Here’s a technical question someone might be able to help with…
In Walter Carlos’ Clockwork Orange soundtrack, there was certain sounds that sound vocalized – some of it is melody line work, like the Beethoven stuff, but some of it is on bass parts, too. What sounds like what is otherwise the quintessential Moog sound has this little…extra element to it, a vocalized quality. Is this some sort of vocoder effect?
Similarly, Tomita has a vocalized Moog sound on his 70s albums – it’s different from the Carlos effect, but still very vowel-like, and not the same vowels, either.
Anyone know what I’m talking about? I suppose I could post sound samples if needed.
I know that Carlos used a vocoder in some weird way to “sing” the melody in the Beethoven piece; but I don’t know about the bass. With Tomita, for instance, the back of the “Snowflakes Are Dancing” album lists all the equipment he uses, and no vocoder…
It was a fixed filter bank modified to work as a vocoder with ten channels using ten pairs of envelope followers and VCAs to modulate a carrier signal - and somewhat inelegantly named a `spectrum encoder/decoder.’
There’s a photo on Wendy’s website of the Moog modular in its later form (1979). The encoder used on Clockwork and so on can be seen on the top tier, with the signal path leading to a fixed filter bank on the second tier down.
FWIW I’m guessing Tomita used the 914 Fixed Filter Bank through filter oscillation (904A?) for the “whistling” effect on much of Snowflakes are Dancing.
Here’s a clip of him using the same effect on a more familiar melody:
No disrespect intended, my usage was for historical accuracy of the artist’s discography, and not used for any personal bias.
And BTW, maybe we should let Wendy speak for herself…
Yes, I’m sure no disrespect was intended. I’m sorry if it sounded as if I thought that. It seemed appropriate to mention it, especially as the original post had raised the same issue.
From memory I think it’s on when Alex is strapped to the chair and watching the video on Hitler and Concentration Camps and Beethoven is played in the background. It may be played at other times too, I’m not sure.
Yeah. Exactly. It’s the soundtrack to a movie he’s watching – a Nazi documentary – while strapped to the chair. There’s these individual bass pulses, for lack of a better term – just hitting a single low note, a quarter note or something. But the same effect is also heard in the music at the very beginning – it’s a very distinctive sound that I’ve only heard on that soundtrack.
Though really, it’s in the long “Timesteps” piece too…it’s all over that soundtrack…now that I think of it, it isn’t on any of her other work, not even SOB. The timbres she developed for that soundtrack give it a diabolical, perverted edge – perfect for the movie.
Does anyone know what that piece is called? I’m no classical music buff, so I wouldn’t know one from another, but that Wendy Carlos version is really nice with the “vocoder” effect in it. And any idea where I could find it?
Wendy Carlos mentions in Secrets of Synthesis that the use of the custom Moog 10-band vocoder in Clockwork Orange wasn’t received very well, especially when used in a composition like the Beethoven 9th. She goes on demonstrate a later vocoder which is much cleaner and articulate.
Secrets of Synthesis is a disc I listen to frequently, because IMO it’s the best example not only of Wendy’s one-of-a-kind body of work, but also dissects how she got there–digital (additive) Synergy as well as Moog modular.
On “Arabesque No.1” from the album"Snowflakes Are Dancing" you can hear two fine examples of ‘vocal’ sounds that Tomita used: One, of course, is the wonderful whistling patch that he created by feeding white noise into a highly resonant low pass filter. (I’m currently working on a Voyager version.) The other sound is created, if I remember having read this right some years ago, by manipulating a band pass filter’s cut off frequency with a sequencer, which is being stepped by the keyboard. Side note: I heard this track regularly in 1974 on an FM radio station in Columbus, Ohio. The DJ would play this first and follow it with Todd Rundgren’s “Born To Synthesize”. Ahhh. Those were the days!
