>Step by step

Vocoding a drum loop

1 Here’s a drum ’n’ bass beat loop with a bassline and keys/pad part. I’m going to vocode the drums using another synth pad as the carrier. First, I load a synth (Dmitry Sches’ Thorn) onto a MIDI track and call up the PAD Airy preset; then I program a chord progression that fits the rest of the tune.

2 Next, I load Live’s Vocoder device onto the drum track. By default, it’s set to use its internal Noise generator as the carrier, so I change this to External and route the synth pad signal in via the menu. Immediately, we hear the filtered pad sound modulated by the drum loop – that’s your basic vocoded drums.

3 Muting the synth track in the mixer takes it out of the mix without affecting its carrier input into the Vocoder, and lowering the Dry/Wet mix reintroduces the dry signal – I set this to 50% for now, to keep my vocoded beat recognisable as a drum loop.

4 The Bands menu sets the number of filters used in the vocoding process. The more bands you use, the higher the resolution of the modulator frequency analysis. I set it to 40, for max fidelity. The level of each band is adjustable in the graph – I draw a curve to gently attenuate low end, for a slightly thinner sound.

5 The Gate setting determines the level above which the output of individual filters has to rise for them to be heard. The higher this goes, the spikier the loop becomes – I settle on a point where the transient definition is emphasised without the whole thing sounding overtly gated.

6 The Attack, Release and Formant controls affect the response speed of the vocoder, and shift the filter frequencies up/down – after a few tweaks, I set them back to their defaults. All that remains is to bring in the rest of the track and play with the Dry/Wet control to get the right blend of drums and synth.