Sound Check Mr. Roboto
posted by on May 10 at 10:32 AM
The vocoder is a processor that makes your voice sound like a robot. A voice – encoder. It digitizes and encrypts sound and compresses it into a narrow vocal bandwidth channel. Vocals are synthesized, and audiences, electrified. A droid on the mic sexes up any sonic combination. Circuitry gets wet with it.
Herbie Hancock, Air, Trans Am, Cher, U.S.E., Kraftwerk, The Faint, and Ween have all dabbled with vocodeness as a musical instrument. And there are many others, like Styx’s, “Mr. Roboto.”
Then there’s the whole pitch shift aspect, for Britney Spears, J-Lo, and Anthony Kiedis, who need help hitting their note. But that’s cheating.
What are your favorite vocoder songs and bands? What kind of vocoder do you use?
Korg, Roland, Atrise? Alesis has some vocoders in the analog realm where you have to manually tune it to a note. With no presets, you have to turn then knob until you find your note. A bitch on stage.
From Wik-i’mina hurria:
In 1970, electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog developed one of the first truly musical vocoders. A 10-band device inspired by the vocoder designs of Homer Dudley, it was originally called a spectrum encoder-decoder, and later referred to simply as a vocoder. The carrier signal came from a Moog modular synthesizer, and the modulator from a microphone input. The output of the 10-band vocoder was fairly intelligible, but relied on specially articulated speech. Later improved vocoders use a high-pass filter to let some sibilance through from the microphone; this ruins the device for its original speech-coding application, but it makes the “talking synthesizer” effect much more intelligible.
Shout Out Out Out Out! Best band with a vocoder ever!
Herbie, Herbie, and Herbie. The electrofunconic Love Bug.
Newcleus (First song, first LP)
Twilight 22 'electric kingdom'
Grandmaster Flash 'Skorpio'
Zapp: first LP
U.S.E. EMERALD CITY!!!!!
Yes, Grandmaster Flash. Thank you. The master.
where is the Frampton love? Huh? Where?
Daft Punk (duh) and Chromeo.
Scorpio, shake it baby, shake it right now.
I can still spin on my back.
Neil Young - Trans
So good/bad the record company sued him.
Framton of course, but what about ELO? did'nt they use one or was I just on drugs:-P
Zapp and Frampton both use a talk box. Completely different thing.
ELO used vocoders a bunch. My favorite track is "Mr. Blue Sky," although not necessarily because of the vocoder. As a guitar effect, I'm partial to Dave Gilmour's solo on "Pigs" and Joe Walsh's use of it on numerous tracks ("Rocky Mountain Way" and "Those Shoes" being the best-known.)
I'm pretty sure that's some kind of vocoder on the vocals singing "Bow wow wow yippee yo yippee yay" in George Clinton's "Atomic Dog," which is one of my faves. And yes, Zapp, on pretty much every track I can remember.
Whoops. You're right, Blairly. I think most of my examples are in fact talk-boxes.
U.S.E- anything by them. Their really the only ones using it in a current setting along w/ of course Daft punk.
this is a very interesing blog posting. Thank you for taking the time to give us more info. I always wondered what made U.S.E sound that way.
So awesome! And Neil young's vocoder album was soooo weird.
Midnight Star - No Parking on the Dance Floor
"Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap
"All Of Your Love" by Hellogoodbye
Trent are you brining the electrofunfunk back? Long live Herbie, long live Frampton, long live the road tours and the boys in the bus.
Tante
Sir Mixalot when he was back in the day mixin in the studio with DJ Nastyness Rodriguez on 1250 KFOX AM(yes Seattle had AM had Rap ATTACK).
Mixalot was doing Lets G and introduced his Square Dance alter ego voice way nastier and funkier in other songs than the square dance rap. I f you recall Electro Shock and I Love my Beats you know what I'm talkin about. Mixalot was Seattles Egyptian Lover but better.
Oh and the other ones I can remeber were DR Dre before he went gangster rap and Uncle Jams Army. Those were the days and those grooves were housin.
And I couldn't leave out two important others Miami Bass Wars DXJ and Maggatron and the lesser known but most used bass groove for mixing through many years and hip hop acts Cybotrons 'Clear'
..and Trent, of course, didn't mention the band he's in (too busy falling in some wierd dream, perhaps).. but we can't forget about Head Like A Kite.
Sir Herbie a Lot. The vocoder makes the sexy sounds I enjoy. Electric tits.
i would have to say ministry stands as the best/most diverse/most original usage of vocoders. from the screaming robot of "you know what you are" to the screaming underwater effect in "just one fix". vocoders sound really cool when the singer is screaming.
adult. frequently use very subtle vocoder effects that give the vocals a tinny, metallic sheen.
the list goes on and on. vocals sound so much more interesting when they don't sound human.
Bass Wars DKJ are the awesomest.
Deftones "Elite"
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