There are tons of cheap and free formant pitch shifters that sound great, but Variphrase has a >really unique sound to it when you push it outside of its intended use case.
Exactly. I suppose the primary use of it is to tidy up vocals in the studio that are a bit off pitch or time, but I was only interested in pushing it to process/stretch/mangle my vocals. This is a song I recorded back in 2005 using the V-Synth Variphrase to process/stretch/etc the vocals. Check out the vocals from the 1:45 to 3:45 mark to hear what I mean.
For this OT formant filter, did you figure out the mapping of frequency (Hz) to frequency value on the filter/EQ (0-127)? Or did you just go by ear until you found the formants?
I donāt really know the mapping of OT frequency parameters to Hzā¦ It kind of sounds like 64 (default value on the EQ) is around 350Hz, but I donāt know for sure. Itās actually nice to not know the actual frequencies so we can just use our ears, but Iām often still curious.
Picked up a V-Synth recently (2.0 base model) after hearing what the variphrase stuff could do on the SP-404mkII - and wanting to mess with that tech further. Was stoked to find one for less than $1k.
The V-Synth is absolutely wild. Beyond the variphrase stuff (which is more fleshed out and flexible compared to the SP-404mkII), you can also audio-rate FM/PM samples, including with other samples (and I think external signals iirc). This can lead to some really out there results. I canāt think of many other samplers that can do this outside of modular (Rossum Assimil8or comes to mind).
Some kind of modern equivalent would be amazing. The variphrase encodings on SP-404mkII are great, but it is definitely not a V-Synth successor (barring further firmware updates). Iād be into anything from a variphrase/V-Synth inspired groovebox like the MC-707, a V-Synth Boutique, or even just a software version.
Definitely need to try that RATE to TSTR trick on the OT.
So, just wonderingā¦Iāve read of many software solutions to this Variphrase quest, but Iām a hardware guy and besides the SP-404mkII no one has mentioned other modern hardware solutions. But what about something in a Eurorack or other modular format? Perhaps a stand alone dedicated vocal processor?
Iād say at a minumum Iād be looking for something with knobs/sliders for real time independent control over pitch/stretch/formant and at maximum the ability to also control those 3 parameters with LFOās or some type of modulation. Any ideas?
Variphrase is great and imparts a really curious character onto things. The V-Synth continues to be a source of inspiration.
In recent times, itās been fun to make complex tones on the V-Synth then sample those onto the Akai s5000. From there, that sample can be part of other complex patches made up of samples of variphrased content plus content from other machines.
