Robots Singing in 3 Part Harmony

If you were brave enough to watch the Zapp and Roger and/or Chromeo videos posted on Valentine's Day, you may have been wondering something. Well, you were probably wondering a few things and to answer your first question, yes, I genuinely enjoy both those songs. If you somehow missed them in the haze of chocolate covered cherries and avalanches of rose petals, I command you now to check them out. You won't be sorry you did and they will prepare you for the following lesson in voice manipulation. Seriously, check them out, they are amazing and I've got nothing but time.

All set? Good. Now you may be asking yourself, "What is the deal with Chromeo?" I have no idea. It all seems like an absurd joke and that guy's moustache is super creepy but the brilliance of the song is undeniable. You may also be thinking, "Why do both videos feature men with tubes in their mouth?" I wondered that too, decided to do some research and discovered something that completley shocked me and made me question the basic fundamental principles of the universe. These vocalists are not using vocoders as I always assumed. Those tubes are part of a magical device called a talk box. The talk box reproduces sound from an amplifier through the tube and directs it into a performer's mouth. By changing the shape of their mouth, they change the sound of the instrument being filtered through the talk box. It was famously used by Peter Frampton on the Frampton Comes Alive! album and allowed Richie Sambora to make that awesome "Waaaaaaaah!" sound in "Livin' On a Prayer." Without the talk box, Bon Jovi might still be just a bar band. Talk box, I thank you.

Check out Mr Frampton rocking it in the modern era. It's thankfully short so I promise it will be over before the Deep Hurting starts:


So what's a vocoder then? A vocoder is a combination of a speech analyzer and a synthesizer that allows keyboards to sing like robots. Vocals are transmitted and filtered through an instrument (typically a keyboard) where they can be manipulated and modulated as much as the performer wants. Without the vocoder, the world would be devoid of the majesty of Kraftwerk and we would sadly be without footage of this guy and his keytar: