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Minimal Audio promises to “go beyond the vocoder” with “hypermodern” vocal resynthesis plugin Evoke

Minimal Audio is the Minnesota-based software developer behind popular plugins like Current and Rift, tools that balance user-friendly playability with creative firepower and sonic experimentation.

After releasing a free formant-shifter just a few weeks ago, the company has announced the release of a new vocal resynthesis plugin: Evoke. Billed as a “hypermodern vocal processor”, Evoke is designed to warp, manipulate and harmonize vocals in a variety of ways, delivering creatively inspiring vocal effects that “unlock new sonic possibilities” for vocal production.

First, Evoke isn’t a vocoder, even though it might sound like one. Like a vocoder, Evoke synthesizes sounds based on an input signal, but it takes a different approach based on spectral analysis and vocal modelling, doing away with the carrier/modulator set-up you’d find in a traditional vocoder. This means that no manual routing is required: just load up the plugin on your vocal track and you’re ready to go.

Evoke’s workflow begins at its bottom Keyboard Panel, where the user can adjust scale and pitch range to guide the plugin’s vocal tuning engine, or dial in multi-voice harmonies of up to four parts. (Though Evoke is designed for creative vocal manipulation, it can also be used as conventional pitch correction tool.)

In its default mode, Evoke automatically detects the pitch of an incoming signal and applies retuning harmonization, but the user is also able to route external MIDI into Evoke to determine the pitch of its resynthesis engine, or even bypass its sound generation altogether to apply its vocal modelling to audio routed in via sidechain.

Evoke’s vocal resynthesis engine is equipped with 15 Character Modes that shape the timbre of its resynthesized output. These cover everything from recognizable vocoder-like sounds to robotic sci-fi voices, glitchy unstable effects and metallic, dissonant textures. There are also 350 curated presets onboard.

The plugin features eight effects that can be combined into chains of up to 12 processors in the Effects Rack. These include chorus, multiband compression, delay, distortion, filter, reverb and EQ, along with frequency shifting and ring modulation.

Like Minimal Audio’s other plugins, Evoke benefits from a versatile modulation system that can introduce movement and unpredictability to presets. Any parameter can be modulated via Evoke’s LFOs, envelope followers and sequencers, all routed via the modulation matrix.

Priced at an introductory discount of $79, Minimal Audio’s Evoke is available now for macOS and Windows in AAX/AU/VST/VST3 formats.

Find out more on Minimal Audio website.

Adafruit’s Sophy Wong shared this DIY project guide for making a Halloween Jack-O-Theremin.

While the project is Halloween-themed, there’s no reason you couldn’t build it into any type of encloser that you like.

Project Summary:

“The theremin is an electronic musical instrument that you can play without even touching it – spooky! The theremin senses the distance from its antennae to the player’s hands, and changes its pitch and volume based on these distances. The theremin was used to make soundtrack music for many iconic spooky movies, like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1958), and is perfect inspiration for a Halloween project!

Here, I’ve turned a pumpkin into a Jack-o-Theremin using an ultrasonic distance sensor and a Circuit Playground Express (CPX). The CPX uses the distance measurement to generate a sound and flash the onboard NeoPixels in various colors. This version of a theremin has a much more digital-bleepy-bloopy sound than a traditional theremin, but you still get to make music by waving your hand around in the air!”

Composer & synthesist Eric Mouquet (Deep Forest) shared this live improvisation, October Melody, on the Haken Continuum.

The Haken Continuum is a unique synthesizer that’s designed to provide the same level of responsiveness as traditional orchestral instruments.

The Continuum uses EaganMatrix, a powerful modular synthesis platform developed by Edmund Eagan, as its synth engine. This is the same platform used by Expressive E for its Osmose synthesizer.

You can find more music from Mouquet at the Deep Forest site.