Can someone explain vocoding to me?

[Kidd Cabbage]

Can someone give me Vocoding 101? I'm using Sonar 7, and have Waves Morphoder, and I can't figure out how to use the damn thing.

I know that the concept of a vocoder is that it mixes two signals... but how, and how are each of the sounds laced into the sound?

And also, how do I control the MIDI? It's an effect, not an instrument, so Sonar won't let me route a MIDI signal through it, and for whatever reason, the Cakewalk plugin manager won't let me change the Morphoder to a synth.

Any help?

[Tensei]

I'm pretty sure that it takes the frequency range of a sound file (usually recorded voice), and applies it to another channel as an effect. There should be some way to load up a .wav file into the vocoder or through the vocoder (I think you can find how to do that in the sonar help file), and after that apply it as an effect to the channel you want.

[Hy Bound]

The best way I know how to describe this is:

You know those little toys that used to be really popular that has a plastic plate with a bunch of little pixel-esque pins that can slide in and out to make little sculptures of your face and hand? A vocoder is basically that same toy but instead its using audio. The vocoder takes a sound (or in the toy metaphor, your hand or face) which in the audio world is called the carrier, and applies that to its own modulator (or the pixel-like pins in the board). The modulator is based off of frequency so you can modify the different frequencies or using the same metaphor, the height of the pins raised to get a different audio "picture."

Sorry if thats a little confusing, but thats the simplest way I can explain it. If you still have questions, I have researched this a bit so i may still be able to help

[Lunahorum]

When we talk, what makes the words is a changing of overtones caused by the shape of our mouth and stuff.

Try singing an "oooo" sound then slowly go to an "aahhh" sound. While you are doing this, you can hear the partials adding on to the ooo. Although the partials are any whole number ratio of the fundamental, I (don't know about everyone else) can only hear the root, 3rd, 5th, and b7th when you go from ooo to ahh. If you are familiar with band pass filters sliding up, it sort of sounds like that.

Ok now you know that words are caused by overtone changes, not fundamental note changes. The vocoder has a fourier transform or something in it that breaks apart your voice into its overtones. By detecting the strength of your different overtones and change over time, it applies that constantly changing EQ to the sound you have it hooked up to.

[zircon]

Remember that vocoding isn't specific to the voice. It can be used with any two sounds. You have one carrier, which is the sound being affected, and then one modulator which is providing a sort of spectral imprint (as several others have described here) based on the fundamental, other harmonics, and level of those harmonics. You can have drums as a modulator and a synth pad as a carrier, which will create a cool rhythmic pad effect, for example.

[Sir_NutS]

There has been plenty of answers about the intrincate process of morphing the two sounds into he vocoded sound but I think the OP wanted to know about how to actually make it work.

Most vocoders work the same way, you have 2 audio inputs, one is the carrier sound, and the other is the modulator.

The Carrier sound is the "blanket" you will lay on top of the voice(modulator) to mask it and make it sound different. For example, a basic retro vocoded voice uses a square wave-like sound as a carrier. Since the square wave is rich in harmonics, it provides a richer audio result when mixed with the voice, oftentimes delivers a "robotic" sound.

This carrier will also have the pitch information most of the times, so is in the carrier sound where you should write the melody line you want to hear when the voice gets vocoded. For example you might want to write a long chord for the whole duration of the voice sample for a uniform pitch, or you might want to make the vocoded voice sing a melody and thus you write said melody on the carrier track.

The Modulator is in this case, the voice sample you want to use. Have in mind that with heavy vocoding you will lose any pitch change the original voice sample had, and it will be overriden with the carrier's pitch information.

As a general rule, use carrier sounds that use more high frequencies than low, to make the vocoding more noticeable. EVERY vocoder machine should have these two audio inputs for the modulator and carrier signal, so now you know what to do. Also, as Zircon stated, you can use several other things, such as a drumloop, for a modulator signal. I for example have used this technique on pads and it gives a nice rhythmic effect to them.

I for one love vocoding (I wish I coould use it more), so it's just a matter of trying it out and experimenting. With this you should have an idea of where goes what. Good Luck!