How To make This aaahh ahhh sound ?

[nutrinoland]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lKis...eature=related

in the intro.....like a gated aahh....is it a synth or a processed vocal sample ?

Its very common in PsyTrance...Anyone know how ?

Thanks

[MBTC]

Short version, you need to modulate a formant filter then gate it to achieve that (I will assume you already know how to gate using whatever synth.. million ways to skin a cat but sometimes I just throw camelspace on a mixer track -- very useful plugin).

Longer version I wish I could comment specifically on how the Virus does formant filters, but typically they have more complex cutoff slopes and resonance peaks than other filter types. In fact to achieve certain vocal vowel sounds, the filter often has more than one resonance peak (if you can visualize that), which is a little weird if you're used to typical low pass, high pass, band pass, and band stop filters, but its what gives them the vocal characteristic (basically a mouth forming a vowel sound).

In that example you posted it almost sounds like there is maybe a slow LFO moving it slightly from an A to an O sound. Gladiator is one synth that comes to mind that literally describes the filters by vowel like that and gives you a visual on what the peaks look like (not sure if it lets you modulate via LFO from what is one filter setting to another).

I loaded up Zebra2, the synth every sound crafter needs to own, and noticed the VCF module's formant setting does let you easily modulate from one vowel to another (it does not label what "vowel" you are on like gladiator but you can tweak by ear).

Regarding processed vocal sample -- I don't know, it doesn't have to be IMHO, but it could. At the end of they day they are just harmonics going through a filter, and in this case it is the filter giving it the vocal quality you hear.

Note like most things, everything I've said above can be achieved a number of different ways, that's just the most common path I think. I don't think most synths would be able to hit that quality you want with a normal ADSR envelope, you just need a more complex shape. Maybe 2 envelopes in parallel but that's kind of doing things the hard way. Better to have lots of tools in the toolbox and for that job I'd probably start with Zebra if you have it and the formant option of the VCF module.

[nutrinoland]

Great Info...Thank You.
I'll start by trying the formant filter on the Virus and also take a look at the other synths you mentioned.

[nutrinoland]

I downloaded a free formant plugin....Thanks..Your method works really well....

[MBTC]

Glad I could help.