Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of planetone

July 29th, 2009 – Many people are drawn to the microKORG XL because of its built in vocoder. The vocoder, for those unfamiliar with it, is a device that turns audio (most often the human voice) into something that sounds robotic, with controllable pitch. Many software titles (ie. Logic and Ableton) come with this functionality built in, but there’s nothing better than a good ol’ fashioned analog vocoder. In perhaps the most complicated and ambitious Instructable I’ve ever seen, user planetone has posted his schematics and instructions for building your own analog vocoder.

As an electronics amateur, I won’t even pretend to know how it all works, but you can’t argue with the fantastic results (embedded in the video below). The DIY vocoder sports a unique sound that I don’t think I’ve heard from other vocoders. If I had the skill, this would definitely be a project I’d try out. I know I’ve said that for any one of a dozen DIY projects I’ve posted here, but this has to be one of the coolest.

Build an analog vocoder via MusFormation