Before T-Pain was using Auto-Tune to buy girls drinks, Franklin D. Roosevelt was using the vocoder to win World War II. In “How to Wreck a Nice Beach,” music critic Dave Tompkins (The Wire, Vibe) ...

When T-Pain and his synthesized vocals made their debut with the songs “I’m Sprung” and “I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper)” three years ago, most people dismissed the hits as novelties and expected the ...

A few weeks ago, the music writer Dave Tompkins took a podium in one of NYU’s many windowless annexes to promote his upcoming book, How To Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II To Hip-Hop.

While it’s hardly surprising to see celebrity music gear show up on eBay, we were hard pressed to think of a single instance of Monty Python using a vocoder to process their voices. But for a mere ...

Lauren B. Collister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations ...