Doc Q7.0
77
Formant [FRM]
5.13
Although the wah effect was originally intended to mimic
the sound of the human voice, it obviously falls a little
short in this regard. The talk-box, a system which plays
guitar sounds through a tube into a real human mouth,
comes far closer to the sound of actual speech, but is
considerably more unwieldy than a wah pedal. The Axe-
Fx II
Formant Filter
makes "talk-box" effects possible
without such a fussy apparatus.
A formant filter is an extension of the wah principle but operates with a far more
vocal
quality. Formants represent
particular resonances of instruments, or in this case, of the human vocal tract. The human vocal tract generates a
handful of formants to produce the vowel sounds we recognize. For example, the vowel sound "eee" can be
reproduced with a bank of narrow bandpass filters with various frequencies and amplitudes.
The Axe-Fx II Formant Filter can be set statically or blend dynamically between
START
,
MID,
and
END
vowels. The
CONTROL
knob sweeps across this range, gradually changing from one vowel to the next between positions. For
example, we can program the Formant Filter to go "III – AAA – OOO" for a “yoww” sound as a pedal is moved.
The Formant Filter usually sounds best when placed after distortion, although there are no hard and fast rules.
Each Axe-Fx II preset can use one
Formant
block.
Parameters
START
– Sets the start vowel sound.
MID
– Sets the mid vowel sound.
END
– Sets the end vowel sound.
RES
– Sets the resonance of the filters. Higher resonance can yield a more dramatic effect.
CTRL
– Controls morphing between vowel sounds. The start vowel is generated with the knob
counterclockwise, the mid vowel at 12 o’clock, and the end vowel at fully clockwise.
Formant Mix Parameters
The
Formant
block has a
MIX
page with
MIX, LEVEL
,
BALANCE
,
BYPASS MODE,
and
GLOBAL MIX
parameters.
for more information.
