Vocoder
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A vocoder (name derived from voice coder, formerly also called voder) is a speech analyser and synthesizer. It was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications applications in the 1930s, the idea being to code speech for transmission. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication, where voice has to be digitized, encrypted and then transmitted on a narrow, voice-bandwidth channel. The vocoder has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument. As an instrument, it is primarily used with guitars and synthesizers and produces a sound that can be described as a "talking guitar" or "talking keyboard". Vocoders are also often used to create the sound of a robot talking.
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How a vocoder works
Vocoder theory
The human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is then filtered by the nose and throat (a complicated resonant piping system) to produce differences in harmonic content (formants) in a controlled way, creating the wide variety of sounds used in speech. There are another set of sounds, known as the unvoiced and plosive sounds, which are not modified by the mouth in the same fashion.
The vocoder examines speech by finding this basic carrier wave, which is at the fundamental frequency, and measuring how its spectral characteristics are changed over time by recording someone speaking. This results in a series of numbers representing these modified frequencies at any particular time as the user speaks. In doing so, the vocoder dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. To recreate speech, the vocoder simply reverses the process, creating the fundamental frequency in an oscillator, then passing it through a stage that filters the frequency content based on the originally recorded series of numbers.
Early vocoders
In order to address this, most analog vocoder systems use a number of channels, all tuned to different frequencies (using band-pass filters). The various values of these filters are stored not as the raw numbers, which are all based on the original fundamental frequency, but as a series of modifications to that fundamental needed to modify it into the signal seen in that filter. During playback these settings are sent back into the filters and then added together, modified with the knowledge that speech typically varies between these frequencies in a fairly linear way. The result is recognizable speech, although somewhat "mechanical" sounding. Vocoders also often include a second system for generating unvoiced sounds, using a noise generator instead of the fundamental frequency.
An example of an early vocoder was the Sonovox, which was used in a number of songs from the 1940s to the 1960s, and is used to create the voice of Casey Junior the train in Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon.
Linear prediction-based vocoders
Since the late 1970s, most non-musical vocoders have been implemented using linear prediction, whereby the target signal's spectral envelope (formant) is estimated by an all-pole IIR filter. In linear prediction coding, the all-pole filter replaces the bandpass filterbank of its predecessor and is used at the encoder to whiten the signal (i.e., flatten the spectrum) and again at the decoder to re-apply the spectral shape of the target speech signal. In contrast with vocoders realized using bandpass filterbanks, the location of the linear predictor's spectral peaks is entirely determined by the target signal and need not be harmonic (whole-number multiples of the fundamental frequency).???
Modern vocoder algorithms
Even with the need to record several frequencies, and the additional unvoiced sounds, the compression of the vocoder system is impressive. Standard systems to record speech record a frequency from about 500Hz to 8kHz, where most of the frequencies used in speech lie, which requires 64kbit/s of bandwidth (due to Nyquist frequency). However a vocoder can provide a reasonably good simulation with as little as 2400 bit/s of bandwidth, a 26x improvement.
Several vocoder algorithms are used in NSA encryption systems:
- LPC-10, FIPS Pub 137, 2400 bit/s, which uses linear predictive coding
- Code Excited Linear Prediction, (CELP), 2400 and 4800 bit/s, Federal Standard 1016, used in STU-III
- Continuously Variable Slope Delta-modulation (CVSD), 16 Kbit/s, used in wideband encryptors such as the KY-57.
- Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM), ITU-T G.721, 32Kbit/s used in STE secure telephone
- Mixed Excitation Linear Prediction (MELP), MIL STD 3005, 2400 bit/s, used in the Future Narrowband Digital Terminal FNBDT, NSA's 21st century secure telephone.
Musical applications
For musical applications, a source of musical sounds is used as the oscillator, instead of extracting the fundamental frequency. For instance, one could use the sound of a guitar as the input to the filter bank, a technique that became popular in the 1970s.
In 1970, electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog developed one of the first truly musical vocoders. A 10-band device inspired by the vocoder designs of Homer Dudley, it was originally called a spectrum encoder-decoder, and later referred to simply as a vocoder. The carrier signal came from Carlos' Moog modular synthesizer, and the modulator from a microphone input. The output of the 10-band vocoder was fairly intelligible, but relied on especially articulated speech.
Carlos' and Moog's vocoder was featured in several recordings, including the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in which the vocoder sang the vocal part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Also featured in the soundtrack was a piece called Timesteps, which featured the vocoder in two main sections. Originally, Timesteps was intended as merely an introduction to vocoders for the "timid listener", but Kubrick chose to include the piece on the soundtrack, much to the surprise of Wendy Carlos.
In the late 1970s vocoder appeared also on some pop music recordings. Especially some disco recordings and some more experimental artists (so called new age genre) utilized vocoder sometimes. Vocoder has since then appeared on pop recordings occasionally. Artists that have made vocoder an essential part of their works include a German group Kraftwerk which plays on technological themes, Roger Troutman (and his band Zapp) and Herbie Hancock (during his late 1970s disco period) who both used vocoder vocals extensively on afro-grooves.
Linear prediction coding is also used as a musical effect (generally for cross-synthesis of musical timbres), but is not as popular as bandpass filterbank vocoders, to which the musical use of the word vocoder refers.
Examples of vocoders in music
The vocoder is a popular instrument used by many bands. Listed below are examples of songs that utilize the vocoder.
1960s
- Sly & the Family Stone - Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey and Sex Machine on album Stand! (1969)
1970s
- A Clockwork Orange (film) soundtrack by Wendy Carlos - the final theme of Beethoven's 9th , Timesteps
- Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion (Intro to David Thoener Remix)
- Herbie Hancock - Feets Don't Fail me now (a disco-funk album featuring many dedicatedly sung vocoder tracks) + many others
- Klaatu - Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
- Kraftwerk - most of their songs (including Autobahn, Radioland, Trans-Europa Express, Endlos Endlos, Die Roboter, Spacelab)
- Yellow Magic Orchestra - Behind the Mask
- Pink Floyd - Dogs, Sheep (from Animals)
1980s
- Earth, Wind & Fire - Let's Groove
- Jean-Michel Jarre - Used most extensively on his Zoolook album
- Kraftwerk - most of their songs (including Nummern, It's More Fun to Compute, Musique Non-Stop)
- Laura Branigan - The Lucky One
- Laurie Anderson - O Superman (For Massenet)
- Mike Oldfield - many songs (including Orabidoo, Five Miles Out, Taurus I & II)
- Pretty Tony - It's Automatic/Don't Stop the Rock
- Skinny Puppy - Worlock
- Styx - Mr. Roboto
- Zapp / Roger Troutman - many vocoder numbers (including hits More bounce to the ounce and Dancefloor)
1990s
- Air (French band) - Sexy Boy, Kelly Watch the Stars, et al
- Covenant - Feedback, Hardware Requiem, etc (most of the album 'Dreams of a Cryotank' and the album 'Sequencer')
- Cher - Believe (often credited with popularising Antares Autotune, although the producer responsible, Mark Taylor, insists a Digitech Talker was used)
- Download - Base Metal
- Eiffel 65 - Move Your Body
- Tear Garden - Judgement Hour
2000s
- cEvin Key - Frozen Sky
- Daft Punk - One More Time
- ohGr - JaKO
- Otto von Schirach - G4 Smackin'
- Tweaker - Microsize Boy
- Enigma - Turn Around
- Farbrausch - Candytron
- System of a Down -- Old School Hollywood
- Madonna - Nobody's Perfect
- Chromeo -de:Vocoder