Talk box

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Technology

Talk box · A talk box makes a guitar talk. A loudspeaker blows the sound through a small plastic tube into the musician's mouth. The musician forms vowels with lips and tongue, and a microphone picks up the result. The idea had existed since the late 1930s, but the devices were too quiet for a rock stage. In 1973, the sound engineer Bob Heil of Marissa, Illinois, built a powerful version for Joe Walsh, who used it on Rocky Mountain Way. Peter Frampton turned it into a crowd-puller. In funk, Roger Troutman of Zapp had a synthesizer sing through the talk box, and that sound returned in G-funk.

Listening

• 
  Rocky Mountain Way · Joe Walsh, 1973
• 
  Show Me the Way · Peter Frampton, 1975
• 
  More Bounce to the Ounce · Zapp, 1980

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Genre Map · Technology^NL Map
• Mixtape 6: Fear of a Black Planet^NL Reader
• Mixtape 7: The 1980s^NL Reader

See also

• Electric guitar
• Funk
• Soft rock and AOR