Singing guitar In 1939,
Alvino Rey, amateur radio operator W6UK, used a
carbon throat microphone wired in such a way as to modulate his electric steel guitar sound. The mic, originally developed for military pilot communications, was placed on the throat of Rey's wife Luise King (one of
The King Sisters), who stood behind a curtain and mouthed the words, along with the guitar lines. The novel-sounding combination was called "Singing Guitar", and employed on stage and in the movie
Jam Session, as a "novelty" attraction, but was not developed further. Rey also created a somewhat similar-sounding "talking" effect by manipulating the tone controls of his Fender electric guitar, but the vocal effect was less pronounced.
Sonovox Another early voice effect using the same principle of the throat as a filter was the
Sonovox, invented by Gilbert Wright in 1939. Instead of a throat microphone modulating a guitar signal, it used small
transducers attached to the performer's throat to produce sounds that the mouth shapes. The Sonovox was marketed and promoted by the Wright-Sonovox company, an affiliate of the Free & Peters advertising agency. The Sonovox was used in many radio station IDs and
jingles produced by
JAM Creative Productions and the
PAMS advertising agency of
Dallas, Texas.
Lucille Ball made one of her earliest film appearances during the 1930s in a
Pathé Newsreel demonstrating the Sonovox. The first use in music was a score by Ernst Toch in the Paramount film
The Ghost Breakers, in June 1940. The Sonovox was used, with an opening credit, for the spirit voices in the 1940 comedy film ''
You'll Find Out. It was used to produce the "voice" of the anthropomorphic train Casey Jr. in the 1941 animated films The Reluctant Dragon and, most famously, Dumbo'', and was also used for the "talking piano" in a children's record issued on Capitol Records entitled ''
Sparky's Magic Piano''.
Talking steel guitar Pete Drake, a Nashville-based player of the
pedal steel guitar, used a talk box on his 1964 album
Forever, in what came to be called his "talking steel guitar". The following year Gallant released three albums with the box,
Pete Drake & His Talking Guitar,
Talking Steel and Singing Strings, and
Talking Steel Guitar. Drake's device consisted of an 8-inch paper cone speaker driver attached to a funnel from which a clear tube brought the sound to the performer's mouth. It was only loud enough to be useful in the recording studio.
Kustom Electronics talk box ("The Bag") The Kustom Electronics device "The Bag" was the first mass market talk box and was housed in a decorative bag slung over the shoulder like a wine bottle. It used a 30-watt driver and was released to the mass music market in early 1969, two years before Bob Heil's talk box became widely available. The Bag is claimed to have been designed by Doug Forbes, who states that exactly the same concept (speaker attached to a plastic tube and inserted into the mouth) had previously been patented as an artificial
larynx.
Stevie Wonder gave the talk box its first national television prominence, performing a medley of The Carpenters' "
(They Long To Be) Close To You" and The Jackson 5's "
Never Can Say Goodbye", both via a Kustom Bag, live on the
David Frost show in 1972.
Jeff Beck used a Kustom Bag talk box in May 1973 on "
Superstition" at a Santa Monica concert. He also used it on "
She's a Woman" from his 1975 release
Blow by Blow, and was seen using it for the song on
BBC television program
Five Faces of the Guitar in 1974 in which he also explains its use to the host of the show.
David Gilmour of
Pink Floyd was an obvious candidate for both the talk box and the vocoder, experimenting with merging voice and instrument into a single unified sound. The effect was employed during the lengthy guitar solo sections of "Raving and Drooling" and "You've Got to Be Crazy" on the
1974 tour, which would eventually become "
Sheep" and "
Dogs" on the
Animals album.
Heil high-powered talk box The first high-powered talk box was developed by
Bob Heil. The classic rock artist
Peter Frampton made extensive use of the talk box in his music. In an interview for the 1999 DVD
Live in Detroit, Frampton says he first heard the talk box in 1970 while sitting in on sessions for
George Harrison's
All Things Must Pass. While he sat next to Pete Drake in the album sessions at
Abbey Road Studios, he heard Drake using it with a pedal steel guitar. Frampton said in the same interview that the sound it produced reminded him of an audio effect he loved listening to on
Radio Luxembourg in the later 1960s. Frampton acquired one as a Christmas present from Bob Heil in 1974. It was a hand-built talk box in a fiberglass box using a 100-watt high-powered driver. This was the Heil talk box used for the
Frampton Comes Alive tour and album. He then promptly locked himself away in a practice space for two weeks, and came out with some mastery of it. The success of the albums
Frampton and
Frampton Comes Alive!, and particularly the hit singles "
Do You Feel Like We Do" and "
Show Me the Way", made Frampton's music somewhat synonymous with the talk box. Frampton also now sells his own line of custom-designed "Framptone" products, including a talk box. In 1976,
Steely Dan guitarist
Walter Becker recorded the talk box effect atop an already-recorded
Dean Parks solo in "
Haitian Divorce", on the album
The Royal Scam. Also from 1977, Johnnie "Guitar" Watson used a talk box. The 1974 album
461 Ocean Boulevard features Eric Clapton using a talk box during his outgoing solo on the song "Mainline Florida".
Electro Harmonix "Golden Throat" Roger Troutman (November 29, 1951 — April 25, 1999) was the lead singer of the band
Zapp who helped spearhead the Funk movement and heavily influenced West Coast hip hop due to the scene’s heavy sampling of his music over the years. Troutman was well known for his use of the talkbox, a device that is connected to an instrument (frequently a keyboard) to create different vocal effects. Roger was inspired by Peter Frampton's use of the instrument. Roger used a custom-made talkbox—the Electro Harmonix “Golden Throat,” as well as a Yamaha DX100 FM synthesizer. As both lead singer of Zapp and in his subsequent solo releases, he scored a bevy of funk and R&B hits throughout the 1980s.
ElectroSpit Producer Bosko, who played talk box on
Big Boi's 2010 album
Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, conceived an alternative to the cumbersome and unsanitary talk box in mid-2014, imagining a neck-worn electronic system that would be easier to use. Bosko showed the ElectroSpit prototype in 2016, and launched a Kickstarter campaign in June 2018. The device sends sound into the mouth by way of electromagnetic transducers placed against the throat, allowing the user to shape the sounds of a synthesizer, guitar or any other electronic source. Bosko released the ElectroSpit product in 2019, showing it at the
NAMM Show. Early users of the ElectroSpit include P-Thugg of
Chromeo,
Terrace Martin who works with
Kendrick Lamar, and
Teddy Riley. ==Non-musical uses==