The vocal effects of Daft Punk

[madeofpalk]

Marc added some extra flavor https://mastodon.social/@marcedwards/114454783708869207

> This article is the longest piece I’ve published on Bjango’s site, and it took a couple of years of research. I purchased around 25 pieces of music gear. I emailed Imogen Heap, and to my surprise, someone from her team got back to me and confirmed the exact harmonizer used on Hide and Seek.

> It’s been a huge effort, and I’m confident it contains a lot of information that is not widely known. For those of you who are into Daft Punk, I hope it’s interesting.

[jedimastert]

It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.

[rickdeckard]

(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...

[cpitman]

Interstella 5555 is still one of my favorite movies. It's an anime movie where the entire soundtrack is the album Discovery. There are no vocals, the entire story is told by only the animation and music, and it works incredibly well.

[diggan]

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.

[Thaxll]

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.

[philistine]

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.

[marcedwards]

Absolutely. Hopefully there’s at least one more.

[trollied]

Was lucky enough to see them live at a small venue in Manchester in the 90s when I was at University. Epic times.

[olelele]

Both of them had separate labels and released a lot of other artists. See DJ Mehdis super hit for one of my favourite tracks ever :)

[smjburton]

Very 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.

[Isamu]

This is a really great deep dive, I wish I could upvote more to reward this kind of quality work.

[marcedwards]

Thank you! Your kind comment helps. :)

[amelius]

Reading the title I thought this was about extraordinary singing techniques. But nice article anyway.

[debrisapron]

I was a bit surprised by this article as it actually contradicts the account I always heard, which was their main vocal effect was a Roland VP-9000. If you listen to e.g. Harder Faster the effect is somewhere in between a vocoder & autotune, so I assumed that was the VP-9000. That said, this guy has clearly done his homework (pun intended) so I'm inclined to accept his version of events.

[marcedwards]

Yep, I’ve read that as well. The workflow and sound of the VP-9000 make me think it’s not what they used. It’s just so cumbersome to use, and it sounds pretty bad, and to my ears doesn’t match the results. The covers using DigiTech Vocalist EX models match so, so closely to the original songs.

It’s hard to know without an official word from our favourite robots, but I think you’d struggle to get the sound of any Daft Punk song out of a VP-9000. I’m really not sure where that rumour started.

I almost bought a VP-9000 to test, but sonically it’s so far off, I didn’t bother.

[brudgers]

If you have a vocoder, running a drum machine through the modulator won't sound all that much like daft punk, but will probably sound familiar. And maybe become part of your sound.

If you don't have a vocoder, Behringer recently released one as a Eurorack module for $99. It's fine.

[marcedwards]

Did you buy one? I think it’s very likely I’ll get a VC16, but they’re not in stock anywhere I purchase from yet.

[_DeadFred_]

Tangentially related if you make music in the box and want some simple Daft Punk breakdowns to experiment from:

https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-homework-synth-soun... https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-discovery-synth-sou...

[gen3]

Outstanding article, don't skip the youtube videos!

[marcedwards]

Thank you!

[brianstorms]

I love, no luuuurrve, this article. Just fantastic research and fantastically useful for a music project I'm workin' on.

[marcedwards]

Thank you! What are you working on? Sounds interesting.

[simonebrunozzi]

Speaking of Daft Punk: I have been so intrigued by their decision to never show their faces, and always use masks.

Anyone here has any good article, or explanation, or theory, of why is that the case?

[tecleandor]

Ah, 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)_/¯

[ofrzeta]

I didn't know the device. Also I didn't know that Kai Krause who later got famous through his Kai's Power Tools was an electronic music expert who sort of did sales for Sennheiser in 1977, according to this page (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennheiser_VSM_201 - only on the German WP, it seems). He also wrote the manual for it.

His German WP page also claims that he sold a VSM 201 to Neil Young in 1982! https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause

English WP has less details on that part of his life, especially the VSM 201 :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause

[speedgoose]

The article says that Daft Punk rented it.

I was surprised about how much better the Sennheiser sounds compared to the others. From the audio comparison in the first YouTube video. I did expect minor variations in the harmonics but the differences are quite significant between the models.

The other vocoder that sound almost as good is quite new and it seems to still be a prototype with a "contact us" price.

[nonrandomstring]

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, autotune, shifting, harmonising etc once you realise how all the fx are now based in FFT, convolution etc - just different variations on processing and control graphs - and so it's fun to create your own vocal effects in things like Max/MSP/PureData. Technically there's a distinction between "effects" and "processing" in terms of how much of the direct (parallel) signal is put through. Chers Believe is a yardstick for "effect", whereas a lot of what I hear with Daft Punk (and Air, Kraftwerk) is quite heavily processed as to disguise the original voice entirely - just letting a bit of top/sibilant through to define the stops and fricatives.

[bibinou]

Thomas Bangalter's father was a French disco producer and songwriter who helped them a lot in their early career. Sure helps.

[marcedwards]

I wonder how many are still in working condition today? Can’t be many. I’d love to see one in person, one day.

[LuciOfStars]

It's Daft Punk, are we really surpised? :-P

[pea]

Obligatory post of the legendary Bode Vocoder demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kc-bhOOLxE

[marcedwards]

Yes! Not sure how many times I’ve watched that, but I will watch it at least once every time someone posts it.

[xavriley]

I went down a similar rabbit hole at the start of my PhD and I wish I’d written more of it up. One of my theories is that they combined effects quite often. For example, “harder better faster stronger” seems more likely to be a talk box recorded for a single note, then looped, then run through an AutoTune rack unit with MIDI inputs to repitch it. I mention this a little bit in a talk I have at ADC 2022 https://youtu.be/uX-FVtQT0PQ?feature=shared

[marcedwards]

Thanks for the talk link! I’m going to try writing some harmonizer code next, so your video is right up my alley. I believe IVL’s algorithm also isn’t FFT-based. That makes sense, given the CPU power around on consumer tech at the time.

As for Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: It’s difficult to know for sure without comments from Daft Punk themselves, but the DigiTech Talker has such a unique, throaty sound, and it’s all over the Human After All album. My confidence varies with my guesses, but Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is one of the more confident ones, given how distinctive the Talker is. They also used so much DigiTech gear, especially on that album.

Hopefully they’ll see the article and let me know which bits are wrong.

[nprateem]

Any good software vocoders out there?

[marcedwards]

Yeah, there’s a few, and I probably should have included more plugins. I don’t mind the built in Ableton vocoder. The built in Logic Pro one is a bit average. I like the XILS 201 plugin, but it’s not as nice as many of the hardware vocoders I tested. I guess it depends what you‘re after and how much vocoder you need.

(Note that the XILS 201 plugin requires iLok. I think iLok sucks.)

[an_aparallel]

Fl studios "vocodex" is likely the most advanced vocoder there is.

128 bands, band redistribution, ability to further route using patcher, just look at its manual to see :)

Though its shrouded by the standard "FL is for rap dumb dumb" stigma. Marketing is one hell of a drug.

[_DeadFred_]

I really like Arturia's though it is a bit finicky, a CPU hog, and takes some post processing to clean up.

[sideshowb]

The built-in one in ableton is fine by me

[roblh]

Tangentially related; here's a great example of the classic daft punk vocal synth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mXLNnZvGJw

[nickisnoble]

But... Skala?!

[marcedwards]

We’re working hard on it! It’s going to be good. There’s some more info on this page: https://bjango.com/mac/skala/

Thanks. :)

[marcedwards]

Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it

[jorge_leria]

Same!