Next up in our guide to making music with the internet's most capable freeware, we decode the mysteries of the vocoder When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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 ...

Originally developed for telecommunications and military applications in the 1930s, the vocoder, a portmanteau of voice encoder, as a musical tool has become indelibly associated with artists such as ...

The vocoder—code name Special Customer, the Green Hornet, Project X-61753, X-Ray, and SIGSALY—started distorting human speech in earnest during World War II, in response to the excellence of German ...