They were all good.
I built the Paia vocoder... sitting on a rack in my garage gathering dust. I should go rescue it and see if it still works - it actually never worked all that well; I remember being slightly disappointed after I finished it - it didn't perform as well as I had dreamed. The ETI sounds like I wanted the Paia to sound.
Amazing. I don't do synths, or vocoders, and I'm terrible on my guitar (though I still like to pluck the strings). But I love your channel. The energy you put into these videos and knowledge you drop is just perfection. Thank you!
yeah, as much as I love all the FPGA and SoC systems we have today and the projects people build off them, I kinda miss this style of kit. tindie has some, but what I wouldn't give for someone to reboot the old heathkit kits or stuff like this.
There's somebody from Kazakhstan, on MW forum, who's selling unpopulated PCBs to make a clone of an old German (I think) vocoder... there are projects like that, but I don't know of an affordable convenient kit?
Julian Ilett built a copy of this a few years ago. You can still get all the components and have the PCBs made, ruclips.net/p/PLjzGSu1yGFjXKZ5igKxwlgfGdy25yZoPN
That trip through the magazine was a nostalgia fix! My grandad had a ZX80, and he also built the Maplin organ, which I remember playing when I visited. My first job after leaving uni was actually in Maplin Electronics in Southampton as well :) I spent a couple of years there before starting a career in software. It was quite instructive, and my staff discount was handy for getting and building kits now and then too.
I used to talk to his brother John Becker about this back in 2003 when I worked at Essex Radio in charge of Engineering. John used to live in Kent at the time but travel down to another electronics magazine.... This was a great product and later In the 1980's they issued I am sure some mods to that project with values etc...... I will try to visit your musium one day as when I left school in 1981 I worked on ZX81's BBC Micros and a host of other computers repairing them as my first job....and at Amstrad.
Neal Armstrong was a big synthesiser user, he loved the echo you got in space, apparently it was out of this world (echo in a vacuum🤣😂) Interesting vocoder 2x👍
C;lassic kit and lots of memories in those mags. We built a comp80 at school, and I had fun secretly patching CP/M to behave a little differently, ZX80 kit as my first computer, and was really keen on the transcendent 2000. Still got an original demo tape for it somewhere.
Since watching BattleStar Galactica in the late 70s I wanted a vocoder. The sound of the Cylons - Awesome! They were used so much during those early years, defined a lot of music of the day. Love it! Vocoder'tastic!
I have always wanted a vocoder. Kenny Everett was the Genius when it came to vocoders. He sung my name jingles for radio with a vocoder back in the 70's Plug a keyboard in to it to play chords with the vocal.
He'd sing whole choirs with them, and use video feedback as well when he made it to the telly. But never forget the BBC radiophonic workshop. EXTERMINATE!!!!
What a cracking bit of kit. My vocoder is part of my DAW and I dont use it much but I will have a play around with it. A stand alone one would be very cool. Actually thinking about it I do have a Behringer vocoder somewhere in the shed. I will have to dig it out!
I want my voice to sound like this all the time. I wonder if I can have one surgically installed. Then instead of speaking normally, when people say "Some weather we're having eh?" I can say things like "Atmospheric conditions are adequate to maintain peak performance on all my systems.". Or "This food is good." "Thank you for the information fellow human. I also intake dead bio matter in a disgusting process of digestion instead of more efficiently recharging like a higher life form would."
I really like how Powertran used the KLF font. hadn't noticed that until now and as a synth nerd who is obsessed with the KLF I'm rather disappointed in myself.
@10:00 putting drums through a vocoder 🤔😲 not sure why I never thought of that. I've been trying to build more musical / but percussive drum sounds. That's exactly what I need!
That sounds amazing! Very Battlestar Galactica Cylons ^___^ (Well they used an EMS 1000 for that so no wonder it sounds very close). I think the 14 or 16 band Vocoders sound the best. I love these things. That patch at 16:00 sounded awesome too! Very Daft Punk I thought. ^^
I just had a VOCASIM!!!!!! OMG!!! You just brought back so great memories.... but you REALLY TICKLED MY PICKLE with that vocoded b-line!!! - You BETTER make a dope ass track with that and POST IT ON YT!!! HAHA!!!! LUV YA M8!!!!!
Man, that thing sounds great! I built a PAIA vocoder when I was a kid, and I never could make it sound good. The filters really kind of sucked, IMHO. Needs a sharper Q? Or more stages? Dunno what the secret is. I also tried building one in Pure Data, and could never get that Phat Sound!
I loved ETI - was fascinated by the Vocoder but could never afford to build it (not that I have any musical talent to use it with!). It was an interesting to compare the design of this vocoder with the Elektor vocoder which came out earlier the same year but which had fewer channels.
nowhere near your level but i found running a mic into an overdrive pedal allowed me to use my voice for heavy metal sounding power chords. That was kinda cool so i got a bowie stylaphone and a gen x1 stylaphone and a few mic input splitters then plugged them all in together in series, then got some ever more interesting cool sounds as the input splitter let me plug a guitar in too.. and the x1 allowed you to feed audio into it too which it was able to do synth things too. Thats probably the functions of two of your basic modules and you have walls of hundreds of them. You must have fun making wierd sounds
I really enjoyed this one ! Just past 14 minutes I thought you were about to go into DALEK mode. :-) I remember them when they first came out, ( black and white ). While I'm here, Just wondered if you'd had time to do a bit of tuning on the organ ? ps, I still play around with my old Echoman EM150 analogue echo unit, good fun. Take care and keep it up
The Buchla module 296t is coming to eurorack from Tiptop soon and i have seen others (even a kit version, bt i cannot now remember the manufacturer), so if someone likes this vocoder and cannot get this particular one, those are an alternative.
The drum machine + poly synth combo was glorious
Vocoders are so awesome, but they are rarely used to full advantage. Everyone immediately goes for the robot voice thing, which is cool and all, but hardly the most creative use of these devices. It's kind of like using a sampler to only play songs using a dog barking or something. You can get more interesting results when you start running guitars or anything other than a voice through them. I remember my music collaborator and I using a PAIA vocoder in the early 90s where we used a guitar as the carrier, and a sequence from an Ensoniq EPS as the modulator. It turned the guitar into an otherworldly gurgling, bubbling water sound.
Totally agree. 👍👍👍
I was honestly a bit surprised when I noticed that most people thought that putting drums, guitar, etc thru it was a new thing.
I’ve always had two things I tell people who just started and wants new inspiring gears: Get a reverb/echo. And get a vocoder. -And experiment!
I want more of the toilet roll song! It's sounds really flush!
Sounds flush! 🤣🤣🤣
I read the first article on the ETI vocoder and desperately wanted to build one. However, I had several things working against me. Firstly, I was still at school at the time with only my allowances to save up from. Secondly, I lived (and still live) in Denmark, and electronic components were hard to come by. Thirdly, I never got my hands on the issue holding the second article in the series, and when I finally managed to track down a copy of it, ETI had gone out of business! However, I did learn a lot about the inner workings of a vocoder by studying that article. Thanks for sharing this!
While it was an expensive project back in 1980 (£175 in 1980 is about £1000 today!) I had a friend who played keyboards and other electronic instruments and he had had it demoed to him at a show and thought it was a bargain, a commercial instrument of similar quality would be 3 or 4 times that. Powertran produced some amazing products, I only wish I had the money and skill at the time to build one or two of them!
Good old ETI. I built several kits. I built the ETI 480 50watt amplifier as my first guitar amp, and a little 5watt one as a practice amp. Used it for years.
I built the ETI 499 amplifier - and I also built the Electronics Australia Playmaster 3. I ended up with 4 of them in a surround sound setup. They were all good.
Richard Becker and his wife owned Powertran. Elektor magazine also published a Vocoder design.
Indeed; I worked for them for 3 months.
If that was a Georgio Moroder impression at 10:55 you nailed it my friend 😅
What an awesome and versatile machine!!
I built the Paia vocoder... sitting on a rack in my garage gathering dust. I should go rescue it and see if it still works - it actually never worked all that well; I remember being slightly disappointed after I finished it - it didn't perform as well as I had dreamed. The ETI sounds like I wanted the Paia to sound.
Love your enthusiasm in everything you do.Big love my good Sir.
Love the 70's fro and stache. You were really, groovin', man. Right on! Solid and outta site!
Watched this entire video with a huge grin on my face. Brilliant!
Amazing. I don't do synths, or vocoders, and I'm terrible on my guitar (though I still like to pluck the strings). But I love your channel. The energy you put into these videos and knowledge you drop is just perfection. Thank you!
Dude it doesn't matter how good you are as long as you have fun and enjoy doing it keep on keeping on!
I don't play anything.. I love music and electronics so I've been working on a project for my friends.
Man I wish there was a diy kit made today of this.
yeah, as much as I love all the FPGA and SoC systems we have today and the projects people build off them, I kinda miss this style of kit. tindie has some, but what I wouldn't give for someone to reboot the old heathkit kits or stuff like this.
There's somebody from Kazakhstan, on MW forum, who's selling unpopulated PCBs to make a clone of an old German (I think) vocoder... there are projects like that, but I don't know of an affordable convenient kit?
Julian Ilett built a copy of this a few years ago. You can still get all the components and have the PCBs made, ruclips.net/p/PLjzGSu1yGFjXKZ5igKxwlgfGdy25yZoPN
Yes please 😁
I saw the responses. To bad that RUclips doesn’t allow links…
@@GizzyDillespee What is the MW forum? Can you drop some links here so I can find what you're referring to?
I miss the electronics magazines. Used to waste a lot of time drooling over the adverts.
That trip through the magazine was a nostalgia fix! My grandad had a ZX80, and he also built the Maplin organ, which I remember playing when I visited. My first job after leaving uni was actually in Maplin Electronics in Southampton as well :) I spent a couple of years there before starting a career in software. It was quite instructive, and my staff discount was handy for getting and building kits now and then too.
I used to talk to his brother John Becker about this back in 2003 when I worked at Essex Radio in charge of Engineering. John used to live in Kent at the time but travel down to another electronics magazine.... This was a great product and later In the 1980's they issued I am sure some mods to that project with values etc...... I will try to visit your musium one day as when I left school in 1981 I worked on ZX81's BBC Micros and a host of other computers repairing them as my first job....and at Amstrad.
That last jam vocoding the bassline was badass. You should build a whole song around that.
That sounds awesome with the drum machine running though it!
😍
I love how much fun you clearly had making this video. Couldn't stop chuckling
I love seeing all these old synths and the building processes but I’ve never wanted any of them like I’ve wanted this vocoder❤️❤️
This is the best sounding vocoder I have ever heard. The digital vocoder plugins don't sound nearly as dirty/grungy as this one.
You just need to run a dirtier carrier signal into them. Should get you into the ballpark more?
@@BatteryCoverMissing yeah, it sounds distorted at both ends. Really unique
Neal Armstrong was a big synthesiser user, he loved the echo you got in space, apparently it was out of this world (echo in a vacuum🤣😂)
Interesting vocoder 2x👍
In space, no one can hear you scream...
@@mediaphile In the Nevada desert at night with a synthesiser you can pretend you are on the moon!
His nightclub was awful though,. No atmosphere.
C;lassic kit and lots of memories in those mags. We built a comp80 at school, and I had fun secretly patching CP/M to behave a little differently, ZX80 kit as my first computer, and was really keen on the transcendent 2000. Still got an original demo tape for it somewhere.
Sam! Brilliant and hilarious as ever! Keep up the good work mate! 🙂
Since watching BattleStar Galactica in the late 70s I wanted a vocoder. The sound of the Cylons - Awesome!
They were used so much during those early years, defined a lot of music of the day.
Love it!
Vocoder'tastic!
And cheaper than the ARP 2500 synthesizer they used.
Battlestar Galactica. I thought the same thing.
@8:09 that classic basic basic vocoder noise. Very cool just by itself. 🔥
Well done. A great demo of the Vocoder. Sounds like you had great fun playing with it.
I love this thing! So did one of my favorite bands, ELO. 🎶Mister Blue Sky! 🎶
Your seventies twin DEFINITELY needs more screen time :D.
Gorgeous typesetting in that magazine. We used to do it up nice.
I have always wanted a vocoder. Kenny Everett was the Genius when it came to vocoders.
He sung my name jingles for radio with a vocoder back in the 70's
Plug a keyboard in to it to play chords with the vocal.
He'd sing whole choirs with them, and use video feedback as well when he made it to the telly. But never forget the BBC radiophonic workshop. EXTERMINATE!!!!
I love the giant turny knobs, straight out of some Frankenstein movie or Batman computer.
I really appreciate the synth patch walkthrough on the Furby machine.
What a cracking bit of kit. My vocoder is part of my DAW and I dont use it much but I will have a play around with it. A stand alone one would be very cool. Actually thinking about it I do have a Behringer vocoder somewhere in the shed. I will have to dig it out!
I sold mine 8 years ago, great sounding processor
I want my voice to sound like this all the time. I wonder if I can have one surgically installed. Then instead of speaking normally, when people say "Some weather we're having eh?" I can say things like "Atmospheric conditions are adequate to maintain peak performance on all my systems.". Or "This food is good." "Thank you for the information fellow human. I also intake dead bio matter in a disgusting process of digestion instead of more efficiently recharging like a higher life form would."
That actually sounds amazing.
I dunno how you knew I wasn't deserving of all those bog rolls, but you nailed it.
I really like how Powertran used the KLF font. hadn't noticed that until now and as a synth nerd who is obsessed with the KLF I'm rather disappointed in myself.
Thanks so much for going into the theory of how these things work! Very interesting! 🎤
@10:00 putting drums through a vocoder 🤔😲 not sure why I never thought of that. I've been trying to build more musical / but percussive drum sounds. That's exactly what I need!
dude vocoders are SICK AND THIS IS COOL ANDTHANKS
10:43 channeling Giorgio Moroder, I LOVE it!😅
Sam, you are a treasure.
Wow it's quite versatile. I want one!
That sounds amazing! Very Battlestar Galactica Cylons ^___^ (Well they used an EMS 1000 for that so no wonder it sounds very close). I think the 14 or 16 band Vocoders sound the best. I love these things. That patch at 16:00 sounded awesome too! Very Daft Punk I thought. ^^
I just had a VOCASIM!!!!!! OMG!!! You just brought back so great memories.... but you REALLY TICKLED MY PICKLE with that vocoded b-line!!! - You BETTER make a dope ass track with that and POST IT ON YT!!! HAHA!!!! LUV YA M8!!!!!
Wow that is really good. Sounds as good as the EMS!
Ooh, getting Astro Blaster vibes from parts of this! "Alert, Alert. Invader in Sector 1, Player 1 to battle stations!" God, I'm old... 😁
Man, that thing sounds great! I built a PAIA vocoder when I was a kid, and I never could make it sound good. The filters really kind of sucked, IMHO. Needs a sharper Q? Or more stages? Dunno what the secret is. I also tried building one in Pure Data, and could never get that Phat Sound!
omg you build the vocoder julian ilett is buildung for what feels like 10 years
I remember seeing this, I had the magazines for the PA stuff but could never afford their kits, their synths were awesome
I really enjoyed the impromptu jams XD
I loved ETI - was fascinated by the Vocoder but could never afford to build it (not that I have any musical talent to use it with!). It was an interesting to compare the design of this vocoder with the Elektor vocoder which came out earlier the same year but which had fewer channels.
Sounds wicked! Kudos
6:45 Cat was laying relaxed but is now looking at Me in confusion looking like He is thinking "What the fxxx is that sound?".
Very cool piece of kit and history.
That was really cool. Thanks for sharing it!
The RUclips caption generator as a vocoder decoder was un-phased up until the load of Toilet Roll Mumbo Jumbo Song.
Awesome, never heard of this one.
Remember Sam... the difference between 70s Sam and 80s Sam is a pair of aviator sunglasses. 😁 That is a great little vocoder. 👍
Hitting my ears like Intergalactic by The Beastie Boys
I like the 4 little circuit diagram dudes hanging out at 4:32 :ø
You should have seen my cats react when he hears that voco-delay The first time 😳😂
you basically made an early Boys Noize track there in the end :P great work!
By your command, imperious leader!
Cool! Has a KMFDM vibe to the voice. Awesome! Also makes me think Beastie Boys as well.
its a cybotron from battlestar galactica. all us oldies know that. really cool.
Thanks
3:00 The Smash Aliens called - they want their colleague back!
Die Stimme der Energie!
Cool Dalek voice🪠
Pretty rad 😎
nowhere near your level but i found running a mic into an overdrive pedal allowed me to use my voice for heavy metal sounding power chords. That was kinda cool so i got a bowie stylaphone and a gen x1 stylaphone and a few mic input splitters then plugged them all in together in series, then got some ever more interesting cool sounds as the input splitter let me plug a guitar in too.. and the x1 allowed you to feed audio into it too which it was able to do synth things too. Thats probably the functions of two of your basic modules and you have walls of hundreds of them. You must have fun making wierd sounds
Hope to see you in bgt
your seventies twin appears to hail from liverpool. i can see him saying "calm down, calm down!"
Brilliant video cheers 👍😃😎🤘
Going to build one of these from scratch …
Thanks.
Diggin' the 80's dress up----Although you look like one of the Scousers off Harry Enfields show lolololo!
That Digital Delay looks decent
A vocoder was used in the SIGSALY system during WW2 for secure, encrypted communication.
Classic!!! How many were started to be built and was never completed? Heaps!
16:35 when you're calling tech support but you are on hold for an hour
This episode was freaking awesome! Need more vocoder music :)
brilliant.
YOU HAVE A VOCODER, HOLY SHIT!
Funkin' Awesome.
Almost spat out my muesli when you said Powertran e-t-i. I hear something completely different.
Great ! We need more Robot Voice !!
What does a harmonica thru a vocoder sound like?
There is a guy in the IOM that likes to do this sort of thing as well as solar electronics.
So that's how they did the evil computer voice in the film Collossus. 😊
Sam nice documentacion
BY YOUR COMMAND
Which setting is more fun, Cyberman or Dalek?
I really enjoyed this one ! Just past 14 minutes I thought you were about to go into DALEK mode. :-) I remember them when they first came out, ( black and white ). While I'm here, Just wondered if you'd had time to do a bit of tuning on the organ ? ps, I still play around with my old Echoman EM150 analogue echo unit, good fun. Take care and keep it up
POWERTRAN!
The Buchla module 296t is coming to eurorack from Tiptop soon and i have seen others (even a kit version, bt i cannot now remember the manufacturer), so if someone likes this vocoder and cannot get this particular one, those are an alternative.