The vocoder was never meant to change the music business – it wasn’t meant for music at all. But the research that started a century ago as a way to cheaply move voices over telephone wires took on a life of its own: It turned into a crucial bit of secret military technology, and then inspired generations of musicians to play their own voices like an instrument. On this episode, with the help of Switched on Pop’s Charlie Harding and the electro-funk duo Chromeo, we tell the full story of the vocoder and all that it made possible.

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