A few weeks ago, the music writer Dave Tompkins took a podium in one of NYU’s many windowless annexes to promote his upcoming book, How To Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II To Hip-Hop.

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 ...

Consider the vocoder. Invented at Bell Labs in 1928 to mimic the human voice, the hope was that the machine would better transmit speech underwater—say, across the Atlantic. Seventeen years later, ...

Casio is capturing a bit of Daft Punk magic with the new Casiotone CT-S1000V, which comes with the ability to “sing” using a built-in, customizable, voice synthesizer. The CT-S1000V, when used in ...

A lot of Daft Punk songs use vocoder effects. Not really sure if that's the style of music you're looking for. Not really. I appreciate the suggestion, but DP songs just aren't my thing somehow. I ...

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.