Everything's better with vocoders!

• Cylons
• Kraftwerk
• Front Line Assembly
• Mr. Roboto by Styx
• Worlock by Skinny Puppy
• Saviour (vox) by VNV Nation

You too can sound like some inhuman mechanical fiend bent on world destruction. Yesh!

Examples: "Only God Knows Why" by Kid Rock. "Blue" by Eiffel 65. Numerous tracks from Madonna's "Music" album (though the title track isn't a prime offender).

But I like vocoder, on the condition that it's done properly. Listen to "Remember" by Air. It's every bit as blatant with the vocoder as Kid Rock's song, but it adds to the general ambience of the song. In Case of the Ex by Mya, the vocoder was used only once, to accentuate an interesting vocal line, and it works beautifully. And yes, most of what rivet mentioned is good, too. But every time I hear a new boring, formulaic pop song that's been drenched in vocoder in a vain attempt to make it more interesting, hip or innovative, I want to vomit.

*end rant*

Strictly speaking, the newest trend in popular music in 2001 was NOT vocoders.

For some time now, many audio software applications such as Cubase, Pro Tools, and Digital Performer have had pitch correction capabilities. The intended use is obviously to keep lousy singers like Madonna from constantly singing sour notes. However, some clever producer figured out that, just like a compressor, the settings on an autotuner can be abused. In fact, certain units can be controlled by MIDI to pull your voice into a certain melody no matter what note you're singing.

Thus, BT asks the guys in *NSYNC to sing one melody while he plays a completely different one into his Antares AutoTune VST plugin (which happens to cost $300 as a software plugin and nearly $400 as a rackmount hardware unit!). Mr. Transeau gets a big paycheck so he can pay off his Kyma and every pop music in the world copies this effect because everyone wants to hear it. (OK, maybe that Cher song had it before.)

There is quite a mess of hardware and software that can perform this task besides the Antares line. Digitech makes rather capable vocal processors, and quite a few pieces of software have pitch correcting features.

As for cheap vocoder gimmicks, that's nothing new. Ever since Kraftwerk, and maybe before... Ashley Pomeroy suggests that Wendy Carlos first kicked off the trend with her soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.