The Matrix Movie "Electronic Voice Effect"

[(DC)]

So after Neo takes the pills, right when the silvery gooey shit is going down his throat he makes this cool sound that sounds like a mix between an internet connection, and a voice through a vocoder.

Anyone know how to pull off a similar sound with vocals?

[poncival]

Originally Posted by (DC)

So after Neo takes the pills, right when the silvery gooey shit is going down his throat he makes this cool sound that sounds like a mix between an internet connection, and a voice through a vocoder.

Anyone know how to pull off a similar sound with vocals?

I have had success with cutting a short segment, maybe 40ms, and looping it for a little while (about 1/2 second) and then taking a shorter segment of that (maybe 30 ms) and looping it for a little shorter (maybe .3 seconds) and taking a shorter segment of that (20 ms) and looping it shorter, then taking a shorter loop of that (10 ms) and looping it... the result is a loop that has a pitch and then the pitch becomes higher with each change in length of the loop. I hope that makes sense, it was easier to do than it was to describe, a lot of apple-D in pro tools- select loop, duplicate 50 times, select shorter piece of that, duplicate 40 times etc.

Hope that helps.

Also serato pitch n time can cause time-oddities like this but they're not as predicatble and there's a lot of stretching and un-stretching over and over to get the good ones. Use oddball numbers (i.e. not "50%" but "57.2%" or something equally random), there seem to be more weird harmonics generated (after many stretches and compressions) if you use something other than 50% and 200%

Another way to accomplish something similar to the looping thing I described above would be to automate the delay time on a short delay with a high feedback. Start with a delay of about 40 ms and set the feedback as high as you can stand it, 94% maybe, and then raise and lower the delay time until you find a starting note that you like. Then you can automate the delay time to get shorter in steps like that matrix effect, it's not quite the same thing but it is a similar robotic- pitch changing effect

[confooshus]

Man I thought I was the only one who noticed and tried to get that sound! I've had some luck with Bitcrusher in Logic. You can automate the bit reduction in steps, it sounds pretty close, especially as you get down to 6, 4, and 2 bits...

[poncival]

It sounds like an old multi-speed modem searching for the fastest baud rate available... like the one you used to hear just before you heard "you've got mail"

I tried the other way I described and people were psyched but I have always wanted to get a sample of a modem and see if just mixing that in would do the trick

[Berolzheimer]

I don't remember the sound in The Matrix (shameful, I know, since I worked on Revolutions) but see if this helps:

[poncival]

yeah that's the sound, at about :23 seconds THANKS!

[vernier]

I've heard that type of sound prior to hearing it in the movie but can't remember where.

[dirren]

I'd say the matrix one is bitcrushed AND mega timestretched + ring mod.

/Matt

[Berolzheimer]

Yer welcome!

That was the sound of the internet, not all that long ago....You know, now it's called "dial up".

[(DC)]

I'll try to replicate the effect with the dial-up sounds...

[jdjustice]

fwiw i think some of the special effects in "The Matrix" were done using plugins developed by Tom Erbe @ UCSD.

you can check them out at:
http://soundhack.com/

i'm not sure which ones were used for what, but some of his plugins are free and they all allow you to manipulate sound in unusual ways.


cheers.
~j.d.

[RhOdEz]

i think they used Kyma granular patches- http://www.symbolicsound.com
It's possible to make something similar in Reaktor but Kyma system is still miles ahead of everything in terms of advanced sound design IMHO

[gearsux]

try using digidesign's old TCE (not the new Time Shift). take the vocal part you want to sound like that and stretch it a few times. it has that cool skipping/vocoder sound.

remember,
gearsux

[Matt Grondin]

Here's the scene in question:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=C6Vllnstly4

FWIW, that sound and scene make me very uncomfortable (probably all the acid and mushrooms I used to take), but the movie's still great.

[daryllh]

Originally Posted by Berolzheimer

since I worked on Revolutions)

Don't worry. We don't blame you for that movie.

[Blast9]

Sounds like a ring modulator to me, followed by extreme time-stretch?

Or when you manually scroll through extremely short delay settings eg 1-5 ms with 50/50 dry/wet mix

[Berolzheimer]

thanks for the link. Now that I hear that sound I can think of several ways Dane might have done it. Some Daws at the time, I don't remember which, maybe synclavier, Fairlight CMI, Screensound, or Dawn, would loop a very small section of audio as you scrubbed. The loop length could be set in the perferences. the descending effect would be from looping at various settings, re-recording that, & editing the peices together. A similar sound might have been made by using the scrub wheel on the Panasonic 3700 Dat recorder which was very prevalent back then. again it would have been a matter of doing a bunch of takes at different scrub speeds & then cutting them together. Or of course the looping could have been done in a sampler.

[vernier]

Yep, ring modulation sounds like one of the ingredients.

[Dusty Chalk]

I remember reading an article about, amongst other things, that specific sound -- I want to say in Keyboard or Electronic Musician -- and basically what they did was non-pitch-shifted-ly extreme time-stretch that sound several times (at the most extreme setting, and then sending the results back into the process), and the artifacts got more pronounced with every iteration. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what was used, but it was something like the Roland Variphrase Processor...might've been in software, though. They didn't say anything about ring modulation.

I bet Keanu'd know.

[Oroz]

Originally Posted by poncival

I have had success with cutting a short segment, maybe 40ms, and looping it for a little while (about 1/2 second) and then taking a shorter segment of that (maybe 30 ms) and looping it for a little shorter (maybe .3 seconds) and taking a shorter segment of that (20 ms) and looping it shorter, then taking a shorter loop of that (10 ms) and looping it... the result is a loop that has a pitch and then the pitch becomes higher with each change in length of the loop. I hope that makes sense, it was easier to do than it was to describe, a lot of apple-D in pro tools- select loop, duplicate 50 times, select shorter piece of that, duplicate 40 times etc.

Hope that helps.

Also serato pitch n time can cause time-oddities like this but they're not as predicatble and there's a lot of stretching and un-stretching over and over to get the good ones. Use oddball numbers (i.e. not "50%" but "57.2%" or something equally random), there seem to be more weird harmonics generated (after many stretches and compressions) if you use something other than 50% and 200%

Another way to accomplish something similar to the looping thing I described above would be to automate the delay time on a short delay with a high feedback. Start with a delay of about 40 ms and set the feedback as high as you can stand it, 94% maybe, and then raise and lower the delay time until you find a starting note that you like. Then you can automate the delay time to get shorter in steps like that matrix effect, it's not quite the same thing but it is a similar robotic- pitch changing effect

Cool, thanks for the tip!

[stuartdixon]

This effect was done using Metasynth, available for the Mac OS (only).

In fact, a lot of the Matrix sound effects came out of this application.

http://uisoftware.com/MetaSynth/

[ignatius]

i read somewhere about them using soundhack for a lot of the audio in that movie. i don't know if they used it on that particular piece of audio though.

soundhack is an enless source if interesting DSP.

[3rdeyeKnight]

Originally Posted by RhOdEz

i think they used Kyma granular patches- http://www.symbolicsound.com
It's possible to make something similar in Reaktor but Kyma system is still miles ahead of everything in terms of advanced sound design IMHO

Not to derail, but I think the Kyma System was also used to create a lot of the sounds in Star Wars too. Can anybody confirm that?

[scrubs]

Originally Posted by 3rdeyeKnight

Not to derail, but I think the Kyma System was also used to create a lot of the sounds in Star Wars too. Can anybody confirm that?

Most of the Star Wars sound effects are real sounds from Ben Burtt's personal sound library (most recorded directly by him). They are layered and manipulated with effects to create the final versions, but I've never come across anything stating that they used other sample libraries. The Kyma software may have been used at some point for the manipulation, but I think they mostly just used Pro Tools on the more recent films.

[3rdeyeKnight]

Originally Posted by scrubs

Most of the Star Wars sound effects are real sounds from Ben Burtt's personal sound library (most recorded directly by him). They are layered and manipulated with effects to create the final versions, but I've never come across anything stating that they used other sample libraries. The Kyma software may have been used at some point for the manipulation, but I think they mostly just used Pro Tools on the more recent films.

Cool. Thanx for clearing that up for me. thumbsup

[Sensenel]

"Granular Synthesis "

cheers

[ignatius]

the early star wars films were lot's of field recording. the lasers from "blasters" were hi tension wires that hold up big electric towers in fields. they would wack the wire w/a mallet and record it. i saw a video of them doing this.

also, a few of the top sound designers were heavily reliant on the synclavier. saw video of this some place too.

jurassic park was done w/synlacvier.. at least the dinosaurs themselves were. layered hippo and rhino and crocs and stuff.

synclaviers were the standard for a long time and i'm sure they are still in heavy use by some people. they do sound great and had pretty awesome features for their time (still pretty cool) they sound great. higher sampling rates than a lof things around. i think up to 100khz. or is it 50khz?

[octatonic]

Originally Posted by ignatius

synclaviers were the standard for a long time and i'm sure they are still in heavy use by some people. they do sound great and had pretty awesome features for their time (still pretty cool) they sound great. higher sampling rates than a lof things around. i think up to 100khz. or is it 50khz?

Have you tried doing tempo changes on a synclavier?
****ing nightmare- everything has to be a coefficient of 120bpm... so if you want to get 90bpm it has to be programmed as 75% of 120.
The early software had latency of between 100-300ms (it varied) and wasn't much fun.

They did sound great though... I'm semi-actively looking for one- to think you can pick one up for $8-12k these days. Amazing.

[charles maynes]

Originally Posted by octatonic

Have you tried doing tempo changes on a synclavier?
****ing nightmare- everything has to be a coefficient of 120bpm... so if you want to get 90bpm it has to be programmed as 75% of 120.
The early software had latency of between 100-300ms (it varied) and wasn't much fun.

They did sound great though... I'm semi-actively looking for one- to think you can pick one up for $8-12k these days. Amazing.

if you are serious about getting one, I may have some leads for you- you can contact me @ charles@furyandgrace.com


charles maynes

[andivax]

it's simple granular synthesis.
you can use Kyma or software vst's like NI Reaktor or dblue Glitch for that effect.
But i have information that this sound was made on Roland V-synth with Elastic audio engine.