Soundwave: The Recipe, Part I

Okay... so by now you have probably had enough time to play around with Audacity, Anvil Studio and Vocoder that you've already figured out how to do the Soundwave voice. But if you haven't, here's my recipe. (I'm no chef, by any means, so your results may turn out better than mine, or you'll figure out that I've missed an important step, or find some other way this recipe is flawed... when you do, comment here and I'll make an addendum to this entry.)

The Recipe

In Audacity, make sure that the drop-down box at the far right of the toolbars at the top of the screen (this is the Input Select box) is set to Microphone. Set the recording preferences to record a mono track at 44MHz. Record a snippet of dialogue. (I usually take one of Soundwave's lines from the old show, like "Disclosure: Averted. Continue observation.") Hit the record button on the toolbar and recite the line in as low and monotone voice as you can muster. The 'low' part is less important than the 'monotone' part. (You should see the waveforms responding on screen as you speak.) It may help to try a few recitations in one take, then pick the one that sounds best. You'll get better results if you speak slowly enunciate well.

Once you've got the vocal sample, edit out any extraneous sounds in the file (clipping stuff from around the vocal you're using). Export the resulting file as a WAV.

Now jump over to Anvil Studio. Here you might need a smidgeon of musical theory knowledge. When you first get into the program, hit the "Compose" button near the top left of the screen. This presents you with a musical staff and a keyboard, along with a bunch of other stuff that's a little daunting if you don't know how to write music. Not to worry, though... to get what you need is fairly straightforward. All we're gonna do is graba couple of chords and leave.

In my Anvil Studio tooling-around time, I've had the best luck (in terms of recreating Soundwave) by using two sequential major chords (e.g., Bb and C), but I know that they mixed it up, just from listening to episodes, from time to time (augmenteds? sixths?). Use whatever you like. (If you need some help constructing chords, try this.) Here's a step-by-step guide to create chords in Anvil.

1. Immediately below the music staff, you'll see a bunch of notation tools, including a row of buttons with musical notes on them. Click on the whole note.
2. While holding down the Shift key, plunk out the individual notes in the chord you've picked. (The Shift key makes the chords... without the Shift key, you'd be playing individual notes.) When you've finished with the chord, release the Shift key. The cursor will move to the next measure. Plunk out the second chord. (Two should be enough.)
3. Above the staff, you'll see a row of stuff that starts with the label "Track 1". Click the "instrument" label, and in the box that pops up, select "95 - Pad 7 (halo)".
4. Immediately above that is a bunch of playback controls. Click on the play button. You should hear your two chords in a breathy synthesizer voice. Problem is, they're not long enough. We need to slow the tempo down. Immediately below the menu bar is a tool-bar with, among other things, a Tempo box with a value of 80. Make that value 10.

The only thing left to do is get that track out of Anvil and into Audacity. I'll finish this longer-than-I-expected tutorial in a few days. Let me know if you figure it all out before I get it written.