Radio LBB: Vocoder October

The history of the instrument / effect dubbed the Vocoder (short for Voice Encoder) is fascinatingly complex, scientific and... well, dry. Instead, let us look at how it could have happened.

The effect is most widely known through the work of artists such as Daft Punk, Kraftwerk and Imogen Heap but its origins date back to much earlier.

In the late 1930’s an engineer at Bell Labs called Homer Dudley was working away at a device that would improve the sound quality of telephone calls while simultaneously reducing the amount of copper wire needed for telephone lines.

At around the same time the term 'disc jockey' was first being used to describe radio announcer Martin Block's work in which he would play records between news bulletins, falsely giving his audience the impression that the artists were right there with him performing live in the studio. As Martin's popularity grew over the months of broadcasting, so did his team and his pack of lies.

A young radio engineer from Belgium, Stephen Wynn, joined Martin's studio a year or so after the show had started. Stephen had been top of his class at the State University of Ghent and found employment at the station within days of relocating to New York after a chance meeting with studio manager Jason Tillman at a local diner.

Jason was extremely 'hands-off' as a studio manager; he had wanted to be a professional boxer in his early 20’s but had only been able to secure one victory on the amateur circuit. He did however find success as a live commentator for the sport for radio and over the years worked his way up the ladder - he would later be let go by the station for playing a part in instigating the Printing Press Riots of 1948.

In 1941 Martin was DJing between news updates on the Suzanne Miller Disappearance using a new console designed by Stephen which would allow listeners to dial in to the station and converse with Martin and his 'live' band on air. Around an hour into the show the station office received a call from an audience member who had spotted Suzanne Miller at a bank in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The update was unexpected and Martin's team scrambled quickly to divert the call from the station's office phone to Stephen's console.

What the audience heard was described as 'the voice of a serpent hissing to the tune of Bing Crosby's Small Fry where it was keeping Miller'; 'a creature not from earth, but fluent in the English language'; 'the voice of the devil himself'. Hysteria swept the nation, many families tried to return their radio sets to the place of purchase, some said they could hear the voice without a set - 'like a worm it wriggled through the air between my ears and the speakers and burrowed itself deep into my brain'.

Of course, it was in fact a technical glitch, one that would take Stephen years to replicate and understand. Other engineers replicated it too and it eventually would be used as a vocal effect in some of the biggest songs of the late 20th century.

Anyway that's fun isn't it - if you want to know the true history of the Vocoder check out iZotope's website.