Question: What sings or plays an acoustic instrument that doesn't have a keyboard or a fretboard?

Answer: A musician whose bank manager doesn't suffer from sleepless nights.

Explanation: Well some of you might be scratching your bums and thinking – "What's he on about? or, "Tonya who?" Let me explain.

For example, take one vocalist, a mike stand and cable and, of course, a microphone of reasonable quality. Then, maybe add, for those of you who are feeling a little extravagant, an echo unit. Now as far as the vocalist goes, he or she is ready to Rock. All that remains is to strap themselves into the tight trousers, put a foot upon top of one of the monitors – and cue dry ice!

This is a far cry from the keyboard player or guitarist who is still lifting their equipment out of the van. You have to admit that the vocalist has some great advantages over the other musicians and, of course, let's not forget the cost. All the vocalist has to do is buy a poxy microphone and away they go. Due to their amazing financial saving this also means the vocalist can afford to go out and spend 10 times as much as the rest of the band on clothes and hairstyles and consequently have far more members of the opposite sex chasing after them. The only retribution is that statistics prove that they get the clap 10 times more than the rest of the band, which personally suits me down to the ground.

What I am trying to say is that apart from the microphone, and for those of more extravagant nature the use of a tambourine, technology has well and truly left them alone.

Enter The Pitch to Voltage Converter

The concept of the Voicetracker is nothing new. For some years several synthesiser manufacturers have explored the idea of taking acoustical sound and getting it to control a synthesiser so that it relates in pitch. For example, someone sings into a microphone and whatever phrase they sing is instantly analysed, converted, and played on the keyboard in exactly the same pitch. Some of our more cocky readers might think this is easy, but the difficulties are in deciphering the precise pitch, then filtering out the harmonics and additional noise. Once the basic pitch has been deduced, it can be easily converted into a voltage thereby enabling it to control synthesisers. This problem has more recently been cracked by those companies who have explored guitar synthesisers. Instead of a microphone you have a pickup, and instead of a voice, a vibrating string.

Now Roland have had a pretty decent pitch-to-voltage converter on the market for quite a few years, and this, like the Voicetracker, can be applied to any acoustic instrument eg, sax, flute, violins. But the biggest obstacle has, until now, been how well it tracks the original pitch. The huge disadvantages of dynamics resulting from volume and tone could not be overcome and, thereby, accurately expressed. What you had was simply something that followed pitch which, without a doubt, was somewhat limiting – until the arrival of the Voicetracker.

The Voicetracker

Most musicians – especially those who aren't dead – have heard of the name Fairlight. Even my cleaning lady has. People use the name Fairlight almost as commonly as Hoover. For example: "I'll just Fairlight the carpet," and "Trevor Horn has got some amazing sounds out of his Series III Hoover" etc etc. Fairlight were one of the first pioneers of powerful dedicated music computers directed at sound sampling, sequencing, and a host of other sonic tricks. Now it has to be said that when it first arrived from its native Australia, the Fairlight totally caught the instrument industry with its pants down. Not that this worried the Japanese, as the Fairlight's CMI market was seriously at the top end of the scale. These days a new Series III will cost you a cool £50,000, if you are able to keep cool when writing a cheque for that amount. Fortunately for the Fairlight mob, the Japs are only concerned with the mass market, so when Fairlight announced it was bringing out a Voicetracker it came as quite a shock to discover that they would be selling it for less than £2,000 which, relatively speaking, barely pays for a new nib for the CMI's light pen. (By the way, I do not recommend using a pencil sharpener on them).

The first time I saw the Voicetracker was about a year and a half ago at one of the trade exhibitions. Obviously, since then, the design has been improved and they are just starting to make it publicly available.

Basically, it's a monophonic instrument – (can you sing chords?) – that takes any sound source and converts it into a CV or a MIDI Signal to control the pitch of an external synthesiser, as well as adding dynamics and timbre.

Apart from its uses to enhance vocals and saxes, etc, it has many applications particularly suited to teaching music, especially ear training. This could be an invaluable tool for teaching people to sing in tune.

Operation is very easy and logically laid out. It employs a powerful 32-Bit microprocessor which is controlled by a simple matrix of buttons on the front panel. There are five main functions:

Range – Selects the appropriate pitch range and presets, therefore covers the area at which the incoming original sound is in. There are four presets that can be used for storing the different sensitivity and dynamic responses. Unlike a conventional synthesiser, you don't need loads of available program space as you are not saving sounds – only the manner in which the Voicetracker responds to the input signal.

Speed – The main function of this is to adjust how fast the Voicetracker will respond to an incoming signal. These are worked out in waveform cycles and can be set either Slow (32 cycles), Medium (eight cycles), or Fast (two cycles). It may also be used to change the rate at which the display – (when using a monitor) – scrolls.

Display – This is split into two rows as it has so many functions. As there is no front panel display, such as an LCD – (why not?) – it is necessary to use some form of video monitor or TV to obtain the full capabilities of the Voicetracker. The various display functions move the waveform forward or backwards in time, moves up or down in semitones, zooms in and out for detail, shows amplitude in dB, timbre brightness and purity, and displays pitch error in cents.

Synth-MIDI – The Voicetracker has a very simple internal synthesiser intended purely for listening to how the presets affect the sound. Its sound quality won't set the house on fire – it is purely intended for use as a handy reference. Since you can't change the sound it is simply a matter of on or off.

Other functions in this section control whether amplitude and timbre information is transmitted via MIDI. The internal semitone quantising can be turned off so that it will output glissando information and pitch bend. Octaves can also be altered so that the output signal is either above or below the source input.

Menu – This requires a video monitor and provides detailed information on MIDI specifications and assignments, internal synth arrangement, RS 232 configurations, etc.

All audio controls are adjusted by two switches, two controls, and two indicators. Sensitivity is set by an input switch on the back panel that has four settings – two mike and two line level. These are used in conjunction with an input level thumbwheel control and effect the amplitude display of level output and gate operation. Adjoining this are indicators for peak level and gate in order that optimum setting is easy to see. Output level is adjusted via a control on the side panel. This varies the level of the headphones output and synth VCA output.

Additional Information

Up to 48 seconds of information can be stored and scrolled across the screen for review and comparison. This should not be confused with sampling as this function is purely a visual display mainly for educational purposes, permitting the user to see detailed information on the input signal. For example, the pitch display (which is the main display) consists of a grid with a keyboard pattern along the right hand side of the screen. An incoming signal is shown as a line moving across from the left of the screen, directly relating a particular note on the keyboard. Vibrato and changes in pitch cause the line to become wavy and rise or fall with the corresponding note. By zooming in on particular ranges and magnitude very detailed movements of pitch are shown.

Overview

Although there are many aspects of the Voicetracker, especially in relation to its various functions, which I have not touched on, I feel these are not so relevant to the Voicetracker as a performing instrument. Fortunately, it has been designed to enable you to get on with playing without worrying about the pretty pictures you are making on the monitor. What is important is how well it responds to input signals, as well as how quickly. Response speed is probably the most important factor – it's no use if it is permanently behind the beat. The Voicetracker performs fairly well with response varying in speed relative to the pitch of the incoming signal. At the time of writing this review some new software was imminently due to improve the Voicetracker's reaction time. Obviously the demands a user makes upon the instrument will vary from one musician to another, depending on how it is employed as well as playing style.

Since there isn't anything on the market to compete with the facilities of the Voicetracker, it finds itself in a class of its own. Allowing precise matching of pitch bend for MIDI synths, it accepts a wide range of sounds for input, discriminates well between unwanted triggering, ie background noise, pitch quantising, VCA and timbre response, has a built-in (basic) synth, and can be programmed.

Because the Voicetracker isn't really an instrument in its own right, having been designed to control external synthesisers, the effectiveness of the sound is going to depend on what you plug it into. If you use a nasty keyboard it will undoubtedly sound horrible, whereas if you plug it into the Fairlight Series III I am sure you could make some wonderful sounds. For most people, a DX7 is probably the most likely partnering – primarily for financial reasons.

For vocalists like Al Jarreau this might be the answer to his dreams, or failing that, a handy thing to take on a picnic. Until many people have actually laid their hands on the Voicetracker it is impossible to assess the full degree of its musical value.

I've just had a rather perverse thought: If you are a vocalist who can't sing in tune, with the assistance of the Voicetracker you could now get the entire band to play out of tune, relative to your voice. That's completely brilliant! Why didn't I think of it before?

RRP: £2000 approx