Thor, Meet the BV512 Digital Vocoder

Used through the years by musical acts including Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, Herbie Hancock, Wendy Carlos, Laurie Anderson, and Earth, Wind & Fire, the vocoder has been part of music since the 1970s. You may be surprised to find out that the technology (in its original, non-musical form) has been around since the 1930s.

Typically, a vocoder is used in the following way: A carrier signal (created by a synthesizer and controlled by a keyboard) is modulated by another signal (created by a human voice speaking or singing into a microphone). This creates the musically pitched “robot voice” with which we are all familiar. Reason’s BV512 Digital Vocoder can work in the same way (provided you use a sampled voice). However, in the following examples you will be doing something a little different: You will be using Thor for the carrier signal (which is perfectly normal), but you will be modulating that signal with a beat from Dr.Rex instead of a voice.