ok, i was thinkin the other day that all sound is made up of harmonic resononces; every sound from a flute to the flushing of a toilet is simply made up of different harmonics and without these everything would sound the same, so....... in theory there could be a machine (perhaps not in real-time yet, but after some research had been done i couldn't be that hard) that you could sing a melody into, this machine would then take away all the harmonics (save the tonic one) and add to it the harmonics that would be produced by another instrument, hey presto aslong as your not tone-deaf you've suddenly got the ability to play any instrument you want.
-- sheepman, Oct 12 2002

Random Music Generator http://www.halfbake...20Music_20Generator
Similar idea. [waugsqueke, Oct 13 2002]

The TalkBox... http://www.frampton.com/equipment.html
...turns musical instruments into peoples voices. Sort of. [phoenix, Oct 14 2002, last modified Oct 06 2004]

wah wah wah wah wah! http://www.frampton.com/showme.ram
I can't believe phoenix beat me with the Frampton! [bungston, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Digital Ear http://www.hitsquad...ograms/Digital_Ear/
realtime audio to MIDI VST plugin - woohoo!! [BunsenHoneydew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

I recently read about something called (I think) a "restructuring synthesizer" that seems, in concept, very similar to what you are describing here. I remember that building sounds was equated to pouring one instrument into another; the tonality of a guitar but played as a trombone, etc.

Beyond that, I am pretty sure that voice modulated synths exist. I once saw an expensive Roland keyboard being demoed where the guy demoing it was playing the "sax" by making vocal sounds into a microphone.
-- bristolz, Oct 12 2002


thanks for the vocoder info [rods]. cogent explication.
-- redundantly_redundant, Nov 16 2002


Baked.

Logic Audio does real-time pitch to MIDI conversion of a monophonic source signal. There's other software around that can do that trick too - try a Google search for "pitch MIDI conversion real time".

You then send the MIDI data to any MIDI instrument, hardware or software.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Jan 01 2003


All of a sudden, it occurs to me that guys like Joe Walsh and Neil Young could record songs while singing into a device like this. <oops, too late>
-- X2Entendre, Jan 01 2003


Baked again - check the link for Digital Ear !!!
-- BunsenHoneydew, Jan 03 2003



random, halfbakery