T-Pain is rapper hailing from Florida, who made his name through creative use of the Autotune effect. Nobody quite does it like T-Pain to this day, but kids the world over got the chance with the release of the “I Am T-Pain” microphone, which puts effects on the user’s vocal to make them sound as fly as possible, batteries not included. In the spirit of musical exploration, [Simon] decided it would be interesting to turn the effect into a guitar pedal.
Initial plans were to wire the microphone to an input jack, and the speaker to an output jack, but things didn’t remain so simple. The toy comes with a line-in and a headphone jack already, but the wiring scheme is strange and one of the inputs can also act as an output under certain conditions. [Simon] took the kitchen sink approach, throwing a bunch of jacks at the circuit and putting it all in a pedal case with some knobs to twiddle some parameters.
The final result is a warbly, lo-fi vibrato when a guitar signal is fed in. It’s quite different from how the original toy sounds, but recalls us somewhat of the Anti-nautilus pedal when used in conjunction with a looper. Video after the break.
… to make them sound as fly as possible? I have got a meter long graphite carbon shaft fly swatter. Knocks ’em right out of the air, off the ceiling. No fly is safe, stinkbugs however get the toilet paper crush and flush.
Sound toys are good for hacks though! I have a few that could be of use in my creative work. Strummed chords are not what a cheap pitch follower-corrector needs though, the test-demo must be with solo notes. I didn’t hear anything happening with the chord strumming, but the feedback got interesting.
I had one of those for a while. It was a bit too digital to do much circuit bending with it. I like the idea of piping a guitar through it!
Special effects in music are like special effects in movies : don’t count on them to improve you talent.
This sounds like something that Conspiracy of Owls would use.
So glad I could fast forward. Waste of an article.
Who squirted in your yogurt buddy
Agree to disagree… I love this project!
Slightly surprised to see no mention of the app – I’ve actually never heard of the mic before, incidentally. According to the app the ‘effect’ is a combination of a chromatic-C scale autotuner followed by a chorus and delay, it’s quite fun to mess with :)