A new device came on the scene in 1969, called The Bag. The Bag was literally a bag with a speaker in it, that had the ability to combine an instrument and a voice to create a unique new sound. The Bag eventually came to be known as the Talk Box. The Talk Box as we know it is a device that has a speaker inside it, that receives a signal from an instrument. That speaker then blows audio out of a tube into the mouth of a person that's working with the instrument. The mouth is used to articulate syllables. And your microphone picks up the syllables as the tube is blowing its audio through your mouth. The talk box is something you've got to see to believe. I've enlisted a good friend of mine, Lamar Mitchell, via Skype, to come into this class to show us what a Talk Box looks like and sounds like. Let's check it out. I'm so fortunate to be here talking to you, Lamar, via Skype. Thanks for agreeing to this. >> Yes, sir. >> When I think about the Talk Box and the Vocoder, I often think about you because you are an expert, you've been doing it for so many years. And what are you doing currently? You're working with Stevie Wonder, right? >> Right now, yeah, I'm working as an assistant for Stevie. A personal technical assistant. What I do is handle all of his day to day chores, from his iPhone, to his new instruments that he's experimenting, to the current instruments, the synthesizers, programming, everything. >> That's great. So, you're working with the keyboard sounds, the synths on that. Does Stevie do the Talk Box also, is he playing around with it? >> Stevie was actually the first guy I've ever seen do the the Talk Box, and- >> Wow. >> This talking, yeah, I often tell, I was about 14 and I happened to come home from school one day and Sesame Street was on. And I was too old to watch Sesame Street, but Stevie Wonder was on! >> [LAUGH] >> He did the Talk Box. He did this thing, it was really simple. It was like one, two, three. It was like A, B, C, one, two, three. It was so cool, it was the coolest thing in the world, man. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> So what is a Talk Box? What's actually happening? >> The Talk Box, a couple of people have used two different things. Peter Frampton used a guitar. But basically, you use a conventional instrument, via synthesizer or guitar, and you actually put it through an amplifier and a driver. Now this is today's version of what the Talk Box is. But inside of here is an amplifier, and it goes into this mid-frequency driver, like what we used to use for PA systems back in the day. And it used to be contained, guys would make them homemade, and they would put it into a bag or a box. Originally, it was called The Bag because- >> So it's a speaker in a bag or a speaker in a box? >> Speaker in a box. And it's driven by an amplifier. And what it does is it takes the tone, you actually put the tone of the synthesizer or the guitar, and it comes through a hose. And then out of that hose you put it into your mouth and you map the phonics of that sound. >> So what does that tube do? >> So basically it replaces the larynx sound that your throat makes and you, with your mouth, you reshape the consonants and the phonics of the sound that you're trying to emulate or the words that you're trying to emulate. So if you want to say, You actually disconnect your larynx and then you insert the tube. One, two, three. So sort of the tone, the tone generator now for your vocal cord. Instead of your vocal cord. >> So you don't have to sing. >> You don't have to sing, no. You don't have to talk. You- >> The melody comes from the instrument, the instrument's blowing through the amp, the amp is then pushing through the tube The tube comes into your mouth, and your mouth is creating the formance of the words that you want to shape. >> That's correct. >> That's incredible, who thought of that? [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Like I said, the first guy I've ever seen do that is Stevie Wonder. The first guy I ever saw, then I saw Peter Frampton and then of course it was Roger Troutman. >> Roger Troutman, yeah, he was well known for that also. >> Yeah, yeah, with more bounce. [MUSIC] >> Yeah, the students should check that record out, More Bounce To The Ounce. >> More Bounce To The Ounce, that- >> People talk about T-Pain's vocal and how synthesized his voice sounds, and that's been going on for a long time. Craftwork had, the synthetic vocals, Roger Chapman, Peter Frampton. So you can play chords with the Talk Box also, can't you? >> Yes, you can play chords with the Talk Box. Right now this is using a monophonic synthesizer, but I want to show you using a stringed instrument. This'll be like what, let's say Peter Frampton if he used the guitar. >> Right, right, right. >> So I have an instrument here if you can see, it's called the harpejji. >> The harpejji, yeah I've seen you play that before. >> Yeah, and it's basically the keyboard player's guitar, and it has 16 strings, and it's tuned to both tones. So basically, The stringed instruments, to really get a good Talk Box sound, you have to add a little bit of distortion, a little bit overdrive because that's the other element, Charles, about using a Talk Box. The Timbre that's used to recreate their larynx sound. And on the analog synthesizer, I was using a sawtooth waveform with a filter. >> So there's a lot of harmonic richness that you can work with. >> Right, right, and if I were to change the tones [MUSIC] A sine wave makes it so smooth, so that it's just like. [MUSIC] >> It's harder to articulate with a tone that doesn't have rich harmonics. >> Exactly. [SOUND] So that's more sawtooth. So now the same thing with the harpejji. [MUSIC] So now when you ask me if I can play a chord, here I'll play a chord. [MUSIC] So yeah. I have to take the distortion off so you can hear it, the equipment. It sounds just like [NOISE] But yeah, that's the whole thing with the stringed instruments. >> Now is that vibrating on your teeth? Are your teeth rattling? >> No, my teeth is, back in the day when we used to use 50 watt Marshall's >> [LAUGH] >> But, thank God this is only like 12 watts so no, it's not rattling my head. And I have neighbors too. >> And is that a thick tube or a thin tube? Do they wear out? Do you have to replace them? >> Well, you have to keep it hygenically clean. It's recommended you boil it and keep it in some Listerene, and soak it, and don't let the cat lick it. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> But yeah, guys have customized these things. They went to an aquarium shop, you go to the aquarium shop and you get the thinner tube that blows in there and- >> I was going to ask you, if the tube is thinner will that change the way it sounds, or will it make it easier to articulate, or not necessarily? >> It depends on your mouth. It depends, everybody's different. You can have a bad dental thing going on and this tube is too much. >> All right. >> What's it called, where your jaw's out of line, >> Yeah, I don't know. [LAUGH] >> But some guys have had that thing where they said, man, my jaws got kind of wacky from holding that thing in my mouth. >> Wow. >> Or yeah, if it affects you like that, you can find smaller diameter tube. >> Now I remember something when I was working with you back in the day, where you would heat the tube up to make it more malleable, so you could put it in your mouth, and clamp on it. >> Yeah, yeah. Different manufacturers use different tubes. So if you happen to lose, like say we used to make our own tubes back, we used to make our own boxes. So the tube that we used to get was probably so toxic, first of all, back then. It'd be stiff, so we would have to boil it in order to get it to be this. But this thing kind of out the box is kind of the right malleable for your mouth. But yeah the ones we used to use it was like, [LAUGH] >> So it really does replace the throat? The larynx operation, that vibrating operation that's going on in the throat >> Correct, correct, yeah. >> Interesting. Now I've been looking at, in this lesson, I looked at megaphones and just shaping a sound and modifying a sound. Then I moved into filters and then I moved into the electronic megaphone. And that has led me into the Talk Box. The electronic megaphones, probably one of the early talk boxes. It wasn't in a bag, it was just, you press on a button and the thing is throwing sound out into the air. And when I think about records, it seems this ability to modify the vocals has been around a long time. So from Rudy Vallee who in 1929 with his megaphone, to people like Peter Frampton and Roger Troutman. And then there was another sound called the vocoder. And we'll take a break. I'll give the students a little bit of a look at some of the techniques behind the vocoder and I want to come back and have you show us the vocoder also. >> Cool. All right. That'd be excellent. >> Thanks a lot Lamar. >> Cool. I'll see you later, yeah.
