East Side Dub

(Garden of Life - In Stereo)

New - Vocal Retakes & Special Effects: ADX had some new ideas for the 2nd half of this tune, so we scheduled another vocal session and laid down 4 takes. I comped those into a single take, then exported loops. I imported the samples (24bit aif) into the same NN-XT sampler and readjusted the midi note triggers to match the new vocal phrasing.

For the 1950's announcer voice at the beginning, I bussed those particular samples out from the NN-XT's 3 & 4 outputs, and into a vocoder unit, set to "equalize". This allows the fine bandpass tuning which can give the "space radio" effect. There's also a little stuttering delay on the line, too.

Later in the tune, there are two vocal lines which I retained from the original vocal take. But to make them stand apart, I send them through Reason's vocoder effect. This device requires a carrier signal (the sound), and a modulation signal (the altering trigger). In this case, I found a synth sound on the Malstrom device to be the carrier, and bussed the special vocal lines through the vocoder's modulation input.

So, when I play notes on the malstrom synth, those notes are modulated by the voice signal, giving that "robotic tuning" voice effect! Below, you can see the back of the vocoder, showing the various inputs, and the notes I played on the malstrom synth.

Although the guitar parts for this tune have been complete, once the vocal lines were laid down by ADX, it really started coming together. 3 complete vocal takes were edited into one vocal comp, then sliced up into chunks several bars long.

The trusty NN-XT was fired up, and the vocal samples were imported and triggered with a couple of midi notes.