How to invent a new musical style

The history of music has really been the history of musical instruments and advancements not only in those instruments, but in techniques for playing them. There was a time, for example, when keyboard instruments didn't have black notes, and the addition of the B-flat key revolutionized music for a time, at least until the other accidentals were added.

The dance music of the early twentieth century was played on traditional instruments, but there were advancements in the way those instruments were used. Glenn Miller was the first to call on the clarinet section to play melodic blocks as the primary instrument in the ensemble, and as a consequence invented a whole new genre of Big Band music. Perhaps the changing social mores of the day permitted people to make more of a public spectacle of themselves, so rhythmic music was more accepted.

When electric guitars were invented, several new ways of playing them appeared, and led to rock 'n' roll and new country and jazz styles. When synthesizers first appeared, they completely changed the way pop music sounded, and when digital workstations led to the creation of loop-based music, everything changed again.

But some technological advancements come along that are so difficult to exploit that their influence, though impressive to listen to, remains limited to one artist. Wendy Carlos' synthesized recordings of Bach's works have never been equaled, and sometimes an instrument ends up 'belonging' to one artist, like Herb Alpert's flugelhorn or Don Ho's ukulele. (Although Israel Kamakawiwoʻole became the successor, it always belonged to just one artist)

There is one technology, that of the vocoder, which to my knowledge has been successfully exploited in only one song. Oh, many artists have used it, and occasionally it makes a minor moment of interest in a song, but there's really only one song that features it and uses it to draw us into an emotional, artistic world, and that's Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek." I remember first hearing it on one of those dance competition TV shows, and completely losing track of everything else, listening to this unearthly, beautiful creation, trying to figure out what I was hearing. I understand the song gained some popularity when the coda was used to score the final scene during the 2nd season finale of "The O.C."in 2005, but for me the best part is...well, all of it: