In our live production lessons we have been using several pieces of equipment such as a vocoder, a looper and a freeze pedal.
A looper allows you to record pieces of audio and then the signal is repeated at the rhythm the settings are put at, this can be done multiple times and reset by pressing one button. This piece of equipment is useful for solo artists who are performing live as it allows them to record the same instrument(common ones to use are guitars and vocals) multiple times. This means the artist can create a big and layered sound with one guitar as long as they get used to timing the looper pedal correctly. A nice pairing for the looper pedal can be a delay pedal as it allows even more depth to the performance repeating the sound again.
A vocoder is meant for taking someones voice and essentially turning it into a synth. You speak into the mic attached to the vocoder and this takes your voice and essentially creates multiple signatures of it that are based on the frequencies going into the mic. The sound you want your voice to be based on is fed into another input on the vocoder if you aren't using the presets that are on the device itself.
This is useful for artists how are attempting to make a lot of sound out of very little as to me it works how a synth pad does backing up the track adding that other layer, except with a vocoder the audio it creates can be used to just back up the normal vocals, I prefer this way of using it as you get the naturalness of the original vocals but you also get the unique and interesting sound that the vocoder creates following the vocals . This video of Bon Iver is a good example of this, it's just him and a vocoder
A freeze pedal is similar to the looper pedal as you speak into it and it takes the bit of audio and repeats it. Different settings on the pedal determine the speed at which the audio signal is repeated. This is useful if artists want to have a phrase repeated during a song or a specific part of the song.
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