The vocoder—code name Special Customer, the Green Hornet, Project X-61753, X-Ray, and SIGSALY—started distorting human speech in earnest during World War II, in response to the excellence of German ...

If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

A scientific tool for those lacking a voice, a means of encrypting voices during World War II, and a way to drop the funk, the vocoder has had many exhale its praises, from General Dwight D.

When Arturia announced the MicroFreak in January of 2019 I said “there's nothing stopping Arturia from adding more oscillators down the road through firmware updates.” And the company has not ...

The vocoder—part military technology, part musical instrument—has had quite a history. In our new Object of Interest video, we explore the vocoder in settings ranging from the Second World War to ...

Would anyone have predicted that a vocal effect best known for its use in a Cher song would dominate hip-hop one day? Doubtful. But a decade after the robotic twinges of Cher’s husky vocals in ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Softube has introduced Vocoder, a new plugin that delivers exactly what its name implies.

(17:46) Clear--Cybotron (from Jeff Mills, "The Wizard," WJLB, Detroit, 1986) "When you go to those places where those people were stars and where black music was rooted in those clubs, there's nothing ...

DAVE TOMPKINS’ new book is titled How to Wreck a Nice Beach, but it has nothing to do with the BP oil spill, or any coast at all. Instead, the phrase he chose for his book title is how the words “how ...

Sometimes a melody just captures your ear in a way that renders you powerless to resist. I've written before about "For You," the R&B-ish ballad recorded by both Stefon Harris and Robert Glasper last ...

Last year Floating Points, aka electronic producer Sam Shepherd, teamed with free jazz icon Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra on Promises, a staggering, emotionally charged work that ...