Some people can sing, and some of us can't - but don't let that put you off using your voice as an instrument, or at least the source for one. With the vast array of audio manipulation tools at our fingertips it can be refreshing to move away from the synths and virtual instruments and get busy with a mic (or two), a sampler and some effects.
This sample pack has been created from glitched-out and manipulated samples of the human voice. The vocal samples were recorded with a range of mics: a classic (SM7B), an OK dynamic (55SH – Elvis mic), a odd mic (Shure 488T – used in aircraft intercoms) and a crap mic (Oktava M64 that was probably made for Russian supermarket tannoys) were used to record a variety of words, noises and phrases that were then loaded into Kontakt.
First up was tweakery in Kontakt itself – LFOs to formants, Timemachine and Beatmachine modes, etc. This was then fed through a chain of plugins that showed no mercy – reverb, distortions, modulators, delays, filters and, of course, Stutter Edit. Patterns were left running while parameters across all effects were heavily tampered with and an interesting result achieved, and this was then captured as a single loop.
The Vocal Pad Loops were made from a set of 'Oohs' recorded note by note over our almost 2 octave range, and with some prodigious use of Nuendo's pitch correction algorithms, a basic loops 'Ooh' instrument was created in Kontakt. This was used to play simple chords (3 or 4 notes to make major, minor, 6th, 7th, 9th and minor 7th chords) through another chain of effects.
There is also a set of Stripped versions of the major and minor chord loops which were stripped of most of their tonal qualities using iZotope's RX3 noise reduction program, and this makes for some pretty unsettling sounds.
What you need to know
All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.
The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!
Example sounds
Glitch vocal samples: click to download
These samples originally appeared in Future Music Magazine. Check out the latest issue for many more.
Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 80,000 more free samples.
