Vocal synth mod#
Vocal synth mods#
Vocal synth free#
Vocal synth mac#

That last detail is unorthodox and really welcome. There are two control buses, both of which can be assigned with a learn control, and each of which has its own attack fader. And that’s actually pretty great.Ĭontrol.

But that’s what’s kind of extraordinary about this engine – all those vowel shifts that sound like vocalese and even sound like they have consonants are just clever use of rapid envelopes. (You can also use these mappings in those aforementioned modular worlds.)

Vocal synth mods#

The vowel and dynamics mods can also be mapped to external input, including key tracking or (if your keyboard supports it) aftertouch. (Think Reaktor, VCV Rack, Bitwig Studio, etc.) That makes Pipa a perfect choice both for something you want to play with a MIDI keyboard and something you want to drop into a modular environment and treat like a patchable oscillator. Again, because this is a synth, you can produce those effects y using live synthesizer controls and either routing in control or playing. The sounds you get in the demos largely have to do with setting the vowel shape and envelopes.

Vocal synth mod#

Note those Mod buttons next to vowel and dynamics. The human side of the voice control is the vowel, dynamics, and body/nose/air controls, which help you model the natural characteristics of the vocal tract.Įnvelopes and modulation. So you can get more artificial, synth-y sounds with fluctuation at zero, natural vocal sounds in the middle, and some more granular / textural sounds as you crank up fluctuation and randomness. Playing with fluctuation and randomness you can get a wide range of smoother, thinner sounds and richer textures, some of which begin to sound like instrumental-vocal hybrids. (You can also set the stereo stage using the pan and spatial width controls.) The granular bit is in “fluctuation,” “randomness,” and “voices.” The plural “voices” is actually just two, but you get sounds that resemble larger choruses depending on how you set other parameters.

Vocal synth free#

As in any voice synth, part of the artificiality comes from your ear’s ability to hear particular formant-pitch relations – and of course, you’re free to break those rules, so these are fluid qualities. You can choose “male” and “female” (which determines which wavetables are used) and play them across any pitch range, or use “mixed” to transition from one to the other automatically based on played pitch. But secondly, the controls give you more continuous parameters you can shift as you play – which is desirable in a synth. One, that sounds more organic and voice-like than just repeating a wavetable or using formant filters. What makes Pipa interesting is that it uses wavetables, but combines them with granular playback – so you get lots of overlapping wavetables for a smooth, consistent sound. (That’s the “dooh dooh” sound many of us grew up with on Roland and Yamaha General MIDI gear.) Simple digital synths of the 80s and 90s also tried using vocal wavetables, but it’d be more or less the same wavetable repeated everywhere, so it also sounds obviously artificial. Since the main challenge here is how you piece together little audio snippets into the finished result, the third method uses machine learning. Pipa is related to this, but with a very significant twist. Generally in combination with 2, you can also use sliced up wavetables. It’s that obviously artificial sound you may have heard – which is itself desirable. This family of approaches is the descendant of voice synthesis. It’s very effective, and it allows you to compose something that sounds like real singers. Yes, they’ll sound like a real chorus or vocalist, but the samples are so large you’re practically just playing a recording of the choir. You’re spoiled for choice with this – massive sample libraries with dozens of gigabytes of sounds. Pipa Vocal Synthesizer for iPad ĭigital instruments today tend to use one of three methods: (Sorry for not much heads-up on that.) Half off, so US$24.99 on desktop and $9.99 on iPad. It’s the work of a small but prolific boutique plug-in maker in Stockholm called Klevgrand.Īlso, crucial – if you read this today Tuesday 5 January, there are intro deals on both. But it’s really a synth, with all the fluid control of parameters you’d expect. So yes, this is the “vocalese” plug-in if you want it to be. It can make quirky vocal a capellas like you hear in the demos, but you can also treat it as a unique oscillator with some vocal-ish characteristics. It’s something that begs you to plug in a little MIDI keyboard and actually mess around, and you can bend it to all kinds of contexts.

I’ve been playing around with it a little late, but I absolutely adore this little gem.

Vocal synth mac#

Lying somewhere between organic and artificial in its sound, the vocal synth Pipa – available as both an iPad app and a Mac and Windows plug-in – is genuinely new and refreshing.