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Video Transcription
Hey guys what’s up, Alex Scott here with consordini.com got another plugin review for you guys today. This one’s gonna be a bit of a quickie but it’s a super super cool plugin that I think everybody should check out especially if they do stuff really really modern production, vocal production particularly, or really big like old-school 80s synth sounds.
This is the TAL vocoder version 2. Now this is a free plugin that is available for download online. Hundred percent free you don’t have to sign up for anything you can just go grab it from somewhere I think it’s hosted on a lot of a popular you know kind of free VST sites. Just google around, you should be able to find it no problem.
And it is a really really great just kind of standard straight-ahead vocoder. I use it all the time/ I’m gonna show you guys one particular instance that I love to use it in, which is using it to add a lot of cool character to a kind of solo lead vocal. But you know it’s a vocoder it does what it does. If you’re not familiar with what a vocoder is basically it’s a synthesizer but instead of using like a normal oscillator to generate the sound of the synth it’s using a typically of I mean you can run anything through a drums or whatever but it’s using like a singing or you know recording of a vocal or recording of some instrument as the actual wave that it’s using to generate the synthesis.
So, when you set it up in your DAW it’s a little bit different than setting up a normal plugin because it needs both audio and MIDI. So, we will have like you can see here in this session when I pull this down I have my two tracks here (well come come back here vocoder) I have two tracks set up for it. We have the track that has the actual vocal on it and then we have a track that’s sending it MIDI data. So, I have this track coming in from my my MIDI controller which is a Komplete Kontrol 61 over here off screen and then I have it sending instrument output here it’s sending the MIDI data into this TAL vocoder plugin which will show up as a MIDI device in your DAW.
And then you actually put the TAL vocoder plug-in onto the channel that contains the audio that you want it to process or use as the generation for the synthesis. So, you know this is typical of pretty much all vocoder plugins. I just love this one because it sounds great and it’s free. Again I love free things who doesn’t.
So, just to kind of take a listen to it an example of it being used in a track. This is a track called Cross My Heart it’s from a record called Nonesuch Palace that I’ve been working on with my good friend Veronique Van Pelt. She’s an amazing singer and songwriter who records kind of a modern indie pop vibe. Really really pleased with how it came out and I really love this track in particular Cross My Heart because of what we were able to do with the vocoder here.
So, we have our lead vocal.
Really really nice, you know really present airy female pop vocal. But in context with the track I wanted to have a little bit more dimension, so I copied her vocal take down and (get out of here) copied her vocal take down to a second track, added the TAL vocoder and then played different chord voicings on my MIDI controller to match the changes of the tune and used that to process her voice.
And I also added you know some nice reed you know big epic reverb on it and a few of things I’ll take all of that off so you can just kind of hear it on its own naturally.
It’s a really cool classic vocoder sound. But when we start bringing in I’ve got a Spatial Widener and then Eventides Blackhole reverb is super epic really long tail reverb, let’s give that a listen.
Really really really pretty really really lush and very interesting texture. And then what we do is we blend the two and you get this you know it feels like a totally normal vocal but it has this layer of ambience and texture behind it. That almost sounds like a background vocalist or background harmonies or something but it’s got this synthesized texture. Here give it give it a listen.
Such a beautiful layer and especially when you hear it in context with the track.
Bring it up in volume a bit.
Ah you can hear the tail area. It’s just it’s such a cool effect and it’s such an interesting approach to layering a vocal. But you know of course if you want to use it for the really classic like 80s vocoder sound you can of course do that, if you want to run drums through it, run guitar through and do some other interesting things it’ll obviously work on any audio signal, but this is my favorite trick to do with it or indeed any other vocoder plug-in or hardware or anything.
But it’s got all the you know typical things that you would kind of expect from a vocoder some waveform adjustments to choose what type of waveform the vocoder is going to use as a carrier. So, we have pulse polar for pulse width we’ve saw you’ve sub hear noise, so this is basically just you know again shaping your waveform. Then we’ve got some you know frequency band control based on where you know what bands you want it to create.
It’s you know it is it is a really really great just all-around vocoder and it does come with a few really really handy plugins as well. Now I’m not a huge synthesis wizard so I don’t get super deep into programming this whole thing and you know messing with all the inner workings of it because synthesis is very very complicated and a vocoder is kind of you know very much in in a class of synthesizers.
But it just in terms of if you are looking for that sound you know again whether you’re doing really modern production want to use it touch really like I do or you’re doing some more 80s vibe stuff it’s free who doesn’t love free it’s very easy to use comes with some really great great presets and it’s just easy to tweak and get sounding how you want really really quickly
So, full two thumbs up recommendation from me. I love it. Whenever I need a vocoder type sound that is the one that I reach for the TAL vocoder.
But what do you guys think? Do you guys use this one before? Is this something that you’ve downloaded and try it out? Do you have other vocoder plugins that you prefer or maybe a
hardware unit? Whatever you guys may think I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments down below. I always love hearing from you guys.
Again my name is Alex Scott with consordini.com. Thank you guys very very much for watching the video! Hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one.