Speaking of vocoders - this is a vocoder effect I really like:
Haven’t though about this song for quite some time - my brain might not work today, but it’s good enough for being sentimental about the times where they made such great filtered acid lines … and of course all the sweaty nights we danced from dawn to dusk, except for chatting up some nice techno girls 
I like the vocals, cause they’re more distorted than robotic…
Ok, I added five or six different Minimal Audio Cluster Delay effects, just to test weirdness. Some are cool, but it’s getting boring quickly.
The challenge is that I have about 30 seconds of lyrics. I want to keep the first 30 seconds “conventional”, and fill the rest (up to 3-4 minutes) with maximum schizophrenia, so I have to cut and destroy the existing vocals.
I want the people on the dance floor either to b@rf and/or to never come back from their trip, something like that
Ok, playing around with effects now to destroy vocals.
Got some nice results now, but no “Yay!” feeling yet. That means: it s#cks!
I’m looking for away to lengthen the “Hurensohn” (= “son of a bitch”) to “Huuuuuuuuuureeeeeeeennnnnnnnsooooooooooooooohn”, with some fast stuttering(?), so it sounds kind-of metallic, and the pitch going up at first and then down.
Like here (from 2:24):
I guess, I need to use a sampler , but how?
This is what perplexity says:
*
Some producers also recreate the effect by combining stretch with gating/sequencing:*
After stretching, run the audio through:
A gate with a 32‑ or 64‑step pattern (or a step sequencer plugin) to chop the stretched vocal into rhythmic slices.
Or use Studio One’s Audio Bend / slice to transient, then trigger slices via MIDI in a sampler for custom rhythms.
Huh?
The gate solution looks promising but a) what is a gate and b) huh?
A gate is a modulated switch that lets the signal through when open and blocks it when closed. You can modulate them with the usual sources like LFOs, but a step sequencer that lets the signal through on the “beats” and blocks it on the “rests” is common. Check out Kilohearts’ Trance Gate snapin for an example. Super useful.
Ha - I just played around with that. It’s the easiest solution.
I now get the envisioned gating effect, but I still don’t have that nice metallic tone that I hear in “Am I wrong”.
So, for the time being, I just conventionally stretched the vocals in the crazy part, put some strange delay on it, and put it with one beat offset over the original vocals. It’s spooky and very very weird.
Love it!
I think that even this conventional solution will be too crazy for my park punk chick, as this touches on old school Avant Garde stuff, almost Stockhausen, which I respect very much!!! And it remains danceable … for non-old people (it’s fast!).
But for her it will be intellectual mumbo jumbo, of course.
The “youth of today” does not know about heritage…
I’ll go for this anyway, see where it leads me, and try to break the breakbeat, probably, instead of doing more harm to the vocals.
I can use the crazy vocal effects learnings for the “Einstürzende Neubauten”-style song that I’m planning to do, based on the coffee machine that I sampled some time ago.
My coffee machine looks so peaceful & innocent, but the samples are hard and aggressive.
I could not listen to it for more than 20 seconds at a time, so that’s perfect, I guess!?!?!
I did not have any inspiration for a song using my coffee machine, but that sound & some destructive vocals makes a great song that reflects my emotions about the elections that we had last weekend
Yeah. Kilohearts snap-ins are great. Deeper capabilities than the simple UIs suggest. And Phase Plant is killer. Just not free. 
Don’t you EVER mention Phase plant again!!!
I’m very interested in that instrument. But I also want Pigments 7 - just waiting until it gets to 100€ again…
No promises. 
EDIT: My new Lenovo ThinkStation P3 (to replace my 6 year old ThinkPad P17 that cratered last week), 2x2 TB internal SSDs, 1x32 GB DDR5 RAM (to get me to 64 GB) and a Display Port cable are all arriving tomorrow. I mention that because I’ve been running on my Surface Pro Snapdragon Win11 ARM system since the P17 crashed. Bitwig, Studio Pro and Reaper all have native ARM versions, but almost all of my plugins are x64. I installed all of my Arturia plugins. None, as if F’ING ZERO, of them ran on the Win11 ARM. Even the Arturia installer app was super flaky, so I had to uninstall everything, including Pigments. Sigh. I’ll be spending the weekend getting the new ThinkStation up and running.
Oh, but that’s my definition of fun! My friends always give there old hardware, I refurbish it … and give it to the needy. It’s cool to work on old machines and puzzle them to something usable!
It’s also a great way to relieve my social conscience…
Maybe you can refurbish your ThinkPad P17 and give it away?
How do you like it? Compared to Phase Plant?
Phase Plant looks complicated…
It’s basically the best buy for modern synths.
Phase Plant is only as complicated as you make it. That’s it’s best part.
Pigments has one of the best user interfaces of synths out there. It sounds pretty good. I don’t think it sounds particularly special, but its UI makes it a pleasure to get to where you want to go with it. It also has an outstanding arpeggiator and sequencer that you can use with other MIDI instruments.
I already have Synthmaster 1, 2 & 3 … and some other synths (Massive etc.).
Is there a real need for Phase Plant or Pigments?
Mind you, I am only using presets, alter them a little (without knowing what I’m doing) … and definitely don’t want learn all the ins & outs of building my own presets right now…
OK, so my Park Punk Chick had to take all of her medication and called the 911 of psychiatric help after she heard my new version
She was not amused, as expected.
Too many experiments going on. To me it felt like a 80s avant garde vernisage afterparty track, you know: where the cool art school chicks go.
But for her it was intellectual masturbation. I disagree: it was surely not intellectual
Now I have created this rather conventional version, which also makes it easy for her to sing live, especially cause she really wants to use her new megaphone:
Booooriiiiinnggg!
I will work on my version anyway, as I fell in love with the utter weirdness. F#ck the youth of today
Need? no.
But what does need really matter here?
Hahaha! Yeah, it matters to me.
I only try to purchase stuff that really makes an impact on what I do.
So: no vanity purchases, nothing without added value.
Take Synthmaster: it’s very cool, BUT: the UI s#cks, especially the browsing presets function. I have thousands of presets, but I think that only a few dozens are actually good.
I feel stressed by only thinking of trying to find the right preset with Synthmaster…
I do like the GUI of Pigments - design-wise - but if it will not give me actual additional usable sounds or an easier way to access those, it has no added value for me.
Phase Plant seems very powerful, but one look at it makes me crumble into a catatonic position, while s#cking my thumb. I just know that I will not use it.
Bottom line: synths have no high priority for me, as I try to built most songs around a bass guitar line (often improvised while noodling in the park), and then add the synth stuff to fill the gaps.
One way or another I find the right tone, but often I have to go through all my synths & presets to find it. It’s such a drag!!!
In a perfect world I would only have one synth plugin and remove the others … I really long for simplicity!
I mean - you’re just looking for presets and don’t care about leaning synthesis. This is super self-defeating already since you already have several outstanding and capable synths you could make do whatever you wanted to hear, if you would put the time in to learn (by study and practice, not asking questions.)
But from what you say you don’t care about that potential, so no, Pigments and Phase Plant wouldn’t be good ideas for you. They are synths designed with sound design in mind (as are the Synthmaster series and Massive X).
For what you have described, you don’t need a synth at all, you might as well just use samples.
What actually would probably be perfect for you is not Pigments, but Arturia Analog Lab. Analog Lab is a selection of thousands of presets selected across all the instruments in the V Collection line. You can’t really modify them meaningfully as if you had the actual synth, but there are some simple tone controls.
Ah, I have Analog Lab, but a smaller version, not the full version.
It’s niche, but I don’t use it much, as it takes up quite a lot of processing power sometimes.
Synthmaster is very light in CPU usage, which is great.
True!
But I want to focus on making songs, not loosing myself into technology.
I envy my park punk chick: she sings for 10 minutes to a metronome, that’s it, bye-bye!
And I work for several days to make a song out of it, most of the time “fighting” technology, to get the tone I want.
I work with sample based stuff (but NEVER loops!), but for synth sounds I try to limit this, as I do change the presets … sometimes a lot!
I just don’t know what I’m doing. I just do what a promiscuous friend of mine does: fumble the knobs
There’s nothing wrong with a primarily sample based workflow. Lots of artists do this. One thing that might be a better fit for you is something like UVI Workstation, Decent Sampler, HALion, or any other good sample-based instrument that you then get sample packs for.
I use samples for those deep boomy kick drums that you hear in some hiphop and d&b stuff. Didn’t know how to make them otherwise.
And of course, I use sample based virtual instruments for Taiko (love those!), cello, double-bass, guitar, ochestral and other traditional analog instruments.
But for electronic sounds it feels wrong, don’t know why.
In the end I do what works for me, no worries. Presets can be inspiring too, and pictures like these are a nightmare to me:
This feels right to me:
That’s exactly what the UI to UVI, NI, Steinberg, and most other sample-based instruments looks like.
What you’re looking at there is the macro view. The Phase Plant image is showing the same types of controls (they are the row of macro buttons across the top), just without the pretty backdrop. UVI Falcon, the most complex and terrible UI out there, also has a macro control view that looks like these macro panes
The easiest explanation is it’s because you’re wrong
I wouldn’t even suggest you had to go with UVI, their soundware (UVI’s name for sample based instruments) is largely good but there’s other great options too. Sample-based workflows and instruments are really common.
Also want to point out - what you’re seeing is a nice thing about Phase Plant - it cleanly lays out all the information you need on one page.
That’s also a sample based patch, btw
