Rocky Mountain Wayward

[Laz]

We're looking to add this song to our blues list, and I was wondering what combination of EFX would be best to simulate the vocoder sound, without the vocoder. Some combination of distortion, flanger, auto-wah, chorus...? Or we could just have our drummer "sing" it...

[gnease]

some autowah (envelope follower) pedals will do this. my Digitech autowah has a vocal setting. the adjustments change the filtering for the two extremes, creating two different vowel sounds.

[Ricochet]

The original used a talk box.

[gnease]

even tho he wrote vocoder, I'm guessing he meant talk box -- which can be a real PITA to set up and use well.

[Laz]

even tho he wrote vocoder, I'm guessing he meant talk box -- which can be a real PITA to set up and use well.

Once again I mis-use a term, though I think I was repeating someone else's error. According to Wiki, a vocoder is a system where voice input is converted to other electrical signals (amplitude and phase) using an envelope follower and other circuits, transmitted, and then re-formed as a voice output. As I see it, a talk box does the second part, attempting to re-create a voice using the guitar for frequency and tone, and the singer's mouth for "shape".

In any case, I was looking for a way to get my guitarist to sound like Joe Walsh (or Peter Frampton), without any hoses. We'll see if his pedal board has the right combination of toys.

[Moonrider]

We're looking to add this song to our blues list, and I was wondering what combination of EFX would be best to simulate the vocoder sound, without the vocoder. Some combination of distortion, flanger, auto-wah, chorus...? Or we could just have our drummer "sing" it...

I never worried about it. Just crank up the gain, bend 'em tight and let 'em scream.

[gnease]

a talk box is more akin to an artificial larynx. the wet 'n' sticky parts are the filter instead of the modulating signal source.

but anyway ... auto-wah aside, I get the most manual articulation with whammy bar and a plain ole wahwahwah pedal on edge of crunchy OD, so the sound goes from cleanish to a bit raunchy with playing dynamics. requires more work than an auto-wah, but with some practice, it's possible to get some very interesting human-to-animal sounds. Joe Walsh is somewhere on that continuum.