Using a Vocoder for Vocals

Okay, one last thing I like to do to my vocals is I have a vocoder on it.

Demonstration

Now, if we go into my track here, let me just show you what it sounds like. I just hit the button here with just one push of a button, and I'll show you how I have that set up.

Vocal Chain Setup

So inside my vocal chain here on my mic track, if we go in here, there's this one guy here called AutoTune and Vocoder.

• There are two chains here:
  • One chain has my AutoTune.
  • The other chain has my Vocoder.

The reason I have them in separate chains is that the AutoTune kind of affects the vocoder and it gives kind of weird things. So I wanted to separate them.

Activating the Vocoder

When I hit this button, you'll notice that the chain selector moves over one and you can hear my voice cut out there because it's basically waiting for the vocoder to happen. This allows me to bypass the AutoTune and focus on the vocoder.

Also, what happens when I hit the button? The light comes on. I've MIDI mapped this button to the same button here.

Synth Setup

By setting up the vocoder, you're going to need a synth setup. On my MPK track, I have this third chain here called Vocoder.

• Basically, when I hit this button, it turns on this analog instrument, which functions as the carrier for my vocoder.
• As carrier, I select external and I select my MPK track, and I want that for prefx.

So once I hit that button, I've basically turned off the AutoTune, turned on the vocoder, and activated this synth that is controlled again with this keyboard.

Quick Transition

It's a really quick way. It's very easy to switch, you know, between singing and then jump right into a vocoder.

Example

I'll give you a quick example:

• Just like that, you're switching between vocoder and regular voice.
• So now I can go back to singing.

Conclusion

Really fun effect! And it's so cool to be able to do that with the push of one button. That's the vocoder.