Hide and Seek Vocal Treatment

mistermoya · Post by **mistermoya** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:41 pm

Hello folks!

I just started using Ableton 2 days ago and was just wondering if anyone is familiar on how to create Imogen Heap's vocal treatment on her track "Hide & Seek"?

Tried my old orange vocoder plug-in but can't seem to get it right, either it gets too robotic, monotonous or too "airy" that you can't distinguish tonal changes.

And I downloaded the mda vocoder and talkbox but can't seem to get to work at all.

Any suggestions?

Cheers!

paul · Post by **paul** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 3:23 pm

First step - somehow develop an incredible singing voice.

As that one is going to be nigh on impossible, I'd give up on trying to recreate the sound after that! Sorry, I'm being flippant, and I'm not going to be a huge help here cos I'm no effects wizard.

But to my ear it sounds as though there are several (2 or 3) vocodered tracks, with some phasing going on between tracks, if not direct phasing on one or more. Try a bit of layering, and mess about with the phase in one track (invert it, shift it). You could even try subtly warping one track so that it drifts fractionally in and out of sync with the other track. No idea what that would sound like.
Just play, that's what Live is for!! You're never gonna get one cheapo plug-in to recreate a sound like that. I think.

Nice pop tune. Check her other album out too, Frou Frou knocks the socks off the solo album.

squareve · Post by **squareve** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:12 pm

she does it live. i'm guessing she using something with hardware, but you can recreate what she does in realtime with the vokko stereo vocoder. it's cheap and well worth it.

http://klanglabs.siliconemusic.com/prod ... /vokko.htm

mistermoya · Post by **mistermoya** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:27 pm

Thanks for the tips. I agree, I doubt I would be able to capture her sound though, I just like how "clean" her voice sounded even if it was put through a vocoder. Am used to creating vocoder sounds that sound very Kraftwerk and Daft Punk. I guess I was pretty surprised hearing Hide and Seek from Imogen since I am actually a big Frou Frou fan.

But I actually prefer Imogen solo than her with Frou Frou. Just my two cents.

Will defintely check out Vikko though. Thanks!

Cheers!

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:41 pm

have you tryed NI vokator?

DJDJ · Post by **DJDJ** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:27 pm

I sounds a LOT like layers of vocoded tracks with subtly auto tuned but not vocoded tracks, and I can guarantee that there's some melodyne going on in there too....

as far as which vocoder, it's hard to say. I'm pretty sure she made the whole album on software besides some decent mics and audio interface/preampage....

I bet you could get a similar sound by layering unvocoded vocal tracks with vocoded ones, pitch correct your unvocoded ones, layer together playing with volume levels....

jamesp · Post by **jamesp** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 10:55 pm

"It was a sweet how that song happened. I had had a really bad "day at the office" as my shiny new computer blew up on me. Real puff of smoke and sparks material. i was about to leave the studio defeated which is always a bad thing. Those days can spiral into weeks and it's important to try to do at least one thing in a day you're happy with. Out of the corner of my eye i spotted my harmonizer (a little box that you hook up to a keyboard via midi so you can play in the notes you want your voice to transpose to in real time). I hadn't yet written anything with this piece of gear but had always wanted to do an a cappella on this album. I powered it up and connected my microphone into the box and recorded the output to my minidisk."

http://aurgasm.us/2005/10/aurgasm-inter ... -heap.html

Still, there's just gotta be a way to do it with Simpler!

mistermoya · Post by **mistermoya** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:17 am

Oh wow! thanks for the link jamesp. Musch appreciated! Cheers!

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:50 pm

i think whatshe uses is 4ormulator ,you can get it for free at vstcentral.com