spoken word
9 tracksA vocal delivered as speech rather than song: talked, recited or half-sung with little or no melody. In electronic and post-punk music a flat, deadpan spoken voice over a beat can sound cool, ironic or confrontational.
Instruments and technology
vocoder
5 tracks.
What it is
A device that imposes the shape of a voice onto a synthesizer's sound, producing the robotic singing heard from Kraftwerk to Daft Punk.
Read more on WikipediaRelated concepts
auto-tune
0 tracksSoftware that corrects the pitch of a voice. Set to act instantly, it becomes an audible effect, the stepped, glassy vocal of much pop and hip-hop since the late 1990s.
synthesizer
38 tracksAn electronic instrument that generates sound from oscillators and shapes it with filters and envelopes. Synthesizers define the sound of electronic pop, house and techno.
Hear it in these tracks
Daft Punk
Get Lucky (Radio Edit)
Nile Rodgers' chicken-scratch guitar, Pharrell's easy vocal and Daft Punk's robot choir turn a four-chord loop into the most irresistible disco revival of the 2010s: the lead single of Random Access Memories, in its radio edit.
Daft Punk
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
A chopped funk loop and a robot reciting a workout mantra: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is Daft Punk turning a sample into one of the most quoted hooks of the century.
Daft Punk
Give Life Back to Music
The curtain-raiser of Random Access Memories: live drums, Nile Rodgers' guitar and a vocoder mission statement announcing that Daft Punk came back to make music breathe again.
Daft Punk
Around the World
One phrase, one bassline and seven minutes of repetition: Around the World is Daft Punk proving that a loop can be a whole world on its own, and Michel Gondry's video turned its arrangement into choreography.
Mirwais
Naïve Song
Mirwais, the former Taxi Girl guitarist who would soon produce Madonna's Music, sets a vocoded voice against stop-start acoustic guitar and retro synths: a 2000 French electro single that reached number two on the US club chart.