WHEN MACHINES DREAM

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The Oscillator X team of John Mendenhall and Kyle Ward have just finalized the purchase of SCI Recordings. The New York based record label was founded in 2005 as a subsidiary of Railyard recordings and has worldwide distribution through InGrooves USA and Beatport. "It was the right opportunity at the right time" says co-owner Kyle Ward. "We had recently taken on some new projects and were looking for a vehicle to expand our operation. SCI has done a great job at building the label's infastructure and distribution network and we hope to capitalize and build on that success."
The existing catalog and artist roster has also seen releases on several well known labels such as DJ Sasha's Excession, John Digweed's Bedrock and Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto.
Plans are underway for several new worldwide releases for 2007 and more to follow in 2008. For more information, please visit:
http://www.scirecordings.com 

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Those of you who know me or listen to my music know that I am ALL ABOUT the vocoder. And not for anything particularly interesting either, mainly for the most cliche'd of uses for the vocoder - the ROBOT VOCALS. Though I have several hardware options for vocoding, I have been on a quest to find and aquire a VST vocoder plug-in to make it easier to get my "domo arigato" on. Most of the VST versions I have tried in the past did not produce suitable results, the main issue being with speech intellegibility. One option I looked into was to purchase a Cylon, (ebay?) very effective if you don't mind editing  "By your command" off of the end of every vocal phrase. The downsides are that it is still hardware and having a piece of studio gear that is bent on destroying humanity seems inconvenient.
That being said, I set out to find the best VST vocoder I could. I scoured the net and downloaded every Freeware, Shareware and Demo I could find and spent 2 days putting them through their paces. For those of you that are unfamiliar with vocoders and how they work, I am not going into that here, so please Google it and come back. Before we get into the shootout results, I need to add a disclaimer. Vocoders are tricky to use with respect to signal routing and I may not have gotten them all working properly, so please note that in some cases the poor results may have been due to P.E.B.C.A.K. (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) - your mileage may vary. For a host I used Ableton Live 6. As far as I can determine, there are 3 ways to configure a Vocoder in Live, depending on the vocoder. The vocoder VST's that I evaluated either "showed up" as an audio effect or a MIDI instrument, or sometimes both.
IF IT IS AN AUDIO EFFECT:
Set up 3 audio tracks - one each for the modulator, carrier and vocoder. Pan
carrier and modulator tracks hard L/R and send to vocoder track, then enable
monitor in on vocoder track.
OR:
Set up vocoder on a return track and set up audio tracks for the carrier and
modulator. Select "sends only" outputs for those tracks and send to vocoder return track.
IF IT IS A MIDI INSTRUMENT:
Set up an audio track for modulator and a MIDI track for vocoder. Enable MIDI in
on vocoder track and send audio from modulator track to it.

Anyway, On to the Vocoders..... (in no particular order)

So right off, the GUI while it looks very nice (typical of Fruity Loops ) it is
real small, and I found myself squinting to read it (also probably typical of
Fruity Loops). Unfortunately, I was unable to coax any usable sounds from it. It
should be noted that Kyle Ward, my musical partner has used this successfully in the past in his productions, and it sounded OK but not very intelligable.


This Vocoder works the way they all should. Super easy to route and the GUI is
very well laid out. Truly a joy to use. Unfortunately, the sound is not at all
what I'm going for. Would be cool to use on drums or other rhythmic instruments.
It's not that it's bad, it just doesn't produce the standard vocoder vocal effects
that I desire.


I had high hopes for this one. The GUI is great and the manual was good at
explaining how to use all of the controls but didn't cover getting it set up at
all. I am pretty sure that I got it set up correctly but alas, could not get any
usable sounds out of it.


The Prosoniq Orange Vocoder is a seminal VST. it's been around for about 10 years now.I evaluated the demo, which annoyingly "time out" every 5 minutes, but it worked reliable and configured logically. It makes very classic vocoder sounds and the chordal, choir-type sounds are quite nice. It is not, however, very intelligable. I think it would be good to layer with another vocoder to fatten up the sound (it is pretty fat sounding). Though it is kind of pricey for how it sounds and how old it is. Also, there is a good "how to" on using Orange Vocoder with Ableton Live here:
http://sonictransfer.com/vocoder-tutorial-ableton-live.shtml


This MAY be the best vocoder on the market. The GUI is great, and the sounds that I could demo were excellent. I evaluated a seriously feature-limited demo (there is a better demo available that needs to authorize a dongle), so I haven't been able to make my final judgement on this one yet. It is, however, quite expensive ($279) AND requires a hardware dongle to run (boo!) It seems to have some interesting features, like pitch-tracking of the modulator, requiring no external carrier. It also is very intelligable sounding. I will probably download the dongle-dependent demo and further evaluate.


Though not actually a Vocoder, I came across it during the shootout and decided to include it. The Robocorder has a dictionary (in both German & English) that can be used to generate robot vocals. The results were pretty interesting, but alas, during the evaluation my computer crashed due to a "serious error" and I quickly uninstalled it.


The VOKKO vocoder is actually the WINNER of the shootout. The GUI is good, it configures logically, and the sound is very intelligable. The feature set is great as well. You can use the onboard synth, onboard Soundfont player, or a mix of both as the carrier and use either an inputted audio signal or the onboard sample player as the modulator. Does it sound as good as the ELS vocoder? I don't know, but it sounds great, only costs $20 and is dongle-free.


As mentioned on the Boxsounds website, the Voctopus does not sound very good for vocals. It does however have a decent GUI and configures logically. Des not work for my vocoding needs - maybe it will work for yours...

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I just finished building the new When Machines Dream studio and once again, as many of my friends are also music producers, I thought that you would be interested in how I did it.
Having built two studio's prior, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted the new facility to be like and tried to incorporate what I had learned from my first two studios into the design and implementation of this one. Building this studio was a bit easier than my previous two, due to the fact that there was no actual "construction" involved, I was simply "installing" a studio into an existing room.
As for design considerations, I needed a space that I could produce music in, using my primary DAW and MIDI setup, track vocals and master the final product. In addition, I wanted to be able to shoot video in the studio as well. Of course it had to have good acoustics, pristine audio quality, good ergonomics and look cool so that I would enjoy working there. A pretty tall order for an existing room in a rented townhouse!
The first order of business was to put together the workstation desk for the DAW.  I have researched and purchased a variety of studio furniture (designed specifically for recording studio use) and I have found that just about everything that is commercially available is just shit - totally designed to not actually work. Harsh? I know (baffling).  Don't believe me? Google it and then try to envision all of your basic stuff set up on it (computer monitor, nearfield monitors, control surface/ keyboard controller, etc.) See? Doesn't work. I should note here though that RaXXess makes some fine studio furniture, but it unfortunately doesn't fit into my budget.
That being said, I have found what I believe to be a near-perfect recording workstation desk. Actually Kyle Ward, my musical partner found it. He bought three on the spot and gave me one (which I was unfortunately unable to ship to my new location and had to purchase my own.) It is available through the office superstore Staples. Here
Anyway, on to the studio building...

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The New When Machines Dream song Rock Robotic hit the # 1 spot on BOTH the Electronica Chart and the Dance Chart on SoundClick.com. Rock Robotic is the first song released from the upcoming When Machines Dream album Silicon Samurai.
Head on over to SoundClick and have a listen. Let me know what you think.

http://www.soundclick.com/whenmachinesdream

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I am frequently asked how When Machines Dream + KaW perform live. First off, let me explain the concept. When Machines Dream is myself and KaW is Kyle Ward (together we are Oscillator X – but that's another blog…), When we do live performances, instead of a traditional show whereas one act would play, followed by another act, we perform together as one group. We select what songs to play from each others repetoire, and then learn each others material and perform it together. Another thing that sets a When Machines Dream + KaW performance apart from many live electronic/ dance acts, is the "show" element. Most of the live electronic shows that we have seen either consist of a person hunched over a laptop all night with a projector behind him or a (typically) female solo vocalist singing along to a backing track. When Machines Dream + KaW shows utilize costumes, staging, effects lighting, and aerotechnics to bring the audience a visual live experience similar to our counterparts in the Rock world. As far as the actual musical performance goes, our current core live set-up is as follows:



John:

Korg MicroKorg – synthesizer

Alesis Micron – synthesizer

Roland SPD-S – Electronic Drum Pads

TC Electronics Voiceworks – Vocal processor

American DJ Pro-Scratch – DJ CD player

Yamaha MG 10/2 – Mixing Console



Kyle:

Roland V-Synth – Synthesizer

Korg MicroKorg – Synthesizer

M-Audio Axiom 49 – MIDI Keyboard Controller

Dell Laptop running Abelton Live 6

Elextrix Warp Factory – Vocoder



The "heart" of our show is run on the laptop with a program called Abelton Live. With this software we are able to manipulate the backing tracks (essentially the basic drum parts and any parts beyond what we can play with our four hands) in real time, thus freeing us up from being locked into a static backing track. We can adjust tempo, key, length of verses and choruses, etc. all while playing the show. Kyle handles this part of it. In the event that the computer crashes (hasn't happened yet – crossing our fingers) during a performance we have the backing tracks also on a CD, which I would then play using my DJ CD player. The DJ CD player still gives us the ability to manipulate many aspects of the music in real time, but not as much as the Abelton Live software.

As far as the keyboards go, Kyle and I each have multiple synthesizers that we play. These are usually set up in "split mode" whereas the bottom half of a keyboard will have one sound assigned to it and the top half will have a different sound assigned to it. This allows us to play the 2 to 4+ parts each per song necessary to perform the songs. In addition, I (and sometimes Kyle) play percussion parts on the electronic drum pads.

In a similar fashion, we divide up the vocal duties as well. I perform all of the singing parts, using the TC Electronic vocal processor to duplicate the effects used on our CD's, while Kyle performs all of the vocoder (robot) vocals using the Electrix vocoder.

The signal (sound) from all of the synths, electronic drums, laptop, CD player, etc. all go into the Yamaha mixer (we mix from the stage generally) and we send a stereo feed to the main house sound system.

In between all of this I control some of the visual effects as well. The lighting is primarily automatic and is just synced to the beat of the music, but I manually do a few tweaks during the show as well as keep the fog machine pumping out fog and both Kyle and I shoot off the aerotechnics.

I hope that this answers most of the questions as to how we perform our music live. If you have any questions that I didn't cover, feel free to send me a message.



~ John

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