Bizarre Hardware

Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Gino Robair

I like to think of my studio gear as partners in the creative process rather than as tools. Like their human counterparts, instruments and effects with a strong personality are inspiring, especially if they fight back a little or offer a bit of mystery. Equipment with attitude is what this article is all about.

I've chosen five products — two instruments and three effects — that offer a fresh approach to music making, even when the initial interface (as in the case of the Wretch Machine) follows a somewhat traditional layout. Each offers a healthy amount of unpredictability that can be creatively harnessed in real time. So whether you're looking for unusual textures, outrageous loop fodder, or exotic spices to sprinkle into your tracks, these hardware “collaborators” are worth getting to know.

Microchip Glossolalia

The futuristic babbling of a circuit-bent toy is a wonderful source for sound-design elements and groove mining. Although the indeterminacy of the creative short circuit is hard to beat, sometimes a composer needs a bit more control over the sounds. That's where the Flame MIDI-Talking-Synth ($549) comes in handy.

The German-built Flame marries a pair of voice chips to hardware controls and a MIDI interface to take advantage of the chips' musically rich possibilities (see Fig. 1). The 8-bit Magnevation SpeakJet chip offers a single-voice, 5-channel synthesizer using the company's proprietary Mathematical Sound Architecture technology to model specific allophones that are created by the vocal cavity when a person speaks. (Allophones are variations of particular phonemes depending on where they would occur in the mouth when used in actual words.)

The chip is programmed with 72 speech elements and offers real-time control over rate, frequency, pitch-bend, and volume parameters. The Flame's front-panel controls are designed to take advantage of these parameters, while the MIDI interface adds further functionality by letting you access strings of allophones that have been formed into words, so you can build sentences with a keyboard controller or sequencer.

The SpeakJet chip also offers 12 DTMF (dual-tone multifrequency) Touch Tone sounds, like you hear when dialing a phone, and 43 sound effects. (Further information on the SpeakJet chip, especially for you DIY-ers, can be downloaded at www.magnevation.com/pdfs/speakjetusermanual.pdf.) The Flame's two SpeakJet chips work in tandem, and each chip gets its own output, giving you a 2-channel, pseudostereo signal that you can exploit with the onboard controls. However, the unit has a single output jack, so you'll need a ¼-inch Y-cable (such as an insert cable) to hear the left and right channels simultaneously.

With a sturdy metal case about the size of a thick paperback, the Flame is small enough to sit on a crowded desktop or a MIDI keyboard controller. It features 2 joysticks, 6 knobs, and 18 switches, and it's very easy to use in its standalone Sequencer mode: just move the Talk joystick, and the Flame will speak (see Web Clip 1). Its position determines which allophone you hear. The Note joystick changes the frequency of the sound depending on its position (see Web Clip 2).

The Flame's two performance modes are Sequencer, for using the built-in controls, and Expander, for using an external MIDI controller. You select the modes from the front panel, as well as start and stop the internal clock and determine whether the Flame uses its internal clock or locks to MIDI Clock. An onboard tempo knob controls the internal clock.

Independent switches let you select whether each chip plays allophones or sound effects, and you can dial in one of seven sound banks using a stepped pot (some of the sound banks are duplicated on the switch). In Expander mode, MIDI notes are mapped to words.

To add variety, you can switch in the “randomize” function for each chip and control the degree to which the sounds are affected (see Web Clip 3). To take the processing one step further, you can independently add tremolo to the sound of each chip, in rhythmic unison or alternating (see Web Clip 4). You can also corral the allophones into a major or minor sonority, and a stepped knob lets you select the key center from 12 chromatic steps.

Most important, from a performance point of view, there are two kinds of switches that set up a loop. Each joystick has an associated Rec switch: turn it on, and the joystick's movements from the last two bars (based on the MIDI Clock) are recorded and looped. To hold a specific joystick position, use the Loop and Hold switches. The looping functions are a clever addition to the Flame, and I found myself endlessly exploiting them (see Web Clip 5).

I've used the Flame onstage and in the studio, and it has never disappointed me. With the ability to add a degree of uncertainty using the Random control, as well as the Tremolo and Tuning functions, the Flame works well as a sound-design tool for instances where you want to create and control vocal-like textures that have movement and musicality in real time. And it's just plain fun to use.

Continue reading about the five unusual hardware products for creative musicians.

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