Vocoding and the Magic in Artifice

The human voice is a versatile instrument. It covers a range of regions, languages, pitches, and timbres. Given that nearly all humans use their voice every day, it’s a useful tool to convey our shared humanity to one another. 

While the human voice is incredible on its own, there’s a lot more than can be done with it. You can edit these vocals, chop them up, layer them, and pan them around the mix. Or you can take them beyond the natural realm, modify them, distort them, in some cases, warp them into something new. 

Vocal modulation has been a prominent fixture in music for decades, and built a bit of a mixed reputation. Some people see the adjustment of voices with tools like Autotune to delegitimize an artist’s performance. It’s like the audio equivalent of Photoshop, too artificial for their tastes. 

As an avid music listener and a graphic designer, I’d have to disagree with this take. You can use Photoshop to touch up someone’s skin, but you can also use it to turn their skin purple. When these adjustments to visuals and audio alike become more pronounced, they beckon a person to lean in a little closer and figure out why that change was made. 

There can be a beauty in the artifice of vocal modulation. A magic, even. This is where the vocoder enters the picture.

The vocoder was initially developed as a speech encoder during World War II. By the 1960s, musicians got their hands on the technology and it began to pop up more and more across the music landscape. The vocoder uses two inputs, the user’s voice and a “carrier,” usually a synthesizer waveform. It extracts the shape of your voice from the microphone input and applies it onto the carrier channel, a process called cross synthesis. The result is a robotic, glitched-out effect as the voice is distorted. 

One version of vocoding you might be familiar with is the Heil Talk Box, popularized by artist Peter Frampton. The talk box has a speaker with a long tube attached that gets placed in the user’s mouth. While the vocoder is a fully electronic piece of technology, this system is electro-acoustic. It uses two inputs as well, one of which is the voice, but this time one of them is an acoustic instrumental element, like a guitar. The voice modifies the guitar sound, which creates a “talking guitar” effect. 

There’s also autotune, which you’ve likely heard of. Autotune has gained a bit of an infamous reputation over the years, but all it is is a pitch correcting software. Most of the time it’s used to adjust a note or some pitchiness in an artist’s vocal takes, but it can also be used as a stylistic tool as well. When the effect is used to the extreme, it can add a robotic, artificial sound to one’s voice. While some songs I’ll mention don’t technically use a vocoder, their use of other effects like Autotune achieve a similar effect, so I think they’re still worth bringing up. 

Now that we’ve got the history of the technology laid out, let’s delve deeper into why artists and listeners alike find the vocoder so appealing.

The first answer that likely popped into your head as to why people like the vocoder is that it sounds super cool and futuristic. And that’s definitely true. This quality of the vocoder makes it prime for usage in dance or electronic music. 

The vocoder became a staple of the disco genre back in the 1970s and 80s. The vocoded intro to “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire is the perfect way to hype up a dance floor for the disco banger to follow. Vocoder is slathered all over classic dance track “Funky Town” by Lipps Inc. Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Cher, the list of artists that used vocoders to pump up the energy in their music goes on and on. 

French electronic music duo Daft Punk put their name on the map with polished, dance floor ready music and mysterious, helmet-ed presentation. They’ve also done their part to bring this long tradition of the vocoder in dance music into the new Millenium. Many of their songs feature the vocoder or other means of vocal distortion, transforming simple phrases like “Work it, make it, do it, makes us harder, better, faster stronger” into so much more. 

Even when Daft Punk welcomes a featured artist onto their songs, their vocoded vocals are still present, a way of making each of their songs immediately recognizable. On their 2013 smash hit “Get Lucky,” Pharell Williams gets the chorus, but the group’s signature robotic chants make up the song’s final moments. This approach applies to their work as featured producers as well. The Weekend concretized his pivot towards synthpop on his album Starboy by coasting atop a wave of iconic Daft Punk-y vocoded backing vocals. 

People often gravitate towards the dance floor for release, to find a community and relief through the movement of their bodies. The vocoder’s presence in dance music reflects this urge. As it distorts the voice, the vocoder can make it universal, communal, relatable to all. The euphoria this type of music provides allows listeners to step out of themselves, let loose, and have fun.

Vocoding allows for nuanced expressions of gender and identity

The distortion that comes with vocoding can add a level of mystery to the artists that use it. Many people have specifically used the software to lean into that effect, using it to distort their identities as well. This can be done to explore one's gender. 

One place a listener will come across significant amounts of vocoding and other means of vocal distortion is the genre of hyperpop, a style of music spearheaded by a litany of queer and trans voices. Max Schaffer discusses this phenomenon in the excellent article Modulation & the Chaos-Trans Voice. Vocal modulation tools like the vocoder gives artists agency over their own voice. They can craft their vocals into something that feels more true to themselves. For transgender artists, it can help them through gender dysphoria, or create a presentation unique to them. Laura Les of 100 gecs and boundary-pushing producer SOPHIE are two examples of trans women at the forefront of the hyperpop genre that have ushered the usage of vocal modulation into the modern age, and then far off into the future. 

The anonymity the vocoder creates in one’s voice can also be a useful tool for self-exploration. Debuting in 2015, The Japanese House is the solo project of London based singer and songwriting Amber Bain, who uses copious amounts of vocoder in her production. The Japanese House initially debuted as an ambiguous, genderless presence, with Bain avoiding interviews, photos, and social media. One way this sense of anonymity was maintained was through Bain’s use of the vocoder. The distortion of Bain’s vocals blurred the line between feminine and masculine, and the human and artificial as well. This allowed the listener to take a step back from any preconceived expectations they may have and drift off into Bain’s dreamy, limboing soundscapes, enjoying the music for what it was. 

We can even backtrack to Daft Punk, who used this element of the vocoder to their advantage. Wanting to avoid celebrity stardom, they used their masks and distorted vocals alike to separate their public and private selves. No matter how an artist identifies, the vocoder allows them to reveal and conceal elements of themselves on their own terms. 

The vocoder can also allow artists to express complex emotions like nobody’s business. There is something undeniably visceral about the effect the vocoder gives. Artists use it on songs with a whole range of emotions, but it especially hits home when communicating vulnerability, insecurity, or distress.

To look at how the vocoder works to unlock an artist’s vulnerability, take a look at 808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West. West broke new ground for the future sound of hip-hop on this album, and it mostly consists of West singing with heavy autotune. The autotune functions a lot like the vocoder on these songs, giving a robotic tinge to West’s voice. The album’s biggest hit, “Heartless,” does this to a stunning effect. During the verses West’s voice is clear as he recounts an experience with a cruel lover, but on the hook his vocals are slathered in a distorted effect, sonically as slippery as they are catchy. This makes the chorus distinct from the rest of the song, and helps it cement it in the listener’s memory. With the way it walks the line between slick production and sorrowful storm of emotion, 808s and Heartbreak is certainly an album that lives up to the title. 

Taylor Swift’s seventh album Reputation is littered with vocoder. The project heavily revolves around themes of public perception and growing comfortable in one’s vulnerability in the aftermath of betrayal. The most memorable vocoder moment on the album for me is the intro to the song “Delicate,” where Swift questions herself about whether opening herself up to a new love is worth the risk. Here the vocoder’s distortion emulates insecurity, how the fear of vulnerability can make somebody put on a veil to avoid showing too much of themselves to another person. “Delicate” is smart in how it uses its vocoder because it also knows when to stop using it. After the intro, the vocoder disappears, signaling Swift’s decision to use her own voice to open up. 

I can’t write an article about the vocoder without mentioning one of the most iconic vocoded moments in music history: “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap. The usage of vocoder in this track makes Heap’s laments on romantic tribulation all the more visceral. The whole song works as a build-up to its final drop, where Heap’s voice swarms and coalesses into a falcon punch of angst. While the lyric “Mm, what you say?” may be a bit of a punchline now, it’s iconic status is fully cemented regardless, and we have the vocoder to thank for that. 

Like with its usage in dance music, the sound of the vocoder recalls the future, a path forward into endless possibilities. Several artists are using it, and new ways of vocal distortion, to innovate music as we know it. 

The vocoder itself can be used in a variety of innovative ways, not just on main vocals. One of my favorite backing beats of all time, Timbaland’s work on “Pony” by Ginuwine, uses heavily vocoded vocal samples and breaths to create a sensual, hypnotizing atmosphere. The ear just barely recognizes this beat as the human voice, familiar enough to draw you in but surprising enough to keep you on your toes. 

The vocoder can also lend a fresh element to an unexpected genre. One may not expect to hear robotic vocals alongside traditional Flamenco sounds, but ROSALĺA did just that on her breakout, genre-mashing album El Mal Querer. On the album, uses ROSALĺA vocoder to accentuate her already stunning and air-tight vibrato and push the folkloric, usually acoustic leaning genre of Flamenco into new territory. In the opening moments of the song “NANA - Cap.9: Concepción,” the heavenly imagery of the lyrics is accentuated by an angelically vocoded choir. 

Artists can also take inspiration from the vocoder and create their own vocal-distorting technology. One of my favorite examples of this is the Messina. The Messina is the brainchild of Chris Messina, (no, not the actor on The Mindy Project.) It was inspired by the Primizer, invented by Francis Starlite, also known by his stage name Francis and the Lights. Messina created the software while working with Bon Iver on his album 22, A Million. The software distorts and randomizes the input vocal, generating four notes at a time. The album’s signature distorted sound comes from “a combination of the dry signal, tuned signal, tonic signal and the harmony created by the H8000” according to Messina. Due to its randomizing effect, the result is always a bit of a surprise. The resulting album is raw, a little messy, and ultimately a wonderland to the ears. 

One could even argue that T-Pain’s use of autotune to push his vocals into flagrantly artificial territory opened up the technique of vocoding to the wider pop world in the 2000s. While listeners were skeptical at the time of whether he was using that autotune as a crutch, we now know that T-Pain mindfully used it as a tool to accentuate his performances, not diminish them. 

It might seem like the supposed fakeness of the vocoder would fall into obscurity at a time where music listeners demand authenticity from artists. Instead, it’s just as prominent as ever. Why is that? 

When I hear the vocoder, the music doesn’t fake at all. The vocoder is so obviously artificial that it draws attention to itself and makes the audience pay attention to why exactly it’s used. It encourages me as a listener to engage on a deeper level with the artist and their music, not detach from it. It’s what drove me to write this article in the first place. 

Whether it’s bringing us onto the dancefloor, or allowing an artist to explore facets of their identity, or helping a songwriter open up about their emotional state, or driving forward musical innovation, the vocoder is a versatile tool that makes the music it’s used in all the more multifaceted, engaging, and honest. 

Oscar Wilde once said: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Vocoding, in many ways, is like that mask. In allowing the artist to take a step away from their own naked presentation and embrace artifice, the vocoder helps them reveal a truth they could never get out otherwise. It’s magical to witness it every time. 

Check out my playlist Modulation Station for the music that influenced this article, and some of my favorite songs that use vocoder!