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 ...

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 ...

On Version History: how to play your voice like an instrument, with a little help from Chromeo. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. is ...

Stop Smiling Books/ Melville House; 335 pp. The room contains two turntables and a microphone. Hulking consoles line the walls, covered in dials and gauges and blinking lights, like the bridge of ...

It is hard to remember that scant decades ago, electronic magazines — the pre-Internet equivalent of blogs — featured lots of audio circuits based on analog processing. Music synthesizers were popular ...

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Half art book, half music nerd bathroom reading, Dave Tompkins' long-in-the-works history of the vocoder, "How to Wreck a Nice Beach," chronicles the sound synthesizing system's ...

A scientific tool for those lacking a voice, a means for encrypting voices during WWII and a way to drop the funk, the vocoder has had many exhale its praises. Here are five essential vocoder tracks.