Built my own vocoder in Reaper DAW - For No Reason

This is a seriously backwards project. It's built in Reaper using only stock plugins. Keep in mind the important fact that I am not a genius. There are probably a hundred better ways to do this just in Reaper, and there are probably 10,000 better ways to do it in an audio programming language. People build these with analog electronics, too, but those are pretty high on the parts count. I wanted to spend a nice day off on this, not a terrifying rest of my life.

An interesting but incorrect fact: the Wikipedia article on the Vocoder says it was invented to compress and more easily encrypt voice transmissions, which is obviously wrong! It's clearly used for making robot sounds.

To download a zip of the full Reaper project, click here. Here is what the project looks like:

Here's the output from my Reaper vocoder: https://soundcloud.com/superbonuspak/reaper-daw-diy-vocoder-experiment-1

And here's how I think it works:

1. Mod Generator is the voice that will modulate the noise. I called it that because originally I used the JS: synthesis/tonegenerator to sweep my frequency bands, before I replaced it with my voice. The sends go prefader from here to each of the Bandpass X tracks - prefader so that you can turn it down (don't want to hear myself dry) but it still goes to the sends. This has a copy of me on it saying something.
2. Noise Generator is the sound to be modulated. I called it that because originally I used pink noise. That still works fine. You can replace the ReaSynth on that track with the JS: Liteon/pinknoisegen and you'll get something that sounds less musical, and slightly more voice-like. Ha ha not really. But less musical.
3. Bandpass X (where X is a number from -1 to 5). This simply receives the Mod Generator voice and bandpasses it way narrow using ReaFir. Each band (each X) is a different notch in the spectrum, from about 300hz to 1500hz.  Why that range? Because I got tired of making bands. Why is there a band -1 and 0? Because after I did band 1-5 I realized I wanted to go lower, and I didn't want to redo all the filters. I just couldn't face it. Like Mod Generator, these are also pre-fader so it can be turned down all the way but still do the sends.
4. Noisemod X uses the Bandpass X send as sidechain input to a JS: SStillwell/expander. The noise comes in from the Noise Generator track via prefader sends, it is filtered with an exact copy of the ReaFir bandpass from its associated Bandpass X, and then goes into the expander, where the output from Bandpass X is sidechained in on 3/4. The expander has a high ratio and carefully tweaked threshold. These are the only tracks that are allowed to make any noise.

This is obviously not a practical way to build a vocoder, but I did learn some of the basics. I think it says something good about Reaper, that it's got the routing mojo to handle this. And I may use Reaper to explore more basic synthesis ideas in the future - it's almost like a bunch of little modules that can be connected by wires, very inexpensively.