Demo & Detail of a Switched Formant Synth Module Made From a 1960s Bell Labs Speech Synthesis Kit

video upload by ParadisoModular

"This video describes and demonstrates a novel synthesizer module I recently designed and built out of a "Speech Synthesis" Kit that was distributed to schools by Bell Labs in the 1960s. After walking through some basic background on the kit and how I adapted it, I demo the kinds of sounds this module makes."

You can find a handful of posts featuring Bell Labs Speech Synthesis here, and all Bell Labs posts here. Don't miss the Alles Machine.

Vintage 1960's Bell Telephone Degraded Speech Synthesis Educational Tool Kit

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"This is a Vintage 1960's Bell Telephone Degraded Speech Synthesis Educational Tool Kit. The Case contains all items in the photos. Every thing you see is included.
Everything appears to be in mint condition. I don't know anything about these items and have no way to test them. Some items appear to be unused.

Kit includes all items in photos:
1 - Bell Telephone Laboratories Degraded Speech Circuit Board.
1 - Bell Telephone Laboratories Artificial Larynx Circuit Board.
2 - Bell Systems Labs Electronic Speech Synthesis Science Experiment #3, Dated 1963.
1 - Bell Telephone Laboratories “The Speech Chain” Book
3 - 1963 Computer Speech 33-1/3 RPM Record vintage with original sleeves: songs include: GREETINGS, BASIC EXAMPLES, AN HISTORICAL REMARK, HAMLET solilquy, BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO unaccompanied, BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO accompanied, COMPUTER DUPLICATES HUMAN VOICE, GOODBYE.
1 - Stack of various speech pamphlets.
1 - Speech Tape Cartridge.
1 - Control box.
1 - Lot of wires and speakers.
1 - Storage case."

CLICK FOR MORE »

XILS-Lab EMS Inspired Vocoder 5000 Arrives

"XILS-lab launches last word in vocoding with powerful plug-in inspired by EMS flagship

GRENOBLE, FRANCE: music software company XILS-lab is proud to announce availability of XILS Vocoder 5000 — inspired by its expensive EMS Vocoder 5000 hardware (partial) namesake (still held high in analogue awe) as an awe-inspiring, affordable vocoder plug-in for Mac (32- and 64-bit, AU, AAX, RTAS, VST 2.4, and VST 3 for Mac OS X 10.6 or higher) and PC (32- and 64-bit, AAX, RTAS, and VST for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8) — as of December 23...

By (typical dictionary) definition, a vocoder is an analysis and synthesis system used to reproduce human speech. Speaking historically, Homer Dudley, a research physicist at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, USA, developed the Voice Operated reCOrDER (VOCODER) way back in 1939 as a research device to test compression schemes for the secure transmission of voice signals over copper telephone lines. Later, Werner Meyer-Eppler, the Director of Phonetics at Bonn University in Germany, recognised the relevance of these machine marvels to electronic music following a visit by Dudley in 1948, subsequently using the vocoder as a basis for future writings which would inspire, in turn, the German Elektronische Musik movement. Musically speaking, the vocoder is indebted to German synth pop pioneers Kraftwerk more than most for bringing its distinctive robotic-sounding voice into commercial consciousness — so much so that Wikipedia even has a photograph of one of their early-Seventies custom-built vocoders alongside its own online definition of the word.

Whatever way one views it, actually it was Peter Zinovieff’s London-based company EMS (Electronic Music Studios) — best known for making musical history in 1969 with its introduction of the VCS3, the first portable synthesiser commercially available anywhere in the world — who released the world’s first commercially-available vocoder, the EMS Studio Vocoder, in 1976. Soon renamed the EMS Vocoder 5000, this vocoder par excellence ended up in the talented hands of a privileged few, both musical or otherwise, including Kraftwerk, predictably; Stevie Wonder; US Seventies-vintage sci-fi TV series classic Battlestar Galactica (‘Cylon’ centurion voices); and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. With its 22-band analysis and synthesis sections, the EMS Vocoder 5000 is probably the most highly-specified such unit ever produced. The fact that it can still be bought new today is testament to its still-stunning design, though there is only one (not so small) problem: purchasers should be prepared to part with a handsome five-figure sum for the privilege and then wait quite some considerable time to take delivery of this weighty (20kg) vocoding heavyweight. However, XILS-lab has an answer to that problem: now those fantastic features and more can be accessed instantly in the comfort of your computer at a fraction of that cost, thanks to the XILS Vocoder 5000 plug-in!

Put simply, XILS-labs’ software-based vocoder virtually emulates the fanciful filtering techniques and incredibly complex circuitry of its analogue predecessor to achieve the same organic sound, precision, and clarity. Just like the EMS Vocoder 5000 before it, XILS Vocoder 5000 can be made to ‘speak’ clearly in English and German — just like Kraftwerk... or in any other language for that matter! Respectively resurrecting the still-sought-after sounds of the EMS VCS3 synthesiser and Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus keyboard in popular plug-in form as XILS 3 and XILS V+ certainly stood XILS-lab in good stead when it came to meaningfully modelling the EMS Vocoder 5000’s impressive feature set of no fewer than 22 bandpass filters and envelope followers; oscillators (modelled from the EMS VCS3); noise generator; frequency shifter; and spectrum analyser — including its distinctive 22x22 pin matrix patchboard, allowing any band of the modulator signal to be connected to any band of the carrier signal. So while analogue vocoders like the esteemed EMS Vocoder 5000 typically analyse an incoming signal by splitting it into a number of tuned frequency bands with modulator and carrier signals being sent through a series of tuned bandpass filters — in the case of Kraftwerk’s beloved robotic voices, for example, the modulator is a microphone and the carrier is a noise or sawtooth waveform — with XILS Vocoder 5000 it’s just the same.

Haying that, XILS-lab being XILS-lab, that’s not all. Additional features that make XILS Vocoder 5000 a truly 21st Century product par excellence in its own right include additional filter types; more SLEW RATE modulations; two LFOs — the original Vocoder 5000 had only one; in-depth FM AMNT (Frequency Modulation amount) and PWM AMNT (Pulse Width Modulation amount) controls; additional oscillator waveforms; improved SPEECH (sibilance) input detector; GATE input; and also a keyboard for playing melodies or chords. Unlike the restrictive nature of the original Vocoder 5000’s ‘real world’ pin matrix patchboard, XILS Vocoder 5000 users can quickly populate its onscreen matrix by freely drawing lines... and it helpfully has its own presets! Picture-perfect, some might say!

So there it is. As well as feeding the human voice — truly the most variable sound source of all — into XILS Vocoder 5000 to alter its pitch, tone, vibrato, and other characteristics to synthesise a choir from a single voice or create musical melodies from ordinary speech, why not use XILS Vocoder 5000 to process drums, percussive elements, guitars, or any kind of synthesiser to breathe new ‘analogue’ life into them or reshape them totally? Try creating vocoded synth patterns from drum loops... loopy! Almost anything is musically possible with XILS Vocoder 5000, so why not give it a try today? Here at XILS-lab we’re sure you’ll love its authenticity, adaptability, and affordability.


XILS Vocoder 5000 is available to purchase and download directly from XILS-lab as an eLicenser or iLok copy-protected virtual instrument and effects plug-in for an introductory discounted price of €99.00 EUR (including VAT within the EU) until January 17, 2015 — thereafter rising to €149.00 EUR (including VAT within the EU) — from here: https://www.xils-lab.com/products/XILS-Vocoder-5000.html

For more in-depth info, please visit the dedicated XILS Vocoder 5000 webpage here: https://www.xils-lab.com/pages/XILS%205000.html

Several short audio demos showcasing XILS Vocoder 5000 can be heard here: http://www.xils-lab.com/pages/XILS5000_Audio.html

Various XILS Vocoder 5000 tutorial videos showing several key features and functions can be seen here:
https://www.xils-lab.com/audiosample/XILS5000/video/XILS5000_TutorialProcessFreqShift.mp4
https://www.xils-lab.com/audiosample/XILS5000/video/XILS5000_TutorialMatrixPatchSlewRate.mp4
https://www.xils-lab.com/audiosample/XILS5000/video/XILS5000_TutorialCarrierControl.mp4
https://www.xils-lab.com/audiosample/XILS5000/video/XILS5000_SideChainCubase.mp4"

Happy New Year! The Year in Synths 2013

Happy New Year Everyone!

What a busy year it has been in the world of synths.

This is going to be one doozy of a post, so bear with me. This post is a review of the year in synths for 2013. We begin with Tributes to Those We Lost This Year, followed by New Manufacturers & Makers, Older Manufacturers Added to the Site, New Gear Announcements, Top 10 Posts by Traffic,  My Standout Posts for the Year, and finally This Years' Synth Events. I did my best to keep things as short and concise as possible.

Let's begin with the hardest part of the post.

Tributes to Those We Lost This Year

RIP Bernard Parmegiani - Electronic & Acoustic Composer
Lou Reed RIP
RIP Dick Raaymakers aka Kid Baltan
RIP George Duke - DreamWeaver
RIP Ralph Dyck, Sept 28, 1941 – May 20, 2013
RIP Ray Manzarek

All missed and never to be forgotten. Take a moment to remember them.

------

New Manufacturers & Makers

Starting last January, I decided to keep a running list of every new manufacturer and maker introduced to the site during the year.  This is something I haven't done before and I thought it would be interesting to see how many there were in the year.   It's easy to focus on the big synth announcements throughout the year, but what about all the new makers and brands? I shouln't have to go considerably into the significance of new designers on the scene, so I'll just say two things regarding them.  One, the number of new makers is a direct reflection on the interest in our scene, and two, these are the creators of new gear which directly translate into new designs not previously available to us.  Think about that for a moment.  These are makers and designs that did not exist before.  They are part of our synth history.  So what is the total count of new synth designers for the year? A whopping 113. Think about that a bit. One hundred and thirteen new synth designers and brands this year alone.

Here they are (note a handful date back to 2012, but 2013 marked their momentum and availability):

CLICK FOR MORE »

Bell Labs Speech Synthesis Site

In case you missed the update to this post, you can find a site on the Bell Labs Speech Synthesis here. Apparently you can still buy the kits here. Also, some comments in this electro-music.com thread. BTW, comments are disabled in this post so we can keep all the comments in the previous post.

via Pete

Bell Labs Speech Synthesis

Click here for additional pics via this auction

Details:

"This complete and unused kit contains everything you need to understand speech synthesis and build your own synthesiser. Produced by Bell Systems Laboratories in 1963, the kit contains all the original equipment and parts which includes the book with complete instructions. The kit is complete and has never been used. It was intended for high school and college students and not for young children. This is an excellent source for hands on learning. When Bell Labs made something, they made it extremely well."

Update via Pete in the comments:
Bell Labs Speech Synthesis site
Kits still available here

CLICK FOR MORE »

The First Synth to....

Update: The new home for this list is now here. You can add to the list there or comment here and I will update both lists. Note that the complete list however will be there as I do not plan on updating this list with updates made there. That would be too much work and would compete with me being able to put up new posts here. Can't let that happen. : ) Related but separate from that list also see https://120years.net. That said...

If you are going to add to the list in the comments, use the same format.

Year - Manufacturer - Model - First at
1837 - C.G. Page (Salem. Mass) - first to produce electronically generated sound (not necessarily associated with a musical instrument). After inventing the Volta in 1800 (an early battery), in 1837 Page was doing experiments with coils and realized when certain coils were attached to a batter they omitted a ringing sound. While he initially thought the ring came from the electrical current was interrupted (battery disconnected), what was actually taking place was the induction through the coils was causing them to vibrate. via Peter Grenader
1885 - Person and Ernst Lorenz -'Elektrisches Musikinstrument' - the first musical instrument designed to produce electrically generated sound. It used electronic vibrations to drive an electromagnet that were connected to resonating boards, which translated these vibrations to sound. via Peter Grenader
1897 - Taddaeus Cahills - Telharmonium - electromechanical instrument.
1936 - Oskar Sala - Mixturtrautonium - first synth using Subharmonic synthesis
1939 - Homer Dudley invents the Parallel Bandpass Vocoder (VODER) - A manually key operated speech synthesizer
1940 - Homer Dudley invents the The Voder speech synthesizer - A device which used the human voice and an artificial voice to produce a composite
Both were researched as a way to transmit speech over copper wires (id est, telephone lines)
1948 - Hugh LeCaine - Electronic Sackbut - First voltage-controlled synthesizer
1948 - Dr. Raymond Scott - Wall of Sound - First polyphonic Sequencing Worstation (electromechanical) and the Electronum - first sequencer.
1950 - CSIR - Mk 1 - The first known use of a digital computer for the purpose playing music
1956 - Louie and Bebe Barron - Produced the first all-electronic musical score for a major motion picture - MGM's 'Forbidden Planet'
1957 - Max V. Mathews at Bell Labs - MUSIC - the first digital synthesizer. Technically, it was a computer program, though it set the stage for every digital synthesizer that proceeded it. See Laurie Spiegel with one here.
1963/64 - Buchla - model 100 modular - 1st "modern" modular synth
1967 - Moog - Moog modular synthesizer I, II & III - 1st commercial modular synth.
1969 - EMS - Synthi VCS-3 - first non-modular mini-synth
1970 - MOOG - Minimoog - 1st Mono Synth with keys (non-modular)
1971 - Tonus/Arp - Soloist - 1st preset mono synth
1971 - John Chowning - developed FM synthesis using the MUSIC-IV language (source), a direct descendent of Mathew's MUSIC program. FM synthesis was later licensed by Yamaha, and used in popular synths such as the DX-7.
1972 - Triadex Muse - first digital synth
""is the first digital musical instrument and was produced in 1972. It was
designed by Edward Fredkin and Marvin Minsky at MIT. It is an algorithmic
music generator: it uses digital logic circuits to produce a sequence of
notes based on the settings of various parameters. It has four small sliders
in that control Volume, Tempo, Pitch, and Fine Pitch. It is not known how
many were made, but they are considered extremely rare.
The Muse is the subject of U. S. Patent 3610801"
1973 - Coupland Digital Music Synthesizer - First Digital (Triadex beat it?) Update via Peter Grenader: "No time to read through all these posts to see if it's come up yet, but the Coupland was vaporwear...it never existed. I met Mark Vail, who's now a friend, by writing him a letter informing him that his story about the Coupland in his Vintage Synthesizers book (GREAT book) which mentioned it's only recorded showing was at the AES show in LA in 1978 was a farce. I was there - at their booth and their suite in the Hilton where the instrument was said to be. I was there on the first day, I was there on the last day. The only thing they had was a small model - about six inches across, sitting on a table. The booth was amazing - this radial orb multiple people could sit in, with a cover that came over each person which played what I remembered was a very impressive demo which swirled around four speakers inside the box. I, and everyone else, were blown away. They kept saying...'it will be here tomorrow, it'll be here tomorrow'...so I showed up the last day just to see it, figuring by the then it would have arrived...it didn't. I did see the frst Synthclavier at that show however. Their suite was across the hall from the Coupland folk. That completely kicked the crap out of everything else shown that year."
1973 - Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer - NED - Synclavier prototype - first digital synth
1974 - Roland - SH-3A - first commercial additive synth
1974 - RMI - Harmonic Synthesizer - first commercial additive synth
1975 - Buchla 502 - six voice polyphonic with minicomputer and ability to save patches to tape drive. Development on the 500 series began in 1969.
1975 - Oberheim FVS - four voice polyphonic with Polyphonic Synthesizer Programmer. Not sure if the Buchla 502 or FVS was released first.
1976 - PPG - PPG 1003 sonic carrier - 1st programmable mono/duo synth with patch memory (this, along with the model 1020, might have been the 1st synths to use DCO's as well)
1977 - Yamaha - CS50/CS60/CS80 - first single enclosure polyphonic keyboard synthesizers with the CS80 to be the first synth with poly aftertouch
1977 (late) - Oberheim - OB-1 - 1st commercial programmable mono synth with patch memory
1978 (late) - PPG - Wavecomputer 360 - 1st wavetable synth
1978 - Sequential Circuits - microprocessor control the SCI prophet 10 (briefly) and the P-5 --- again based on existing E-mu tech stuff
1979 - NED - Synclavier - First FM
1979 - Fairlight CMI - First Sampler, First Workstation
1980 - Performance Music Systems - Syntar - First self contained keytar
1982 - Sequential Circuits - Prophet 600 / First Midi Synthesizer (though some argue the Prophet 5 rev 3.2 is pre-MIDI MIDI)
1983 - Yamaha - DX7 - Digital takes over, FM goes mainstream
1983 - OSC - OSCar - First real-time additive with analog filters
1984 - Sequential Circuits - SixTrak - first multitimbral
1985 - Casio - CZ-101 - First battery-powered all digital mini-synth
1987 - Kawai K5 and Technos Axcel - first additive synths
1989 - E-Mu Systems - Proteus - First dedicated ROMpler
1992 - Seer Systems - first host-based software synthesizer in 1992
1994 - Yamaha - VL1 - first physical modelling synth
1995 - Clavia - Nord Lead - 1st Virtual Analog
1996 - Rubberduck - still not the first softsynth but came before Seer Systems Reality.
1996 - Steinberg - VST - Ok not a synth but enabled a lot to be written as plug-ins and used simultaneously
1997 - Seer Systems - Reality - First Modular Soft Synth
2002 - Hartmann Neuron - first neuronal synth
2912 - KalQuestoTron - the first genetically engineered synth. Each cell is an oscillator, filter, and neural sequencer. Can be delivered via injection to always play 'hold music' in your head.

I thought it might be fun to have a "first synth to..." post. There's been a lot of buzz over Sonic State's Top 20 Synths of All Time with good reason. What exactly is a "top synth?" Is it it's influence on the music scene? It's rarity and lust appeal? The number of synths sold? According to Sonic State their list was the result of Sonic State reader's voting for their favorite synths. Blame the voters if you don't like what you see. Based on what has come up on the list so far, the E-Mu Proteus and Roland JV-1080 for example as well as the Roland Jupiter 8 not even making the top ten, I'm guessing a bit of it has to do with the vote and... possibly the most influential/ground breaking synths for their time. The JV1080 and Proteus? Not super sexy in this day and age, but what they offered in their time? Who knows. It's obviously subjective. But there is something that isn't. The most influential synths of all time not because they were super sexy or utilitarian, but because they offered something that was not previously available.

I thought what might be interesting to create a list of the first synths to feature a particular technology or feature. For example what was the fist synth to bring FM to the table? Was it the DX7 or a predecessor? What was the first digital synth and when? The first additive synth? I have a good idea and could probably look it all up, but that wouldn't be any fun, so.... You tell me. I am going to make this an open post that will live over time. You get to participate by putting an entry in the comments. I will update the list and when I do I will change the time stamp of the post to keep it current. That said, for the archives, this post went up with a time stamp of 4/11/07 7:20 PM PST. I'll start the list (btw, do correct me on the MOOG, what model should we be talking about here? The A, B, C or D or all of them?).

Year - Manufacturer - Model - First at
1970 - MOOG - Minimoog - 1st Mono Synth with keys (non-modular)
1978 - Sequential Circuits - Prophet 5 - 1st Programmable Polyphonic Analog
... List continues above.

Update 3/34/12: Also see the first synthesizers to offer patch storage here.