So i was thinking if it would be possible to create a pedal which has the same effect of a talkbox (that the guitar seems to speak) in which the human voice is generated from a speaker/transducer inside the pedal? (Just wondering :icon_biggrin:)
What do you envision controlling that "voice", modulating it? If you're looking for something that is just repeating a phrase, you could have a looper or a sampler as the modulator, but I'm not 100% sure what you're picturing.
Roger
well I don't exactly know... but i was thinking of something similar to the korg miku, but instead of it saying many phrases, it would only say 1 or 2 default presets... so instead of the pedal sampling the guitar signal, there would just be an internal speaker and reciever that has a similar concept as the talkbox
What about farting in tune..??
Quote from: antonis on June 02, 2020, 08:51:16 AM
What about farting in tune..??
If i can record some farts and play it in this circuit... perhaps.... ;) That would be interesting tone ;) ;) ;)
heh heh
just do a search for "fart keyboard"
yeh, I have one!!!!!! ::)
there's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aiqZzssUPs
and this:
https://www.burpandfartpiano.com/
yeh, I actually have one!!!!!
https://www.amazon.com/sky-rocket-prank-star-piano/dp/b00fn6rav8
8)
"Talking" pedals attempt to mimic human vocal characteristics by using two counterswept bandpass filters to simulate movement of formants. I wouldn't call them accurate, but they certainly sound more like a voice than they sound like an autowah or wah.
A recent thread asked about an auto-wah using an LFO ( https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=124587.0 ). I suspect that what 11-90-AN is asking about/for could be reasonably achieved by having two bandpass filters independently swept by independent LFOs. The passbands, and their respective Q and range of sweep would need to be chosen wisely, and empirically. While the LFOs would be unsynced, they would need to aim for comparable speeds, since one would not normally move one part of your vocal tract at a different rate than any other. As well, there would be points in the sweep-cycle when it would, and wouldn't, sound like speech, as the passbands/formants achieve relationships similar to and different from what your throat normally does.
Here's some very vocal sounding patches I came up half by accident with using SpinCAD (and some hand editing to increase the resonance of the filters). They are, as Mark mentioned, two resonant filters sweeping in opposite directions. Triggering with the guitar envelope makes for a very dynamic and interactive effect. I'm almost surprised that people haven't formed entire ensembles based on this sound.
https://soundclick.com/r/s7roow
https://soundclick.com/r/s7rm8m
DL
I was reminded that the EHX Bass Balls pedal has two envelope-swept bandpass filters. There are times when it sounds vaguely voice-like. The trim-pots it uses to tune the bandpass filters can be set to stagger the filters farther apart or closer together. They also partly set the width of sweep in response to the rectified envelope. I imagine some interesting and vaguely voice-like sounds might be obtained by sweeping the lower filter with an LFO, while maintaining the envelope-driven sweep of the upper filter. I will note that, when the attack time is kept very short (e.g., reducing the 100R resistor to 47 or even 22R), the filter will seem to only sweep downward, because the fall time is so long, relative to the rise time. That's an advantage in attempting to mimic voice, and especially since we want to be able to have a more responsive upper formant, as the lower one moves around.
Rich/kipper4, haven't you dickered around with something along these lines, or am I only imagining it?
If it's got anything to do with envelopes, then that'll be Rich. I hear the Royal Mail is one of his projects. ;D
the fact that talkboxes seem to "blend" the human voice and the guitar, gave me the idea to substitute the human voice for a preset fart recording, for example, set on a loop. So when you play the guitar, the sound of the fart wil be blended in with the guitar sound.
Not sure if this pedal would be useful, just curious haha :icon_biggrin:
I'm pretty sure that Alexander Graham Bell, just prior to spilling the acid and saying "I need you Watson", had ripped a few good ones into the microphone for Watson's benefit, but that story got suppressed in favor of the one we all know today. And so on with every recording medium. I had a tape recorder as a kid. Wow with double and half speed we were in hysterics for weeks at a time. Fast forward to the early days of digital recording on a PC, there it was again!
I think the exact phrase was "Watson, come here quick. I need you to pull my finger!"
Maybe OT but, all this talk about fart reminded me of a recent thought: the minute they invent tele-odor, I'm making prank fart-calls.
Quote from: 11-90-an on June 02, 2020, 02:32:21 PM
the fact that talkboxes seem to "blend" the human voice and the guitar...
Butt... (pun intended)
...they don't. At least usually not. I mean, I suppose you could sing at the same time and if you're loud enough compared to what comes out of the tube, you'd get some mix of the voice with the guitar. I didn't really think that was particularly normal usage for a talkbox, though. What you're actually getting is just the filter action of the resonant space changing around the sound source.
I'm not sure a fart would work the same way. You could jam a tube up there if you want, but most of us don't have a lot of control over the shape of that space or its aperature. I did once experience a noise/performance "artist" who jammed a (small) microphone up there while they danced around. They got some pretty interesting feedback that changed based on position. Not exactly the same thing...
cof cof
talkalyzer
vocalizer
diphtongizer
talking pedal
there's been quite a few....
I am pretty sure this is not what the OP is looking for. As far as I understand, you don't need to talk or sing for a talkbox to affect the sound of your guitar. It is a speaker directed into your mouth, then you put your mouth by a microphone. If you had a talkbox directed into some other resonant cavity with a way to change the size/shape of the cavity using your foot (or some other muscle), it seems like you would be halfway there.
Quote from: r080 on June 04, 2020, 12:25:52 PM
I am pretty sure this is not what the OP is looking for. As far as I understand, you don't need to talk or sing for a talkbox to affect the sound of your guitar. It is a speaker directed into your mouth, then you put your mouth by a microphone.
Ahhh... Looks like what I thought a talkbox is is wrong :icon_redface:.
Thanks anyway, guys, I was able to still learn new things (And I think some of you could say the same :icon_biggrin:)
It sure looks like the user is talking, and in some respects actually talking helps to form one's mouth cavity in the appropriate way, but yes, no talking is actually required, just the mouth cavity.
That said, it takes considerable practice to make such devices sound vaguely voice-like. For gigging purposes, the requirement for a voice mic risks feedback on smaller stages. I have Danelectro Free Speech pedal, which crowds a pair of small electret capsules at the mouth-tube entrance, making it easier to block any extraneous sound from being picked up.
Anyone ever inhale while playing a jaw harp? Don't tell me you never inhaled.
Sorry, this is months old, but it occurs to that the OP might get close with a vocoder. That's a pretty complex circuit for a pedal, though it could be done digitally. Then again, a ring modulator can do things that are surprisingly similar with the right inputs, and we've got a few of those out there.
Quote from: 11-90-an on June 02, 2020, 09:00:23 AM
Quote from: antonis on June 02, 2020, 08:51:16 AM
What about farting in tune..??
If i can record some farts and play it in this circuit... perhaps.... ;) That would be interesting tone ;) ;) ;)
i gotta fuzzbox that sounds like farts in a blender if ya need the schematic, let me know.... lol
Quote from: pinkjimiphoton on November 13, 2020, 01:29:33 PM
Quote from: 11-90-an on June 02, 2020, 09:00:23 AM
Quote from: antonis on June 02, 2020, 08:51:16 AM
What about farting in tune..??
If i can record some farts and play it in this circuit... perhaps.... ;) That would be interesting tone ;) ;) ;)
i gotta fuzzbox that sounds like farts in a blender if ya need the schematic, let me know.... lol
Ooh yes.. i've been looking for a fuzz to build... Schem? Yessiree would be very apreciated.
here, try this... kinda like pitched static lol
nope. post image is down. try later if i remember
Let's take a step or two back.
There are essentially two basic approaches to mimicking speech sounds with a pedal. One is aiming for speech-like sounds on demand. So this would include vocoding, envelope-controlled "diphthongizers" and anti-wah arrangements, treadle-controlled talking pedals, and maybe even the Korg Miku.
The other approach, which hasn't really been explored in this thread, is random speech-like sounds. That is, swept filters that are not necessarily corresponding to what the player aims for at this moment, but which often line up in a way that mimics formant combinations humans use when they talk. In other words, it kinda sounds like talking, though not necessarily the talking you were aiming for. Essentially what I'm talking about is tweaked bandpass filters (appropriate to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd formants) being swept independently by their own LFOs; the LFOs themselves having a sweep width, and maybe even speed, corresponding to the typical range of the given formant.
the ludwig phase II, madbean's honeydripper, dino's talkalyzer, ronan's talking pedal clone will all get ya in the ballpark pretty well.
i like the idea of random lfo sweeps of different formants. i think some of the digitech and zoom stuff kinda did that. its vocal-ish, but not anything particularly speech like.
when dino came to visit years ago, i remember him making the dang ludwig seem to say a couple words. ;) it was really cool.
i think if ya follow mark's approach tho, you may get a useable idea. i'd think maybe make the r/c networks where the first three formants occur so that you can tweak the bandwidth or frequency range of each filter would probably be important for best effect.
if you could make a couple filters cross like a bassballs does, and maybe control a third formant with a wah pedal or similar may be an interesting way to get a lot of mileage out of a fairly simple concept.
i built tiny dazzler's formant wah thing years ago, i can't recall the name of it, but it did the formant thing really well... mouthmeister i think he called it.
or maybe it would be better to place the third formant under lfo control with random waveforms like in a sample and hold circuit, and "wah" the other two in a wah/antiwah kinda setup by treadle.
the bitch comes down to which formant is under what kind of control, i'd think. some vocal formants are more speech like than others, some are hardly noticeable.
making popcorn to see who comes up with the next genius idea here. remember, fuzz will make it stand out a bit more. i always found fairly brutal fuzzes like in the ludwig helped generate more consonant noises from your pick bashing against stuff, which is as important <to me, anyways> as the vowel sounds themselves if ya wanna make it sound like its talking.
but imho the easiest way to accomplish this is still with a classic talkbox setup of a full range driver, an a/b box and some tubing.
You touch on a reasonable compromise, Sir James.
Consider something like a Bassballs (where the bandpass filters don't cross over, as you imply, but rise and fall together) but with 3 bandpass filters. The lowest one is foot-controlled, via a simple resistance to ground, while the upper two are LFO swept.
Now that I think of it, I had mentioned using a guitar-mounted-and-pinky-finger-modulated photocell control in past. A person could work the lowest formant from the guitar, using their pinky finger, while they play. Once in a while the upper two swept formants would conspire, and line up with the lower formant to make vaguely speech-like sounds.
i love the way you think, mark ;)
when i say cross over i realize i got it wrong lol.. i tune 'em to get the nastiest gargles i can from them usually. i still have a pcb you donated me years ago in my to-do list. it was working, i did something, ooops. one day...
but to go one further, instead of pinky control, how about we take the super low road for oddity, and do a soul kiss kinda design? instead of a pinky pot, use an ldr in a tube ya stick in your mouth. open the beak, filter goes squeak. then it would be an ELECTRONIC emulation of a talkbox using an actual facial protruberance, while not being a traditional talkbox at all. make that filter have a decent envelope follower and i postulate you may even be able to get a quasi vocordor-ish talking box effect. what better way to generate formants than thru use of the human vocal orifice and associated glands and uvulas and fillings and stuff? make funny phaces, and get funny noises.
maybe i DID do too much lds with spock at berkley...
I also like the way you think, Mark :icon_mrgreen:
Thing is, this thread only started because I didn't realize that the talkbox sends the guitar signal into your mouth and your mouth acts like a cavity that dampens/attenuates the signal when you open and close your mouth... and the mic pics everything up... before I thought that the tube would pick up your voice and somehow mix it with the signal... :icon_lol:
But yes... that would be a really good idea... 1 controlled via expression pedal, 1 controlled by LFO, and one envelope controlled? :icon_eek:
And I like your thinking, too. The idea of one modulated, one foot-controlled, and one envelope-controlled, makes sense in a conceptual way.
Imagine you're having a conversation, maybe even an argument, with someone over dinner. Some formants will vary as you chew your food, some will remain constant and deliberate, and others will change as your emotion peaks here and there.
A number of years back, RG sent me a note with an idea for inclusion of white noise to mimic "breathiness". In the current context, mimicry of human speech might also be enhanced by inclusion of pink or other noise in some deliberative way. Perhaps a noise source could be/provide much of the content of the 3rd formant
......................like maybe shitty leaky noisy useless germanium transistors that we've ALL gotten at some point?
The received wisdom about transistor noise sources in the synth community is to install a socket and try them out. I am personally not aware of any simple criterion or spec one can look for or measure to assess noise qualities that would be more accurate or reliable than just plugging the tranny in and listening.
OK, I just had a totally ridiculous sounding thought.
Bear with me here....
Think of an upside down bowl that is sealed at the top.
Use a rubber or rubber like material that is flexible enough that you can easily distort it, but stiff enough to have memory.
Turn it upside down and cut a hole in it.
Basically, something to simulate the inside of the mouth that you can distort with your foot.
Might be interesting.
Also may help those who tend to drool when they use a talk box (Or am I the only one?).
Quote from: Mark Hammer on November 15, 2020, 05:23:58 PM
The received wisdom about transistor noise sources in the synth community is to install a socket and try them out. I am personally not aware of any simple criterion or spec one can look for or measure to assess noise qualities that would be more accurate or reliable than just plugging the tranny in and listening.
Just to follow up on this, I'm just finishing up one of Kevin Mitchell's Mini Sample & Hold units ( https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=122371.msg1154322#msg1154322 what an absolutely marvellous circuit, Kevin! :icon_biggrin: ) The schematic calls for a 2N3904 to use as the noise source. I tried out a few I had but none of them grabbed me. Serendipitously, the parts drawer that had the 3904s also had some BC307s, so I figured "what the hell", plugged one into the socket, and it was magic. More variation and usable range. I should also note, for the record, that I didn't have any BF245 JFETs, so I used J113s, and they worked like a charm.
Moral of the story: if a noise circuit relies on a transistor as the source, use a socket and try a bunch out.
Mike Matthews also had the light activated wah. You put it in your mouth and by opening and closing your mouth, it would control the cutoff frequency of the wah. It was pretty cool for the time.
what about a vocoder,
you can put in the guitar in one side and a microphone or any XLR input on the other side and it tracks the formants of the voice and uses that as a filter over the input signal. IDK if it works with anything else then human voice, if not, you could plug in a bunch of other sounds like farts and chainsaws
cheers, Iain
I wonder if the fact that the guitar sound goes *in* through the mouth, rather than coming out from the throat makes a difference?
I did some research into vocal synthesis at one point, and for accurate formant synthesis, you need four or five resonant peaks. Some are more important than others, and it depends on the vowel sound (A, E, I, O, U), so you can often get something "speech-like" with less. As people have mentioned, a couple of bandpass filters is the bare minimum. Maybe the mouth only has a couple of resonances, and the others come from the throat or the vocal cords themselves? Maybe the throat is relevant for a talkbox too, I don't know. You're feeding the sound in at the other end of the system though, for sure.
If you wanted something more sophisticated, you'd have to set up a filter bank with four or five filters, and you'd need to control the frequency, level, and Q of each filter. Then you program in the known vowel resonances, and get the system to interpolate from one to another as you twiddle some control or other. I was working on something like this, done digitally, but analog would be possible with maybe a processor to control it and do the interpolations.
Good data on the actual human resonances here:
https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/Papers/HillenbrandGettyClarkWheeler.pdf (https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/Papers/HillenbrandGettyClarkWheeler.pdf)
if you like sketchy speech synthesis, check out the pink trombone
https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ (https://dood.al/pinktrombone/)
its quit a fun app to play with for like 5 minutes, then it just gets annoying
cheers, Iain
Quote from: ElectricDruid on November 18, 2020, 08:34:30 AM
I wonder if the fact that the guitar sound goes *in* through the mouth, rather than coming out from the throat makes a difference?
I did some research into vocal synthesis at one point, and for accurate formant synthesis, you need four or five resonant peaks. Some are more important than others, and it depends on the vowel sound (A, E, I, O, U), so you can often get something "speech-like" with less. As people have mentioned, a couple of bandpass filters is the bare minimum. Maybe the mouth only has a couple of resonances, and the others come from the throat or the vocal cords themselves? Maybe the throat is relevant for a talkbox too, I don't know. You're feeding the sound in at the other end of the system though, for sure.
If you wanted something more sophisticated, you'd have to set up a filter bank with four or five filters, and you'd need to control the frequency, level, and Q of each filter. Then you program in the known vowel resonances, and get the system to interpolate from one to another as you twiddle some control or other. I was working on something like this, done digitally, but analog would be possible with maybe a processor to control it and do the interpolations.
Good data on the actual human resonances here:
https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/Papers/HillenbrandGettyClarkWheeler.pdf (https://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/Papers/HillenbrandGettyClarkWheeler.pdf)
Thanks for that, Tom. Useful reference material. The only caveat I would offer is that it aims to identify the formants required for accurate identification/differentiation of various phoneme combinations. My sense here is that our collective goal is not so much to achieve accuracy as much as some reasonable verisimilitude. It's like the difference between a detailed-enough portrait that lets you know who is depicted in this one vs that, and asking what you need to include in a stick-man animation that looks kinda sorta like human movement.
I don't know if you've ever stood and watched the monkeys - virtually any lower primate - at the zoo, but one is struck by how "human" their movements and facial expressions can be, even though you know they would never be mistaken for humans. I think we're collectively looking for something that, in passing, sounds like it
could be speech, even though we know it isn't.
Quote from: pinkjimiphoton on November 13, 2020, 01:29:33 PM
i gotta fuzzbox that sounds like farts in a blender if ya need the schematic, let me know.... lol
A bit OT, but I'm still waiting to see this broccoli smoothie schematic. :icon_lol:
Quote from: iainpunk on November 18, 2020, 08:51:26 AM
if you like sketchy speech synthesis, check out the pink trombone
https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ (https://dood.al/pinktrombone/)
its quit a fun app to play with for like 5 minutes, then it just gets annoying
cheers, Iain
Now I probably can't go to sleep without hearing woaaaaAaaOooooaAhHhooooAoooooaAo everywhere... :icon_mrgreen:
Quote from: EBK on November 18, 2020, 10:37:14 AM
Quote from: pinkjimiphoton on November 13, 2020, 01:29:33 PM
i gotta fuzzbox that sounds like farts in a blender if ya need the schematic, let me know.... lol
A bit OT, but I'm still waiting to see this broccoli smoothie schematic. :icon_lol:
yup me too... :icon_lol:
> ....four or five resonant peaks. ...you can often get something "speech-like" with less.
So few household sounds have even two peaks, 2 peaks gives a strong suggestion of "almost speech". (Also as hearing is lost though loud exposure and old age, those peaks are lost, "speech banana".)
> You're feeding the sound in at the other end of the system though, for sure.
There is a theorem in room acoustics that the transmission path measures the same from stage to listener or listener to stage. I know this is first-order useful thinking. I have not crawled into a throat to confirm.
Quote from: PRR on November 18, 2020, 02:30:26 PM
> ....four or five resonant peaks. ...you can often get something "speech-like" with less.
So few household sounds have even two peaks, 2 peaks gives a strong suggestion of "almost speech". (Also as hearing is lost though loud exposure and old age, those peaks are lost, "speech banana".)
> You're feeding the sound in at the other end of the system though, for sure.
There is a theorem in room acoustics that the transmission path measures the same from stage to listener or listener to stage. I know this is first-order useful thinking. I have not crawled into a throat to confirm.
I don't know anything about room acoustics, but I know that a shape one way around is different from a shape the other way around. Whether that is significant or not in this case, I don't know. You're suggesting that not - so the shape and distance from source doesn't make any odds? Otherwise "wide then narrow" would be different from "narrow then wide", right? The "transmission path" you talk about from the lips to the wide cavity of the mouth is much less far than the distance from the vocal cords to the same cavity. So despite the fact the distances from one end to the other are the same measured from either end, the distances from one end to the relevant important structures and features aren't the same at all. Does that matter, or not?
> "wide then narrow" would be different from "narrow then wide", right?
No. Same path, direction does not matter.
I'm sure there is fine-print I have forgotten.
As long as there is only one path, it should be the same. However, where there are many paths, I would expect there to be differences in how these interfere. My gut tells me that amplitude does not care about the path direction in the end but amplitude as well as phase at the points where paths interfere will be different for different points of origin. I have zero evidence to back that up, though. But I am pretty sure we need to consider interaction between paths to understand what's going on in a resonance chamber.
Andy
(https://i.postimg.cc/94b23yHD/ANCIENT-PROPHET-FUZZ-1a-pcb-schem.png) (https://postimg.cc/94b23yHD)
(https://i.postimg.cc/jwkr2K5K/ancient-prophet-fuzz-1a-schematic.png) (https://postimg.cc/jwkr2K5K)
(https://i.postimg.cc/ZBqSJ0JV/ANCIENT-PROPHET-FUZZ-1-A-VEROBOARD.png) (https://postimg.cc/ZBqSJ0JV)
this thing should sound like a fart in a blender for ya lol
unless i'm forgetting, which is possible/plausible/likely
use at your own risk. i DID end up selling a bunch of these way back when, for some reason. can get enough fuzz where your guitar sounds almost like pitched static.
Quote from: PRR on November 20, 2020, 09:18:23 PM
> "wide then narrow" would be different from "narrow then wide", right?
No. Same path, direction does not matter.
I'm sure there is fine-print I have forgotten.
QuoteThere is a theorem in room acoustics that the transmission path measures the same from stage to listener or listener to stage
this tells you that funnels/horns are good for boosting your voice, but also good for louder listening, not that the voice is equally amplified if you turn the horn around. i hope that clears it up a little.
what teh tube in mouth thing of the talk box basically does is like making a hole in the side of the horn and screaming in to that hole, this takes out a big part of the effectiveness of the horn, as it is directly linked to length, volume and curvature.
cheers, Iain