Mondo Knows Facts
A vocoder uses a voice to shape another sound
Bell Labs built the first versions in the 1930s to compress speech for telephony The analysis of a voice becomes a filter over a synthesizer or instrument, which produces the singing robot effect. It appeared on pop records from the 1970s and later in hip hop. Its sound became shorthand for machines talking. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: vocoder, effects, history
A vocoder uses a voice to shape another sound: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Bell Labs built the first versions in the 1930s to compress speech for telephony. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.