It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
They did so much more. Thomas made Call On Me, a track he found unsatisfying, and it still ended up as a massive hit because it was stolen from him.
The vocal effects of Daft Punk
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#32Very 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.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#33Ah, 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... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thomas Bangalter's father was a French disco producer and songwriter who helped them a lot in their early career. Sure helps.
They used the VSM-201 for "Random Access Memories", their last Studio Album. At that time they didn't need such help anymore, they famously rented a huge amount of equipment and large studio-floors (i.e. they recorded simultaneously with microphones from different decades because Thomas heard a difference and wanted this reflected on the record).
Above all, the biggest help from his father was probably to insist that they keep the ownership of their music when signing with any label, regardless of any money, because as a producer he knew that this is how artists get screwed by record labels.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#34It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
To be fair, they've done a lot more than just studio albums, from collaborations to live albums, concerts and whatever more. Personal favorite is probably Alive 2007 that went on repeat until Mom complained about the windows in the living room downstairs almost breaking.
The TRON:Legacy soundtrack was an incredible piece of work. Fit the movie exactly.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#35It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
To be fair, they've done a lot more than just studio albums, from collaborations to live albums, concerts and whatever more. Personal favorite is probably Alive 2007 that went on repeat until Mom complained about the windows in the living room downstairs almost breaking.
Funny because Mom alternated between a Bob Marley greatest hits and Daft Punk Discovery and Human after all records when doing the ironing and cleaning at home.
No idea what she is listening to these days when doing those chores.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#36It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
(They also did the Soundtrack for Tron:Legacy, basically their fifth studio album)
Anyway, I keep remembering how panned 'Human After All' was, and how bad the reviews were because the album was too "mechanical" and was "missing the warmth of House", while this is EXACTLY how the genre evolved in the years to come and none of those music experts saw this.
Many journalists did a retrospective of it a few years later and admitted that they misjudged it.
It's not that Daft Punk drove the industry in this direction, the album wasn't well-received by most at that time. They showed the destination of a journey while people didn't even realize they are traveling...
In the end, it appears that 'Random Access Memories' is one of their least innovative and "lasting" albums. It's probably their most successful one, the most complex to conceptualize and produce, but IMO it has the least unique character of all their productions.
Looking at the whole picture, the product of "Random Access Memories" is less the music, but the duo celebrating the process of production itself...
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#37It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
(They also did the Soundtrack for Tron:Legacy, basically their fifth studio album) Anyway, I keep remembering how panned 'Human After All' was, and how bad the reviews were because the album was too "mechanical" and was "missing the warmth of House", while this is EXACTLY how the genre evolved in the years to come and none of those music experts saw this. Many journalists did a retrospective of it a few years later a…
Random Access Memories was such a letdown. It's an OK disco album that doesn't innovate at all. Masterful recording, it sounds great of course, but it didn't take any risks. I listened to it twice and that was it.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#38It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
They did so much more. Thomas made Call On Me, a track he found unsatisfying, and it still ended up as a massive hit because it was stolen from him.
Imagine inventing pumping sidechain compression and finding it unsatisfying.
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never had the pleasure of a Sennheiser but when working in radio I got my hands on a lot of rack vocoders for doing branding, stings and idents. Funny how the number 9000 comes up a lot, like Roland VP9000 and Eventide H9000. 80 and 90s vintage ones like Korg VC-10 or Elektronik EM-26 had unique sounds, but tbh the modern digital recreations are amazing models. There's not a world of difference between vocoding, auto…
Did you listen to the example audio in the video? Soft synths and digital emulation can be absolutely amazing these days, but the VSM201 and Ultimate VoIS are in their own league. It’d be pretty easy to pick them out from a blind test with other vocoders. Oh, it also might be of interest that the IVL algorithm isn’t FFT-based. I think their harmonizers sound better than the rest, so maybe FFT isn’t the best way to go…
Yes exactly, I was really excited when I found out that you do not need a FFT to do speech processing.
If you look at the code of (phone/voice) codecs GSM/Speex/Opus you can see that you can estimate the spectral envelope (or the configuration of a physical tube model for the vocal tract) in time domain with linear prediction coefficients (LPC).
And it is simple, e.g. the often used Levinson-Durbin algorithm is just 22 lines of C code. It is an interesting exercise to build your own vocoder from scratch that fits in a single screen page.
Many of the code snippets I have seen (which likely have already processed your voice) are just translations of the Fortran code of the book "Linear Prediction of Speech" by Markel and Gray (1976).
Re: The vocal effects of Daft Punk
#40It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
Because those albums redefined the music industry, they also created the base platform for all live EDM concert with Coachella in 2006.
Daft punk had a large impact on music overall, they were ( are? ) really really good musicians.