Talking Synth Tutorial!

[@mack_solo]

Just like with the unicorns, there should be "Yoie" tunes 😜

[@EdEditz]

Best synthesizer channel on KZbin.

[@brumd]

A video talking about synths that talk back. Yay! Wow!

[@Cfpp0]

Bananas wow wow

[@AlexBallMusic]

True story.

[@entropybentwhistle]

Bananarama “WOW!” and Bow Wow Wow were two different bands and projects.

[@Toolsquatch]

Haha, bitcrushing a resonant synth is how I stumbled on the yays a few years ago; fabulous video, didn't realize there were *so many* different ways to pull it off!

[@AlexBallMusic]

Yeah, I keep stumbling on the same result from different routes, so I thought I'd share them all. 😀

[@Toolsquatch]

​@@AlexBallMusic It's greatly-appreciated, like I'm genuinely tempted to explore S&H and LFOs in these new ways: thank you ❤

[@erikribeiro5772]

Fantastic! Thanks for turning a clip on social media into a full tutorial.

[@AlexBallMusic]

After about the 40th request, I relented. Hopefully the world will be full of yeeeiiiis from now on.

[@shaneb.2464]

I enjoy your quirky mix of wit, weirdness and science. Job well done.

[@keyboardkingpin]

You given the new york school of synthesis a run for their money on this one Alex! Fuggin Wow!

[@DrSynth]

You can get a much wider vocabulary on FM synths, but then they start talking sh*t about you behind your back...

[@AlexBallMusic]

😂

[@stb2017]

This is like watching a wizard create a spell. Amazing

[@davidryle]

I have bumped into this sound a few times while patching a modular and couldn't figure out exactly what was going on. Thanks for the breakdown of the method. Now I know.

[@thedonal]

SYNTHESYAAAAIIIIZERS!!! Lovely tutorial. I'm gonna have some fun with this over the weekend!

[@DestroyER82]

I do have a Teisco S-100P synthesizer (made in 1979 if im correct) and that "little" gorgeous thing have one amazing speciality. A preset called "Voice". Specially for this preset, engineers in Teisco have put into that machine multiple calibrated resonating filters (just for that one preset!) and the outcome is simply astonishing (especially when using aftertouch for vibrato and switching portamento for additional expression). I used that sound as a lead for one of my recent tunes (and generally it is all over my new album) and actually quite a few people (including seasoned producers) thought it was a real human voice singing.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Oh cool! A bit like Vox Humana, I guess? I didn't know that about the S100-P.

[@DestroyER82]

​@@AlexBallMusic Actually not at all, it really does sound like human. The tune I used it in as lead is called Mad Maverick - Vintage, easier to show like this than attempting to describe ;-)

[@tihinter]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWHdqJyAdpJ4Zqssi=VkKd8uZlOJtfIEs1

[@synthnerd4539]

@@DestroyER82 @AlexBallMusic The S-100P is my secret weapon, and that voice preset is incredible in the right context. What really makes it is the aftertouch to pitch bend. Brilliant and unnerving sound. Brilliant little synth overall really.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Jeepers! That's an amazing present. Now I need an S-100P!

[@alairlibreinsfreie5785]

talking synth, thats well and dandy, but in the moog part you went also in a even more important direction: it seemed to me you were only some tweaks away from making the synth do a cats meow.... as usual: your presentation is phantastic. thanks a lot

[@tihinter]

Alex , please do a video on emulating animal sounds by vintage analog synths! pleeeeaze! All those seagulls, wild geese, crickets, frogs - we’re waitin’!

[@haydenduvall162]

It's ALIIIIIIIIVE!

[@AlexBallMusic]

(hits it with bat)

[@scratchanitch]

Polyphonic Ya were brilliant back in the day. Their set at Reading Festival is legendary.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Neeeeiiiiiiight and day

[@mbrombert]

I have never heard of them and google comes up with nothing - is this some kind of inside joke? 😅

[@AlexBallMusic]

@@mbrombert thepolyphonicspree.com/

[@Bata9999]

My first synth was a Nord Wave which has a great vocal filter so these sounds are near and dear to my heart even though I pretty much never use them. Great tutorial! Might have to get some yeeeyaiiiiyoiiii-ing done tonight.

[@comfysynth]

You are a total legend Alex. I love your channel as a total synth nerd. Go bro ❤

[@Computer.Music.And.I]

Alex von Kempelen k. k. wirklichen Hofraths Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine Love it 😊

[@synthesizernews]

Great tutorial 🙏 you can get also some nice talking sounds like "eiiiii" and "jaaaa" with the resonant waves of a Casio CZ.

[@Laundry_Hamper]

You should check out the C64 chiptune "mr. marvellous", if you haven't heard it before! Some extremely tortuous coding to produce extremely tortured phonemes.

[@calyx93]

I’ll never forget stumbling across this effect on my friend’s brother’s Odyssey - then replicating that on a pawn shop bargain Pro One back in the early 80s. So metallic and magical - never fails to make me smile.

[@thelanavishnuorchestra]

I think I'll probably do it in VCV Rack. You can do almost anything in VCV. Nice end jam.

[@grogboggoth]

Discovered this. wheeze when I had a Roland SYSTEM-1 for a while. I wasn't completely convinced of its musical worth and I certainly couldn't find a place in my work for it but Alex works his magic wonderfully here to demonstrate its potential.

[@DonnDeVoreMusic]

i'm looping that outro jam over and over. I really like that type of thing.

[@dancarter8763]

Just watching you kneeling amongst your synths like a kid surrounded by a sea of unwrapped presents on Christmas morning….makes my knees ache

[@gutterbones]

Hell yeah! I love the sound of talking machines.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Yeah, I had a lot of fun with the dedicated formant filter on the Hydrasynth in particular. Love those weird voices.

[@howardscarr9518]

As always from Alex: a well thought-out, thoroughly entertaining demonstration!

[@AlexBallMusic]

Cheers Howard!

[@DMTCYMATICSDreamMusicTemple]

WOW! great variety of examples there Alex

[@Pablo668]

I feel like one could go completely insane in your studio.

[@horizontalblanking]

Shades of Tomita’s “talking/singing” synth work during the into to “The Planets” album. Great stuff!

[@mraduanemc]

Always a treat, Alex. Thanks again, buddy.

[@Reuben1024]

Enjoyable and informative as always, loved the Throbbing Gristle-esque end track (well reminded me of them)

[@electricdawn2258]

Technically you don't even need a S&H, an audio rate modulated VCA will do (almost) the same trick. Just in case you don't have an S&H in your system. I'm at around 7 minutes, so you probably will bring that up as well. :D Well, I guess I added some other way to do it. ;) Very cool video! This is the stuff I like. And a great jam at the end to top it all off! Edit: I used a Mother-32 and a DFAM to create a bandpass filter and I used an external env. generator for the DFAM (which I probably wouldn't have needed). Massive YIAOOUS!

[@warp2600]

👍The yay-yay song at the end was fun. The first part I already knew from an earlier 100m patch video of yours. Thanks.

[@zheltovsky]

Clear explanations and... like always, amazing music in the end ! Alex is the best !

[@arthurcrime]

Funnily enough I have spent a considerable number of hours doing something very similar. It was moderately easy on a sub37 but quite difficult with my triton extreme. It's nice to see someone else do similar stuff. You pulled it off quickly and made it appear easy. Very enjoyable, thank you.

[@SpikesStudio3]

Yeah. Got it from my sub 37 in the past too. Brought in with modwheel. #happyaccident.

[@HOLLASOUNDS]

This is a preset on the Novation Mininova and Ultranova.

[@adamstan84]

Thanks - finally I know how to make VCF go "yay" :D And besides, this trick of modulating low-tuned resonant filter with high-pitched tone to introduce "aliasing" is brilliant in its own way and opens the doors to many other interesting dirty sounds. Thanks again for showing this!

[@jacobmarley6781]

The is the best. I am always trying to make sounds like this. This is the best tutorial I have ever seen on it and now I finally fully get it. It really helps when people say things like, you can use a low pass but a band pass works best because... It helps me to understand what is the important aspects of the design. A thousand times thank you. I just found the holy grail, quest over. Time to play now. bye.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Cheers! Glad it was useful.

[@MattJohnsonJamiroquai]

What a great idea that fast mod is! Thanks for the tip[!

[@macronencer]

Thanks - I know quite a few synth tricks but I'd never got around to finding out how this one was done. I appreciate the tutorial!

[@Goettel]

Superb, Sir!

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

I'm fascinated by sounds like this, for example in songs like Levitating by Dua Lipa and Tilted by Christina and the Queens. A while ago I read that an American University (MIT?) had done research on things like this and found three or four filters peaks were enough to create the different vowels sounds (so four (relative) frequencies for each vowel). They are (at least were) somewhere on the web (in a table).

[@HOLLASOUNDS]

It's a very common preset in software and hardware synths and in on the Novation Mininova and also Reason for over decade now so I never needed to know how to make that sound.

[@joelanderson9823]

I love the track you made. Thanks for the video!

[@jakobymaster]

Ive been a synth nerd for 20 years now, but somehow till this day s&h has been always the "make barbarella computer bleepidy-bloop" random function. For a video thats supposed to teach a synth go IYAAII these few minutes have been a paradigm-shift for me.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Right! Yeah, it always annoys me that hardwired versions of sample and hold circuits and ring modulators or vocoders have fixed connectivity and functionality and so get totally misunderstood. They are totally open ended and can do so many things.

[@slipknotboy555]

​@@AlexBallMusicExactly! Like even for more traditional S+H duties, there's more than just random/sampling noise. Sending in triangle or saw waves (making stepped versions of them) can be really cool. Some vintage Roland synths had this option, I think. But unfortunately, it's not very common on modern stuff outside of semi/modular. Hell, I don't think any synths I have at the moment can do that.

[@klavtech2715]

Thank you! I spent all night finding ways to make yays with my particular setup!

[@mudi2000a]

Very good Alex, thanks! I only knew the bitcrusher method but I will surely try out the others as well!

[@eficer04]

Thank you!!! this is by far my favorite Alex Ball synth signature dude you're a fucking genius

[@carriersignal]

Very cool! Always appreciate your videos.

[@DuckTronic]

Yay yay yay... very nice and inspiring! 🙂Thanks, Alex!

[@Mark761966]

It's very enthusiastic

[@chrisbolton5461]

You make it look easy. Superb sounds.

[@martinforstner3075]

This was really interesting and helpful. Excellent video, like always. Thank you!

[@els1f]

I never get tired of yai, ayy, or yows

[@thesrabbit]

Awesome tutorial! I tried it out on my System-500 first, but had a tough time dialing in the filter used for self-oscillation. I'm now using a ladder filter instead for the S/H clock input and a G-Storm SH-5 clone for the main filter, feeding the main sawtooth into the dedicated bandpass and a bit of sub-osc into the lowpass, then the final audio signal into an expert sleepers persephone VCA with built in JFET distortion. Takes a lot of time to dial in but the result is so cool. Now I just can't touch anything ever again. I've never thought of using S/H for anything other than random voltages with the built in noise for the sampling input. Thanks again!

[@stevesmyth4982]

Thanks, Alex - I'll try to do similar on my Kyma system now you've given a great explanation.

[@localhost4460]

Really nice, universal demo! Thanks for sharing!

[@cathedraldarkness]

One of favorite sounds

[@TisMeJohnDee]

Listening to your song Nexus, I always thought it was vocoder shenanigans. Thank you for your well explained video.

[@the_synthusiast]

That outro kicked serious ass!

[@Listento360]

Very interesting tutorial! It also randomly reminded me of the vowel filter in a tc electronic Fireworx…

[@danniielle]

Yay!! 🙃😁 Yeah, I know. Someone had to reply in such a manner. 😁😁 Good stuff as usual Alex. Love your work my friend. ✨️🌟🎶💖🎵🌟✨️

[@GloveBunniesVideos]

Thanks for clearing this up! I always thought it was some kind of demon in my SH-101.

[@Oatmeal1400]

Such a fun topic and greatly explained! I need to try this on my behringer neutron asap!

[@electronictiger]

Thanks Alex, this is fun stuff!

[@vinylarchaeologist]

My heart is over-yay-ed

[@AlexBallMusic]

🫵

[@Patrick-bm6ih]

Outro jam becomes top track of 2024 electro chart..

[@PepeMusic]

I was so surprised to hear the Trident doing this sound at the start of your video. I immediately thought that it sounded like it was run through a sample rate reducer - and exactly that was the case! I produced very similar sounds in my synthesizer demo video of the tiny Hotone KRUSH pedal. I like these sounds as well. YAY!

[@AlexBallMusic]

Funnily enough, I'd actually stuck an oscillator from the 2600 into the filter input on the back of the Trident, so that one was audio rate filter FM. The bit crusher would have done it too though, as you say.

[@PepeMusic]

@@AlexBallMusic Ah, neat trick! I could try that with my Trident and my MS-50.

[@AlexBallMusic]

@@PepeMusic That'll do it, yep!

[@nativeVS]

Glad I'm not the only one who likes to show off that a Minimoog has a lot more range than most people tend to think.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Indeed it does! The rear filter input is often an overlooked feature too.

[@VladoT]

Great! More of this kind of videos please!

[@AnUnseenRuler]

I’m never going to do this so I am so happy you did.

[@superultrathanksmom3845]

Have you ever thought of yourself as a very advanced sound synthesizer? You can really do some insane sound design with the human body! ! !

[@AlexBallMusic]

One of my university lecturers said that you should never forget that your voice is the most versatile and powerful instrument you have in your studio and it always stuck with me. So obvious, but we get distracted by technology.

[@martingerken7094]

Cool, and my Behringer Neutron has all that it needs

[@JoshuaPhilgarlic]

Just built this patch in my Eurorack. So awesome 😅👍!

[@user-qm5ku2pu4w]

Yo, the end Jam on this one was especially Heavy!

[@kenzgbr]

Loving your work, sir.

[@PaulBoos]

I’m y’id out! Very cool seeing the different ways to do this. I was mostly familiar with second way, but didn’t quite get the theory behind it. That helps a lot…

[@ChrisHopkinsBass]

0:05 damn that’s almost the “Protect and Survive” tone

[@maxir4k]

I'm sure changing the way the envelope modulates the filter can give you an Ohoowo sound!

[@doublebass5y]

Nice one Alex, even like your student coloured carpet. Lets face it who wants to spend money on fancy carpet when you can buy a synth or two . Noice. Another spiffingly good video tutorial Many thanks. .

[@van_daddy_z]

One great way I’ve found to emphasize the vocal quality is to send it to a slightly detuned frequency shifter with significant feedback set up.

[@lukebussey5218]

Track at the end is insane

[@DoctorNemmo]

Finally, Alex made this tutorial ! Yay !

[@AlexBallMusic]

Yeeeeiiiiissss.

[@ymotechnopopfan]

I use that with the LFO and modulation on my Behringer MS-1. Very fun!

[@gulagwarlord]

Ah yes, the good old YOI bass... a must have in any heavy bass producer's tool belt.

[@cuccomposer]

This is how the WAVE channel of LSDJ sounds like with high resonance, because it's a 4-bit synth

[@MirlitronOne]

Thanks Alex! Been working on this for weeks...

[@qbqbqdbq]

I immediately bought three 1047's when the price dropped a little while ago so I could bandpass filter for F1, F2, and F3

[@ebrombaugh]

Very cool. I'm guessing that the reason the S/H or filter modulation brings so much more dimension to the sound is that they cause aliasing that adds a lot of higher frequency content that looks like additional formants moving around.

[@tonalaxis]

Thank you Alex.

[@MattUFO33]

I first heard this on a Commodore 64 - blew my little 13 year old mind!

[@atarirob]

So fun! I first discovered this with my Akai S3200XL - I think I'd sampled a pattern from a 303 and then went to the FX section to process it. The S3200XL had a frequency modulator, which if set correctly gives virtually the same effect as the Sample + Hold technique here. I was like "Oh, THAT's how you make that sound" lol I think the first time I ever heard it was either on the track 'Fly Street' by Squarepusher, or 'Shiz Ko E' by The Tuss (aka; Aphex Twin). Both tracks rinse this technique.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Ah cool, I didn't know you could do that with Akai samplers!

[@atarirob]

@@AlexBallMusic I think the FX board is called the EB16, it came as standard on the 3200XL but could be bought seperately and put inside any 3000 unit and even the MPC2000! If you ever get the chance to do so, please have a play around with one! It had an unusual selection of effects and modulation options, like cascading pitched delays and reverbs (a la Eventide H3000), the aforementioned frequency shifter and my favourite of all was an EQ with a dual LFO's for the peak frequencies and gain...just barmy stuff, you could very quickly get into headfuq IDM territory lol. It's been a while, but I seem to remember it being dual channel too, one for anything and one exclusively for reverb. I cannot think of any other hardware FX unit off the top of my head that could do all of those things, besides an Eventide system that's 100% user programmable with the only limit being memory...but alas, nobody EVER seems to talk about them!

[@adamoliver82]

Good vid, fun sounds and a nice track at the end. I popped my cherry on this sound with my Norand Mono a couple of days ago, I was well chuffed I got it to talk, does a good job of it.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Excellent. I've never tried a Norand. Are you enjoying it?

[@adamoliver82]

@@AlexBallMusic Yeah, I like it. It can be a simple little acid box or you can dive deep with all the modulation and stuff. It does a lot and has it's own sound. I generally have it plugged into my TR8S, they're a fun pair.

[@BerndScheurer]

great tutorial! thank you very much!

[@KevinWheelerMusic]

I love these talking synth patches. First I lernen it on the Matriarch. Nowadays I use the Hydrasynth because it is more easy for me and it is a polyphonic synth. Yay wuth 5 voices for example is awesome 😁

[@mixolydian2010]

Amazing, cheers never come across that before. Nice one.

[@AlexBallMusic]

Now you'll do it all the time. 😀

[@mixolydian2010]

@AlexBallMusic ha ha for sure,thanks for putting the video together.

[@HenritheHorse]

Nice, just learned this trick on Moog Mavis maybe a month ago! Those Rolands sound amazing!

[@AlexBallMusic]

Works well on Moogs. Got a corking Yeeeiii out of a Matriarch.

[@TheMartyODonnell]

The retro is strong with this one

[@pizzagogo6151]

Thanks Alex very entertaining 😁 while I’ve personally hate vocoders & vocoders in tracks (don’t understand the 80s obsession with it 😮)- this was still a great & interesting tutorial!

[@cookiekixx]

Thank you!