A vocoder ( /ˈvoʊkoʊdər/, short for voice encoder) is an analysis/synthesis system, used to reproduce human speech. In the encoder, the input is passed through a multiband filter, each band is passed through an envelope follower, and the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated to the decoder. The decoder applies these (amplitude) control signals to corresponding filters in the synthesizer. Since the control signals change only slowly compared to the original speech waveform, the bandwidth required to transmit speech can be reduced. This allows more speech channels to share a radio circuit or submarine cable. By encoding the control signals, voice transmission can be secured against interception.

The vocode was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications applications in the 1930s, the idea being to code speech for transmission. Transmitting the parameters of a speech model instead of a digitized representation of the speech waveform saves bandwidth in the communication channel; the parameters of the model change relatively slowly, compared to the changes in the speech waveform that they describe. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication, where voice has to be encrypted and then transmitted. The advantage of this method of "encryption" is that no 'signal' is sent, but rather envelopes of the bandpass filters. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same channel configuration to resynthesize a version of the original signal spectrum. The vocoder as both hardware and software has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument.

Whereas the vocoder analyzes speech, transforms it into electronically transmitted information, and recreates it, The Voder (from Voice Operating Demonstrator) generates synthesized speech by means of a console with fifteen touch-sensitive keys and a pedal, basically consisting of the "second half" of the vocoder, but with manual filter controls, needing a highly trained operator.^[1][2]

Early 1970s vocoder, custom built for electronic music band Kraftwerk

Vocoder theory[link]

The human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is then filtered by the nose and throat (a complicated resonant piping system) to produce differences in harmonic content (formants) in a controlled way, creating the wide variety of sounds used in speech. There is another set of sounds, known as the unvoiced and plosive sounds, which are created or modified by the mouth in different fashions.

The vocoder examines speech by measuring how its spectral characteristics change over time. This results in a series of numbers representing these modified frequencies at any particular time as the user speaks. In simple terms, the signal is split into a number of frequency bands (the larger this number, the more accurate the analysis) and the level of signal present at each frequency band gives the instantaneous representation of the spectral energy content. Thus, the vocoder dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. To recreate speech, the vocoder simply reverses the process, processing a broadband noise source by passing it through a stage that filters the frequency content based on the originally recorded series of numbers. Information about the instantaneous frequency (as distinct from spectral characteristic) of the original voice signal is discarded; it wasn't important to preserve this for the purposes of the vocoder's original use as an encryption aid, and it is this "dehumanizing" quality of the vocoding process that has made it useful in creating special voice effects in popular music and audio entertainment.

Since the vocoder process sends only the parameters of the vocal model over the communication link, instead of a point by point recreation of the waveform, it allows a significant reduction in the bandwidth required to transmit speech.

History[link]

Channel vocoder schematic

Analog vocoders typically analyze an incoming signal by splitting the signal into a number of tuned frequency bands or ranges. A modulator and carrier signal are sent through a series of these tuned band pass filters. In the example of a typical robot voice the modulator is a microphone and the carrier is noise or a sawtooth waveform. There are usually between 8 and 20 bands.

The amplitude of the modulator for each of the individual analysis bands generates a voltage that is used to control amplifiers for each of the corresponding carrier bands. The result is that frequency components of the modulating signal are mapped onto the carrier signal as discrete amplitude changes in each of the frequency bands.

Often there is an unvoiced band or sibilance channel. This is for frequencies outside of analysis bands for typical speech but still important in speech. Examples are words that start with the letters s, f, ch or any other sibilant sound. These can be mixed with the carrier output to increase clarity. The result is recognizable speech, although somewhat "mechanical" sounding. Vocoders also often include a second system for generating unvoiced sounds, using a noise generator instead of the fundamental frequency.

SIGSALY (1943-1946) speech encipherment system

HY-2 Vocoder (designed in 1961), was the last generation of channel vocoder in the US.^[3]

The first experiments with a vocoder were conducted in 1928 by Bell Labs engineer Homer Dudley, who was granted a patent for it on March 21, 1939.^[4] The Voder(Voice Operating Demonstrator), was introduced to the public at the AT&T building at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.^[2] The Voder consisted of a series of manually-controlled oscillators, filters, and a noise source. The filters were controlled by a set of keys and a foot pedal to convert the hisses and tones into vowels, consonants, and inflections. This was a complex machine to operate, but with a skilled operator could produce recognizable speech.^{[2][media 1]}

Dudley's vocoder was used in the SIGSALY system, which was built by Bell Labs engineers in 1943. SIGSALY was used for encrypted high-level voice communications during World War II. Later work in this field has been conducted by James Flanagan.

Vocoder applications[link]

• Terminal equipment for Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) based systems.
• Digital Trunking
• DMR TDMA
• Digital Voice Scrambling and Encryption
• Digital WLL
• Voice Storage and Playback Systems
• Messaging Systems
• VoIP Systems
• Voice Pagers
• Regenerative Digital Voice Repeaters

Modern vocoder implementations[link]

Even with the need to record several frequencies, and the additional unvoiced sounds, the compression of the vocoder system is impressive. Standard speech-recording systems capture frequencies from about 500 Hz to 3400 Hz, where most of the frequencies used in speech lie, typically using a sampling rate of 8 kHz (slightly greater than the Nyquist rate). The sampling resolution is typically at least 12 or more bits per sample resolution (16 is standard), for a final data rate in the range of 96-128 kbit/s. However, a good vocoder can provide a reasonable good simulation of voice with as little as 2.4 kbit/s of data.

'Toll Quality' voice coders, such as ITU G.729, are used in many telephone networks. G.729 in particular has a final data rate of 8 kbit/s with superb voice quality. G.723 achieves slightly worse quality at data rates of 5.3 kbit/s and 6.4 kbit/s. Many voice systems use even lower data rates, but below 5 kbit/s voice quality begins to drop rapidly.

Several vocoder systems are used in NSA encryption systems:

• LPC-10, FIPS Pub 137, 2400 bit/s, which uses linear predictive coding
• Code-excited linear prediction (CELP), 2400 and 4800 bit/s, Federal Standard 1016, used in STU-III
• Continuously variable slope delta modulation (CVSD), 16 kbit/s, used in wide band encryptors such as the KY-57.
• Mixed-excitation linear prediction (MELP), MIL STD 3005, 2400 bit/s, used in the Future Narrowband Digital Terminal FNBDT, NSA's 21st century secure telephone.
• Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM), former ITU-T G.721, 32 kbit/s used in STE secure telephone

(ADPCM is not a proper vocoder but rather a waveform codec. ITU has gathered G.721 along with some other ADPCM codecs into G.726.)

Vocoders are also currently used in developing psychophysics, linguistics, computational neuroscience and cochlear implant research.

Modern vocoders that are used in communication equipment and in voice storage devices today are based on the following algorithms:

• Algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP 4.7 kbit/s – 24 kbit/s)^[5]
• Mixed-excitation linear prediction (MELPe 2400, 1200 and 600 bit/s)^[6]
• Multi-band excitation (AMBE 2000 bit/s – 9600 bit/s)^[7]
• Sinusoidal-Pulsed Representation (SPR 300 bit/s – 4800 bit/s)^[8]
• Tri-Wave Excited Linear Prediction (TWELP 600 bit/s – 9600 bit/s)^[9]

Linear prediction-based vocoders[link]

Since the late 1970s, most non-musical vocoders have been implemented using linear prediction, whereby the target signal's spectral envelope (formant) is estimated by an all-pole IIR filter. In linear prediction coding, the all-pole filter replaces the bandpass filter bank of its predecessor and is used at the encoder to whiten the signal (i.e., flatten the spectrum) and again at the decoder to re-apply the spectral shape of the target speech signal.

One advantage of this type of filtering is that the location of the linear predictor's spectral peaks is entirely determined by the target signal, and can be as precise as allowed by the time period to be filtered. This is in contrast with vocoders realized using fixed-width filter banks, where spectral peaks can generally only be determined to be within the scope of a given frequency band. LP filtering also has disadvantages in that signals with a large number of constituent frequencies may exceed the number of frequencies that can be represented by the linear prediction filter. This restriction is the primary reason that LP coding is almost always used in tandem with other methods in high-compression voice coders.

RAWCLI vocoder[link]

Robust Advanced Low Complexity Waveform Interpolation (RALCWI) technology uses proprietary signal decomposition and parameter encoding methods to provide high voice quality at high compression ratios. The voice quality of RALCWI-class vocoders, as estimated by independent listeners, is similar to that provided by standard vocoders running at bit rates above 4000 bit/s. The Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of voice quality for this Vocoder is about 3.5-3.6. This value was determined by a paired comparison method, performing listening tests of developed and standard voice Vocoders.^{[citation needed]}

The RALCWI vocoder operates on a “frame-by-frame” basis. The 20ms source voice frame consists of 160 samples of linear 16-bit PCM sampled at 8 kHz. The Voice Encoder performs voice analysis at the high time resolution (8 times per frame) and forms a set of estimated parameters for each voice segment. All of the estimated parameters are quantized to produce 41-, 48- or 55-bit frames, using vector quantization (VQ) of different types. All of the vector quantizers were trained on a mixed multi-language voice base, which contains voice samples in both Eastern and Western languages.

Waveform-Interpolative (WI) vocoder was developed in AT&T Bell Laboratories around 1995 by W.B. Kleijn, and subsequently a low- complexity version was developed by AT&T for the DoD secure vocoder competition. Notable enhancements to the WI coder were made at the University of California, Santa Barbara. AT&T holds the core patents related to WI, and other institutes hold additional patents. Using these patents as a part of WI coder implementation requires licensing from all IPR holders.

The product is the result of a co-operation between CML Microcircuits and SPIRIT DSP. The co-operation combines CML’s 39-year history of developing mixed-signal semiconductors for professional and leisure communication applications, with SPIRIT’s experience in embedded voice products.

Voice effects in music[link]

For musical applications, a source of musical sounds is used as the carrier, instead of extracting the fundamental frequency. For instance, one could use the sound of a synthesizer as the input to the filter bank, a technique that became popular in the 1970s.

Musical history[link]

One of the earliest person who recognized the possibility of Vocoder/Voder on the electronic music may be Werner Meyer-Eppler, a German physicist/experimental acoustician/phoneticist. In 1949, he published thesis on the electronic music and speech synthesis from the viewpoint of sound synthesis,^[10] and in 1951, he joined to the successful proposal of establishment of WDR Cologne Studio for Electronic Music.^[11]

Siemens Synthesizer (c.1959) at Siemens Studio for Electronic Music was one of the first attempt to divert vocoder to create music

One of the first attempt to divert vocoder to create music may be a “Siemens Synthesizer” at Siemens Studio for Electronic Music, developed between 1956-1959.^{[12][media 2]}

In 1968, Robert Moog developed one of the first solid-state musical vocoder for electronic music studio of University at Buffalo.^[13]

In 1969, Bruce Haack built a prototype vocoder, named "Farad" after Michael Faraday,^[14] and it was featured on his rock album The Electric Lucifer released in the same year.^{[15][media 3]}

In 1970 Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog built another musical vocoder, a 10-band device inspired by the vocoder designs of Homer Dudley. It was originally called a spectrum encoder-decoder, and later referred to simply as a vocoder. The carrier signal came from a Moog modular synthesizer, and the modulator from a microphone input. The output of the 10-band vocoder was fairly intelligible, but relied on specially articulated speech. Later improved vocoders use a high-pass filter to let some sibilance through from the microphone; this ruins the device for its original speech-coding application, but it makes the "talking synthesizer" effect much more intelligible.

Carlos and Moog's vocoder was featured in several recordings, including the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in which the vocoder sang the vocal part of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony". Also featured in the soundtrack was a piece called "Timesteps," which featured the vocoder in two sections. "Timesteps" was originally intended as merely an introduction to vocoders for the "timid listener", but Kubrick chose to include the piece on the soundtrack, much to the surprise of Wendy Carlos.^{[citation needed]}

Kraftwerk's Autobahn (1974) was one of the first successful pop/rock albums to feature vocoder vocals. Another of the early songs to feature a vocoder was "The Raven" on the 1976 album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project; the vocoder also was used on later albums such as I Robot. Following Alan Parsons' example, vocoders began to appear in pop music in the late 1970s, for example, on disco recordings. Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra used the vocoder in several albums such as Time (featuring the Roland VP-330 Plus MkI). ELO songs such as "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Sweet Talkin' Woman" both from Out of the Blue (1977) use the vocoder extensively. Featured on the album are the EMS Vocoder 2000W MkI, and the EMS Vocoder (-System) 2000 (W or B, MkI or II).

	"Mr. Blue Sky" by the Electric Light Orchestra (1977) noicon Classic example of a singing vocoded voice.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Giorgio Moroder made extensive use of the vocoder on the 1975 album Einzelganger and on the 1977 album From Here to Eternity. Another example is Pink Floyd's album Animals, where the band put the sound of a barking dog through the device. Vocoders are often used to create the sound of a robot talking, as in the Styx song "Mr. Roboto". It was also used for the introduction to the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland.

Vocoders have appeared on pop recordings from time to time ever since, most often simply as a special effect rather than a featured aspect of the work. However, many experimental electronic artists of the New Age music genre often utilize vocoder in a more comprehensive manner in specific works, such as Jean Michel Jarre (on Zoolook, 1984) and Mike Oldfield (on QE2, 1980 and Five Miles Out, 1982). There are also some artists who have made vocoders an essential part of their music, overall or during an extended phase. Examples include the German synthpop group Kraftwerk, Stevie Wonder ("Send One Your Love", "A Seed's a Star") and jazz/fusion keyboardist Herbie Hancock during his late 1970s period.

In 1982 Neil Young used a Sennheiser Vocoder VSM201 on six of the nine tracks on Trans.^[16]

Voice effects[link]

"Robot voices" became a recurring element in popular music during the 20th century. Apart from vocoders, several other methods of producing variations on this effect include: the Sonovox, Talk box, and Auto-Tune,^{[media 4]} linear prediction vocoders, speech synthesis, ^{[media 5][media 6]} ring modulation and comb filter.

	Example of vocoder Demonstration of the "robotic voice" effect found in film and television.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Vocoders are used in television production, filmmaking and games, usually for robots or talking computers. The Cylons from Battlestar Galactica used an EMS Vocoder 2000^[16] to create their voice-effects. The 1980 version of the Doctor Who theme has a section generated by a Roland SVC-350 Vocoder.

Synthesizer voice[link]

In 1972, Isao Tomita's first electronic music album Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock was an early attempt at applying speech synthesis technique through a vocoder^{[citation needed]} in electronic rock and pop music. The album featured electronic renditions of contemporary rock and pop songs, while utilizing synthesized voices in place of human voices. In 1974, he utilized synthesized voices again in his popular classical music album Snowflakes are Dancing, which became a worldwide success and helped popularize electronic music.^[17]

See also[link]

• Homer Dudley
• The Voder
• Phase vocoder
• Silent speech interface

for musical applications

• Werner Meyer-Eppler
• List of vocoders
• Auto-Tune
• Audio timescale-pitch modification

References[link]

Multimedia references

External links[link]

• "How Vocoders Work" from PAIA
• Penn State - basic voder/vocoder operation with simple diagrams
• Description, photographs, and diagram for the vocoder at 120years.net
• Vokator Tutorial. Description of a modern Vocoder.
• GPL implementation of a vocoder, as a LADSPA plugin
• O'Reilly Article on Vocoders
• Kleijn, W.B.; Haagen, J.; AT&T Bell Labs., Murray Hill, NJ, "A speech coder based on decomposition of characteristic waveforms," IEEE 1995 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1995. ICASSP-95.
• Kleijn, W.B.; Shoham, Y.; Sen, D.; Hagen, R.; AT&T Bell Labs., Murray Hill, NJ "A low-complexity waveform interpolation coder," IEEE ICASSP 1996.
• Gottesman, O.; Gersho, A.; Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA, "Enhanced waveform interpolative coding at low bit-rate," IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, November 2001.

Herbie Hancock
Hancock in concert at the Nice Jazz Festival 2010
Background information
Birth name	Herbert Jeffrey Hancock
Also known as	Herbie Hancock
Born	(1940-04-12) April 12, 1940 (age 72) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres	Jazz, bebop, post bop, jazz fusion, hard bop, jazz-funk, funk, R&B, electro funk, classical
Occupations	Musician, composer, bandleader
Instruments	Piano, synthesizer, organ, clavinet, keytar, vocoder
Years active	1961–present
Labels	Columbia, Blue Note, Verve, Warner Bros.
Associated acts	Miles Davis Quintet, Jaco Pastorius, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder
Website	www.herbiehancock.com

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader and composer.^[1] As part of Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace music synthesizers and funk music (characterized by syncopated drum beats). Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success among pop audiences. His music embraces elements of funk and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. In his jazz improvisation, he possesses a unique creative blend of jazz, blues, and modern classical music, with harmonic stylings much like the styles of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Hancock's best-known solo works include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man" (later performed by dozens of musicians, including bandleader Mongo Santamaría), "Maiden Voyage", "Chameleon", and the singles "I Thought It Was You" and "Rockit". His 2007 tribute album River: The Joni Letters won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album ever to win the award after Getz/Gilberto in 1965.

Hancock is a member of Sōka Gakkai International.^[2][3]

On July 22, 2011 at a ceremony in Paris, Hancock was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the promotion of Intercultural Dialogue.

Early life and career[link]

Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois. Like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical music education. He studied from age seven, and his talent was recognized early. Considered a child prodigy,^[4] he played the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5 at a young people's concert with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.^[5]

Through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher, but developed his ear and sense of harmony. He was also influenced by records of the vocal group the Hi-Lo's. He reported that:

the time I actually heard the Hi-Lo's, I started picking that stuff out; my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and that's when I really learned some much farther-out voicings -like the harmonies I used on 'Speak Like a Child' -just being able to do that. I really got that from Clare Fischer's arrangements for the Hi-Lo's. Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept... He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it came from.^[6]

In 1960, he heard Chris Anderson play just once, and begged him to accept him as a student.^[7] Hancock often mentions Anderson as his harmonic guru. Hancock left Grinnell College, moved to Chicago and began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, during which period he also took courses at Roosevelt University. (He later graduated from Grinnell with degrees in electrical engineering and music. Grinnell also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1972).^[5][8] Donald Byrd was attending the Manhattan School of Music in New York at the time and suggested that Hancock study composition with Vittorio Giannini, which he did for a short time in 1960. The pianist quickly earned a reputation, and played subsequent sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods. He recorded his first solo album Takin' Off for Blue Note Records in 1962. "Watermelon Man" (from Takin' Off) was to provide Mongo Santamaría with a hit single, but more importantly for Hancock, Takin' Off caught the attention of Miles Davis, who was at that time assembling a new band. Hancock was introduced to Davis by the young drummer Tony Williams, a member of the new band.

Miles Davis quintet and Blue Note[link]

Hancock received considerable attention when, in May 1963,^[5] he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet. Davis personally sought out Hancock, whom he saw as one of the most promising talents in jazz. The rhythm section Davis organized was young but effective, comprising bassist Ron Carter, 17-year-old drummer Tony Williams, and Hancock on piano. After George Coleman and Sam Rivers each took a turn at the saxophone spot, the quintet would gel with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. This quintet is often regarded as one of the finest jazz ensembles, and the rhythm section has been especially praised for its innovation and flexibility.

The second great quintet was where Hancock found his own voice as a pianist. Not only did he find new ways to use common chords, but he also popularized chords that had not previously been used in jazz. Hancock also developed a unique taste for "orchestral" accompaniment – using quartal harmony and Debussy-like harmonies, with stark contrasts then unheard of in jazz. With Williams and Carter he wove a labyrinth of rhythmic intricacy on, around and over existing melodic and chordal schemes. In the later half of the sixties their approach became so sophisticated and unorthodox that conventional chord changes would hardly be discernible; hence their improvisational concept would become known as "Time, No Changes". 

While in Davis's band, Hancock also found time to record dozens of sessions for the Blue Note label, both under his own name and as a sideman with other musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

His albums Empyrean Isles (1964) and Maiden Voyage (1965) were to be two of the most famous and influential jazz LPs of the sixties, winning praise for both their innovation and accessibility (the latter demonstrated by the subsequent enormous popularity of the Maiden Voyage title track as a jazz standard, and by the jazz rap group US3 having a hit single with "Cantaloop" (derived from "Cantaloupe Island" on Empyrean Isles) some twenty five years later). Empyrean Isles featured the Davis rhythm section of Hancock, Carter and Williams with the addition of Freddie Hubbard on cornet, while Maiden Voyage also added former Davis saxophonist George Coleman (with Hubbard remaining on trumpet). Both albums are regarded as among the principal foundations of the post-bop style. Hancock also recorded several less-well-known but still critically acclaimed albums with larger ensembles – My Point of View (1963), Speak Like a Child (1968) and The Prisoner (1969) featured flugelhorn, alto flute and bass trombone. 1963's Inventions and Dimensions was an album of almost entirely improvised music, teaming Hancock with bassist Paul Chambers and two Latin percussionists, Willie Bobo and Osvaldo "Chihuahua" Martinez.

During this period, Hancock also composed the score to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup, the first of many soundtracks he recorded in his career.

Davis had begun incorporating elements of rock and popular music into his recordings by the end of Hancock's tenure with the band. Despite some initial reluctance, Hancock began doubling on electric keyboards including the Fender Rhodes electric piano at Davis's insistence. Hancock adapted quickly to the new instruments, which proved to be instrumental in his future artistic endeavors.

Under the pretext that he had returned late from a honeymoon in Brazil, Hancock was dismissed from Davis's band. In the summer of 1968 Hancock formed his own sextet. However, although Davis soon disbanded his quintet to search for a new sound, Hancock, despite his departure from the working band, continued to appear on Miles Davis records for the next few years. Noteworthy appearances include In a Silent Way, A Tribute to Jack Johnson and On the Corner.

[edit] Fat Albert and Mwandishi

Hancock playing a Roland AX-7 keytar, at The Roundhouse, Camden, London, 2006

Hancock left Blue Note in 1969, signing up with Warner Bros. Records. In 1969, Hancock composed the soundtrack for the Bill Cosby animated children's television show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Titled Fat Albert Rotunda, the album was mainly an R&B-influenced album with strong jazz overtones. One of the jazzier songs on the record, "Tell Me A Bedtime Story", was later re-worked as a more electronic sounding song for the Quincy Jones album, Sounds...and Stuff Like That.

Hancock became fascinated with accumulating musical gadgets and toys. Together with the profound influence of Davis's Bitches Brew, this fascination would culminate in a series of albums in which electronic instruments are coupled with acoustic instruments.

Hancock's first ventures into electronic music started with a sextet comprising Hancock, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart, and a trio of horn players: Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Julian Priester (trombone), and multireedist Bennie Maupin. Dr. Patrick Gleeson was eventually added to the mix to play and program the synthesizers. In fact, Hancock was one of the first jazz pianists to completely embrace electronic keyboards.^{[citation needed]}

The sextet, later a septet with the addition of Gleeson, made three experimental albums under Hancock's name: Mwandishi (1971), Crossings (1972) (both on Warner Bros. Records), and Sextant (1973) (released on Columbia Records); two more, Realization and Inside Out, were recorded under Henderson's name with essentially the same personnel. The music often had very free improvisations and showed influence from the electronic music of some contemporary classical composers.

Synthesizer player Patrick Gleeson, one of the first musicians to play synthesizer on any jazz recording, introduced the instrument on Crossings, released in 1972, one of a handful of influential electronic jazz/fusion recordings to feature synthesizer that same year. On Crossings (as well as on I Sing the Body Electric), the synthesizer is used more as an improvisatory global orchestration device than as a strictly melodic instrument. This reflected Gleeson's (and Powell's) interest in contemporary European electronic music techniques and in the West Coast synthesis techniques of Morton Subotnick and other contemporaries, several of whom were resident at one time or another, as was Gleeson, at The Mills College Tape Music Center. An early review of Crossings in Downbeat magazine complained about the synthesizer, but a few years later the magazine noted in a cover story on Gleeson that he was "a pioneer" in the field of electronics in jazz. Gleeson used a modular Moog III for the recording of the album, but used an ARP 2600 synthesizer, and occasionally an ARP Soloist for the group's live performances. On Sextant Gleeson used the more compact ARP synthesizers instead of the larger Moog III for both studio and live performances. In the albums following The Crossings, Hancock started to play synth himself and unlike Gleeson, he plays it as a melodical and rhythm instrument just like electric pianos.

Hancock's three records released in 1971–1973, became later known as the "Mwandishi" albums, so-called after a Swahili name Hancock sometimes used during this era (Mwandishi is Swahili for writer). The first two, including Fat Albert Rotunda were made available on the 2-CD set Mwandishi: the Complete Warner Bros. Recordings, released in 1994, but are now sold as individual CD editions. Of the three electronic albums, Sextant is probably the most experimental since the Arp synthesizers are used extensively, and some advanced improvisation ("post-modal free impressionism") is found on the tracks "Hornets" and "Hidden Shadows" (which is in the meter 19/4). "Hornets" was later revised on the 2001 album Future2Future as "Virtual Hornets".

Among the instruments Hancock and Gleeson used were Fender Rhodes piano, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, ARP Pro Soloist Synthesizer, a Mellotron and the Moog synthesizer III.

All three Warner Bros. albums Fat Albert Rotunda, Mwandishi, and Crossings, were remastered in 2001 and released in Europe but were not released in the U.S.A. as of June 2005. In the Winter of 2006–7 a remastered edition of Crossings was announced and scheduled for release in the Spring.

[edit] Headhunters and Death Wish

Hancock performing in concert, 2006

After the sometimes "airy" and decidedly experimental "Mwandishi" albums, Hancock was eager to perform more "earthy" and "funky" music. The Mwandishi albums – though these days seen as respected early fusion recordings – had seen mixed reviews and poor sales, so it is probable that Hancock was motivated by financial concerns as well as artistic restlessness.^{[citation needed]} Hancock was also bothered by the fact that many people did not understand avant-garde music. He explained that he loved funk music, especially Sly Stone's music, so he wanted to try to make funk himself.

He gathered a new band, which he called The Headhunters, keeping only Maupin from the sextet and adding bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers, and drummer Harvey Mason. The album Head Hunters, released in 1973, was a major hit and crossed over to pop audiences, though it prompted criticism from some jazz fans. Head Hunters was recorded at Different Fur studios.

Despite charges of "selling out", Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic positively reviewed the album among other friendly critics, saying, "Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital three decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop."^[9]

Mason was replaced by Mike Clark, and the band released a second album, Thrust, the following year. (A live album from a Japan performance, consisting of compositions from those first two Head Hunters releases was released in 1975 as Flood. The record has since been released on CD in Japan.) This was almost as well received as its predecessor, if not attaining the same level of commercial success. The Headhunters made another successful album (called Survival of the Fittest) without Hancock, while Hancock himself started to make even more commercial albums, often featuring members of the band, but no longer billed as The Headhunters. The Headhunters reunited with Hancock in 1998 for Return of the Headhunters, and a version of the band (featuring Jackson and Clark) continues to play live and record.

In 1973, Hancock composed his second masterful soundtrack to the controversial film The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Then in 1974, he also composed the soundtrack to the first Death Wish film. One of his memorable songs, "Joanna's Theme", would later be re-recorded in 1997 on his duet album with Wayne Shorter 1 + 1.

Hancock's next jazz-funk albums of the 1970s were Man-Child (1975), and Secrets (1976), which point toward the more commercial direction Hancock would take over the next decade. These albums feature the members of the 'Headhunters' band, but also a variety of other musicians in important roles.

[edit] Back to the basics: VSOP and Future Shock

During late 1970s and early 1980s, Hancock toured with his "V.S.O.P." quintet, which featured all the members of the 1960s Miles Davis quintet except Davis, who was replaced by trumpet giant Freddie Hubbard. There was constant speculation that one day Davis would reunite with his classic band, but he never did so. VSOP recorded several live albums in the late 1970s, including VSOP (1976), and VSOP: The Quintet (1977).

In 1978, Hancock recorded a duet with Chick Corea, who had replaced him in the Miles Davis band a decade earlier. He also released a solo acoustic piano album titled The Piano (1978), which, like so many Hancock albums at the time, was initially released only in Japan. (It was finally released in the US in 2004.) Several other Japan-only releases have yet to surface in the US, such as Dedication (1974), VSOP: Tempest in the Colosseum (1977), and Direct Step (1978). Live Under the Sky was a VSOP album remastered for the US in 2004, and included an entire second concert from the July 1979 tour.

From 1978–1982, Hancock recorded many albums consisting of jazz-inflected disco and pop music, beginning with Sunlight (featuring guest musicians including Tony Williams and Jaco Pastorius on the last track) (1978). Singing through a vocoder, he earned a British hit,^[10] "I Thought It Was You", although critics were unimpressed.^[11] This led to more vocoder on the 1979 follow-up, Feets, Don't Fail Me Now, which gave him another UK hit in "You Bet Your Love".^[10] Albums such as Monster (1980), Magic Windows (1981), and Lite Me Up (1982) were some of Hancock's most criticized and unwelcomed albums, the market at the time being somewhat saturated with similar pop-jazz hybrids from the likes of former bandmate Freddie Hubbard. Hancock himself had quite a limited role in some of those albums, leaving singing, composing and even producing to others. Mr. Hands (1980) is perhaps the one album during this period that was critically acclaimed. To the delight of many fans, there were no vocals on the album, and one track featured Jaco Pastorius on bass. The album contained a wide variety of different styles, including a disco instrumental song, a Latin-jazz number and an electronic piece in which Hancock plays alone with the help of computers.

Hancock also found time to record more traditional jazz while creating more commercially oriented music. He toured with Tony Williams and Ron Carter in 1981, recording Herbie Hancock Trio, a five-track live album released only in Japan. A month later, he recorded Quartet with Wynton Marsalis, released in the US the following year. Hancock, Williams and Carter toured internationally with Wynton and his brother Branford Marsalis in what was affectionately known as "VSOP II". This quintet can be heard on Marsalis' debut album on Columbia (1981). In 1982 he contributed to the Simple Minds album New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84), playing a synthesizer solo on the track "Hunter and The Hunted".

In 1983, Hancock had a mainstream hit with the Grammy-award winning instrumental single "Rockit" from the album Future Shock. It was perhaps the first mainstream single to feature scratching, and also featured an innovative animated music video which was directed by Godley and Creme and showed several robot-like artworks by Jim Whiting. The video was a hit on MTV and reached No.8 in the UK.^[12] The video won five different categories at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards. This single ushered in a collaboration with noted bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Hancock experimented with electronic music on a string of three LPs produced by Laswell: Future Shock (1983), Sound-System (1984) and Perfect Machine (1988). Despite the success of "Rockit", Hancock's trio of Laswell-produced albums (particularly the latter two) are among the most critically derided of his entire career, perhaps even more so than his erstwhile pop-jazz experiments. Hancock's level of actual contribution to these albums was also questioned, with some critics contending that the Laswell albums should have been labelled "Bill Laswell featuring Herbie Hancock".

During this period, he appeared onstage at the Grammy awards with Stevie Wonder, Howard Jones, and Thomas Dolby, in a famous synthesizer jam (The video on Youtube can be found here.). Lesser known works from the 1980s are the live album Jazz Africa and the studio album Village Life (1984), which were recorded with Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso.^[13] Also, in 1985 Hancock performed as a guest on the album So Red The Rose by the Duran Duran offshoot group Arcadia. He also provided introductory and closing comments for the PBS rebroadcast in the United States of the BBC educational series from the mid-1980s, Rockschool (not to be confused with the most recent Gene Simmons' Rock School series).

In 1986, Hancock performed and acted in the film 'Round Midnight. He also wrote the score/soundtrack, for which he won an Academy Award for Original Music Score. Often he would write music for TV commercials. "Maiden Voyage", in fact, started out as a cologne advertisement. At the end of the Perfect Machine tour, Hancock decided to leave Columbia Records after a 15-plus-year relationship.

As of June 2005, almost half of his Columbia recordings have been remastered. The first three US releases, Sextant, Head Hunters and Thrust as well as the last four releases Future Shock, Sound-System, the soundtrack to Round Midnight and Perfect Machine. Everything released in America from Man-Child to Quartet has yet to be remastered. Some albums, made and initially released in the US, were remastered between 1999 and 2001 in other countries such as Magic Windows and Monster. Hancock also re-released some of his Japan-only releases in the West, such as The Piano.

1990s and later[link]

Hancock live in concert

After leaving Columbia, Hancock took a break. Then, with friends Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Davis admirer Wallace Roney, they recorded A Tribute to Miles, which was released in 1994. The album contained two live recordings and studio recording classics, with Roney playing Davis's part as trumpet player. The album won a Grammy for best group album. He also toured with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny in 1990 on their Parallel Realities tour, which included a memorable performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1990.

Hancock's next album, Dis Is Da Drum, released in 1994, saw him return to Acid Jazz. Also in 1994, he appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African-American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine.

1995's The New Standard found Hancock and an all-star band including John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette and Michael Brecker interpreting pop songs by Nirvana, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Prince, Peter Gabriel and others. A 1997 duet album with Wayne Shorter entitled 1 + 1 was successful, the song "Aung San Suu Kyi" winning the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition. Hancock also achieved great success in 1998 with his album Gershwin's World, which featured inventive readings of George and Ira Gershwin standards by Hancock and a plethora of guest stars, including Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Shorter. Hancock toured the world in the support of Gershwin's World with a sextet that featured Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson.

In 2001, Hancock recorded Future2Future, which reunited Hancock with Bill Laswell and featured doses of electronica as well as turntablist Rob Swift of The X-Ecutioners. Hancock later toured with the band, and released a live concert DVD with a different lineup which also included the "Rockit" music video. Also in 2001, Hancock partnered with Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove to record a live concert album saluting Davis and John Coltrane entitled Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall, recorded live in Toronto. The threesome toured to support the album, and toured on and off through 2005.

The year 2005 saw the release of a duet album called Possibilities. It features duets with Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Sting and others. In 2006, Possibilities was nominated for Grammy awards in two categories: "A Song For You", featuring Christina Aguilera was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and "Gelo No Montanha", featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance. Neither nomination resulted in an award.

Also in 2005, Hancock toured Europe with a new quartet that included Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, and explored textures ranging from ambient to straight jazz to African music. Plus, during the summer of 2005, Hancock re-staffed the famous Headhunters and went on tour with them, including a performance at The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

However, this lineup did not consist of any of the original Headhunters musicians. The group included Marcus Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Lionel Loueke and John Mayer. Hancock also served as the first artist in residence for Bonnaroo that summer.

Also in 2006, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which bought out Hancock's old label, Columbia Records) released the two-disc retrospective The Essential Herbie Hancock. This two-disc set is the first compilation of Herbie's work at Warner Bros. Records, Blue Note Records, Columbia and at Verve/Polygram. This became Hancock's second major compilation of work since the 2002 Columbia-onlyThe Herbie Hancock Box, which was released at first in a plastic 4x4 cube then re-released in 2004 in a long box set. Hancock also in 2006, recorded a new song with Josh Groban and Eric Mouquet (co-founder of Deep Forest) entitled "Machine". It is featured on Josh Groban's CD Awake. Hancock also recorded and improvised with guitarist Lionel Loueke on Loueke's debut album Virgin Forest on the ObliqSound label in 2006, resulting in two improvisational tracks "Le Réveil des Agneaux (The Awakening of the Lambs)" and "La Poursuite du lion (The Lion's Pursuit)".

Hancock, a longtime associate and friend of Joni Mitchell released a 2007 album, River: The Joni Letters, that paid tribute to her work. Norah Jones and Tina Turner recorded vocals,^[14] as did Corinne Bailey Rae, and Leonard Cohen contributed a spoken piece set to Hancock's piano. Mitchell herself also made an appearance. The album was released on September 25, simultaneously with the release of Mitchell's album Shine.^[15] "River" was nominated for and won the 2008 Album of the Year Grammy Award, only the second jazz album ever to receive either honor. The album also won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and the song "Both Sides Now" was nominated for Best Instrumental Jazz Solo.

Recently Hancock performed at the Shriner's Children's Hospital Charity Fundraiser with Sheila E, Jim Brickman, Kirk Whalum and Wendy Alane Wright.

His latest work includes assisting the production of the Kanye West track "RoboCop", found on 808s & Heartbreak.

On June 14, 2008, Hancock performed at Rhythm on the Vine at the South Coast Winery in Temecula, California, for Shriners Hospital for Children. Other performers at the event, that raised $515,000 for Shriners Hospital, were contemporary music artist Jim Brickman, and Sheila E. & the E. Family Band.^[16]

On January 18, 2009, Hancock performed at the We Are One concert, marking the start of inaugural celebrations for American President Barack Obama.^[17] Hancock also performed the Rhapsody in Blue at the 2009 Classical BRIT Awards with classical pianist Lang Lang. Hancock was named as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's creative chair for jazz for 2010–12.^[18] In June 2010, Hancock released his newest album, The Imagine Project.

On June 5, 2010, Hancock received an Alumni Award from his alma mater, Grinnell College.^[19]

Discography[link]

Filmography[link]

As a Leader[link]

• 2000: Dejohnette, Hancock, Holland and Metheny – Live in Concert
• 2002: Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane! with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham^[20]
• 2002: The Jazz Channel Presents Herbie Hancock (BET on Jazz) with Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson (recorded in 2000)
• 2004: Herbie Hancock – Future2Future Live
• 2006: Herbie Hancock – Possibilities with John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Joss Stone, and more

Awards[link]

Academy Awards[link]

• 1986, Original Soundtrack, for Round Midnight

Grammy Awards[link]

1. 1984, Best R&B Instrumental Performance, for Rockit
2. 1985, Best R&B Instrumental Performance, for Sound-System
3. 1988, Best Instrumental Composition, for Call Sheet Blues
4. 1995, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for A Tribute to Miles
5. 1997, Best Instrumental Composition, for Manhattan (Island Of Lights And Love)
6. 1999, Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), for St. Louis Blues
7. 1999, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for Gershwin's World
8. 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group, for Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall
9. 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for My Ship
10. 2005, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for Speak Like a Child
11. 2008, Album of the Year, for River: The Joni Letters
12. 2008, Best Contemporary Jazz Album, for River: The Joni Letters
13. 2011, Best Improvised Jazz Solo, for A Change Is Gonna Come
14. 2011, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for Imagine

Playboy Music Poll[link]

• Best Jazz Group, 1985
• Best Jazz Keyboards, 1985
• Best Jazz Album – Rockit, 1985
• Best Jazz Keyboards, 1986
• Best R&B Instrumentalist, 1987
• Best Jazz Instrumentalist, 1988

Keyboard Magazine's Readers Poll[link]

• Best Jazz & Pop Keyboardist, 1983
• Best Jazz Pianist, 1987
• Best Jazz Keyboardist, 1987
• Best Jazz Pianist, 1988

Other notable awards[link]

• MTV Awards (5 awards in total) – Best Concept Video – Rockit, 1983–84
• Gold Note Jazz Awards – NY Chapter of the National Black MBA Association, 1985
• French Award Officer of the Order of Arts & Letters - Paris, 1985
• BMI Film Music Award Round Midnight, 1986
• U.S. Radio Award "Best Original Music Scoring – Thom McAnn Shoes", 1986
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association "Best Score – Round Midnight", 1986
• BMI Film Music Award Colors, 1989
• Miles Davis Award, granted by the Montreal International Jazz Festival, 1997
• Soul Train Music Award "Best Jazz Album – The New Standard", 1997
• Festival International Jazz de Montreal Prix Miles Davis, 1997
• VH1's 100 Greatest Videos Rockit is "10th Greatest Video", 2001
• NEA Jazz Masters Award, 2004
• Downbeat Magazine Readers Poll Hall of Fame, 2005

^[21]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website of Herbie Hancock
• Official Herbie Hancock MySpace page
• Herbie Hancock at Verve Records
• River:The Joni Letters at Verve Records
• Possibilities Herbie Hancock
• Discography Herbie Hancock Discography
• Interview with Herbie Hancock on music and technology from AppleMatters
• Interview with Herbie Hancock on the "Possibilities" album release from LiveDaily
• Herbie Hancock: Outside The Comfort Zone Herbie Hancock interview from JamBase
• "Herbie Hancock: Essential Recordings" by Ted Gioia (www.jazz.com)
• Herbie Hancock's Grinnell College Alumni Award citation from Grinnell College Alumni Assembly on June 5, 2010.