The vocal effects of Daft Punk
6 comments
·May 5, 2025LuciOfStars
I'm a simple person. I see Daft Punk, I upvote.
tecleandor
Ah, the Sennheiser VSM201. Just a $30K vocoder. Seems like it was $25K when it released in 1977, but also didn't get to sell even 50 units, so quite rare.
I guess you can get similar results with cheaper hardware, but if you have money and you have it around... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ofrzeta
I didn't know the device. Also I didn't know that Kai Krause who later got famous through his Kai's Power Tools was an electronic music expert who sort of did sales for Sennheiser in 1977, according to this page (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennheiser_VSM_201 - only on the German WP, it seems). He also wrote the manual for it.
His German WP page also claims that he sold a VSM 201 to Neil Young in 1982! https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause
English WP has less details on that part of his life, especially the VSM 201 :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause
nonrandomstring
Never had the pleasure of a Sennheiser but when working in radio I got my hands on a lot of rack vocoders for doing branding, stings and idents. Funny how the number 9000 comes up a lot, like Roland VP9000 and Eventide H9000. 80 and 90s vintage ones like Korg VC-10 or Elektronik EM-26 had unique sounds, but tbh the modern digital recreations are amazing models. There's not a world of difference between vocoding, autotune, shifting, harmonising etc once you realise how all the fx are now based in FFT, convolution etc - just different variations on processing and control graphs - and so it's fun to create your own vocal effects in things like Max/MSP/PureData. Technically there's a distinction between "effects" and "processing" in terms of how much of the direct (parallel) signal is put through. Chers Believe is a yardstick for "effect", whereas a lot of what I hear with Daft Punk (and Air, Kraftwerk) is quite heavily processed as to disguise the original voice entirely - just letting a bit of top/sibilant through to define the stops and fricatives.
marcedwards
I wonder how many are still in working condition today? Can’t be many. I’d love to see one in person, one day.
Marc added some extra flavor https://mastodon.social/@marcedwards/114454783708869207
> This article is the longest piece I’ve published on Bjango’s site, and it took a couple of years of research. I purchased around 25 pieces of music gear. I emailed Imogen Heap, and to my surprise, someone from her team got back to me and confirmed the exact harmonizer used on Hide and Seek.
> It’s been a huge effort, and I’m confident it contains a lot of information that is not widely known. For those of you who are into Daft Punk, I hope it’s interesting.