Thanks, Terry.

I worked a lot on the bass. Devin Hoffman, the lead composer of the original, is a very excellent bass player from what I've read. The bass pattern for the first couple of bars was pretty easy to reproduce, except for the slides that he used in his original. I don't know how to do that with my bass instrument plugin yet.

But, further on in the original track, the bass part got quite submerged in the mix, and it was hard to distinguish it. I EQ'd the original to try to isolate it, but that wasn't entirely successful. But, I think I got most of it.

I believe there are really only 3 or maybe 4 actual patterns in the entire song and the chord progression doesn't change at all, which was a surprise to me. The varied melody lines and instrumentation for each section make it seem like there's much more variation in the underlying chord progression than there really is.

A very good learning exercise for me!

Eric

Thanks, eighteen. I'm a big fan of Daft Punk as well. They are truly experts with vocoders and, I think, talk box as well. I don't know what they use, but I don't think the vocoders are VSTs. I think they are original hardware units. I need to go back and listen to their stuff again because I think there are some good lessons about what works well and what doesn't.

Anyway, I do appreciate the feedback.

Eric

Thanks, Maj. I really liked the original song. It was used as background for a promo of a movie. That's how I heard it. Movie wasn't that great apparently, but the song was really good. I figured it would be a good learning exercise to reproduce it, sort-of. :)

Thanks, Ronabo.

I actually have about 3-4 different vocoder tracks going simultaneously, each one either a different vocoder plugin or a different patch. I wanted to thicken up the vocal, but I think it probably just resulted in it getting muffled, as you said. On reflection, I think I pushed the vocal back in the mix because I knew it really wasn't very good, so didn't want it to be too prominent. :)

Steve also commented that the Vox needs to be cleaned-up, so I think there's a consensus that I need to do more work on the mix. I appreciate the advice.

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I did try to adjust the timing of the modulator vocal using Flextime editing in Logic. But, it wasn't very successful. I'll try your suggestion. I assume I should bounce the vocoder output down to an audio track, then chop that up into regions. Not sure if I need to actually make loops per se, just chunks of audio that I can try to place better in the groove.

Worth a try. If I get an improved version, I'll re-post.

Eric

Hi, Neo.

See my response to Terry's comment, below. I'd be very interested in any advice you can provide on how to ge the timing synced up properly. It's really frustrating. I think I did a nice tight job constructing the backing track for this, but the vocoder parts really ruin the groove. I'm almost inclined to delete the track and just post the backing track, but it's actually kind of repetitive and not very interesting. This song (including the original version) is a good example of a production that absolutely relies on the vocal part for interest and value. Not allowing the instrumental backing to compete in terms of loudness or frequency range with the vocal part was a good learning exercise for me.

Thanks, Terry.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to record the carrier midi track simultaneously when recording the modulator vocal track to keep the timing synced better. For this project I did the vocal track first, then recorded the midi, then manually edited the midi to try to get them synced up properly. Had a lot of latency issues generally with the entire project (too many plugins and not enough RAM?). Disabling plugins helped a bit, but vocoder parts that seemed OK when soloed, slipped out of sync when the entire project was played and bounced. Or, perhaps I should just face the truth that I'm really no competition for Daft Punk and should forget about attempting vocoder melody tracks. I should reserve vocoders for sustained notes and chords.

Any tips?

Thanks, Cary. The original is way better, but I learned a lot trying to do a cover from scratch.

Thanks, Phil. I'm not really satisfied with the quality of this track, but I've spent way too much time trying to get the vocoder parts to fit in the groove. Really difficult to match the phrasing of the excellent vocals in the original version.

Eric