Synth masterclass with Dave Gale
#03 U-he Zebra CM talking filter
If synths could talk, what would they say? OK, we can’t answer that, but the Zebra filter, with its impressive Formant filter, comes close
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Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic
It was once cited, by a member of the infamous BBC Radiophonic Workshop, that whenever certain sounds were broadcast on radio or television, it was guaranteed to provoke a reaction from a public who were, back then, unused to such things. This would often result in the BBC switchboard lighting up like the proverbial Christmas tree: any sound that shared the characteristics of a human voice, but was in fact electronic, would get people going.
While this would often relate to synthetic devices known as vocoders (which would rely heavily on the live input of a human voice) some synths came equipped with a form of filtering known as Formant filtering. Associated with a term used in speech science, the word formant refers directly to the resonance of the human vocal tract. Zebra CM (from our free Plugin Suite) is equipped with a formant filter, which allows for the reproduction of basic vowel sounds, which can be sequenced into a pattern.