Singers who simulate a vocal effect without using the actual vocal effect!

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Examples? I can't think of any!

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:25 (twenty years ago)

I mean, vocalists do record lyrics on seperate tracks to fill in intervals to provide that effect that he/she is talking to him/herself, sure... but that's really an effect in the form of overdubbing.

I'm talking about raw one-take simulations here. Like someone simulating an echo on their voice without using an echo, etc.

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:27 (twenty years ago)

I guess the most common one is singing really loudly against the mike to simulate distortion?

― donut debonair (donut), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:28 (twenty years ago)

on "like spinning plates" from amnesiac, thom yorke mimicked a backwards effect on the vocals. i think interviews said he first sang the melody backward, then listened to a reversed recording of that, then learned how to sing the melody right-way forward but sounding as if it were backward on the album. that's not one take though.

― swvl (vozick), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

I can think of lots of rappers simulating turntable or delay effects with their voice, RZA on 'Fast Cars' comes to mind.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

I don't know exactly what effect Bob Pollard would have been simulating, but Guided By Voices' "Chicken Blows" seems like it should apply here.

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

It sounds on "Tropical Ice-Land" like Eleanor is mimicking a backward effect

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

I can think of lots of rappers simulating turntable or delay effects with their voice, RZA on 'Fast Cars' comes to mind.

and that guy from The Roots

― phil-two (phil-two), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

Both of 'em.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:40 (twenty years ago)

cLOUDDEAD do the reverse-reverse thing as well.

― Orange (Orange), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:41 (twenty years ago)

I saw Regina Spektor do a neat little trumpet solo-y sound when she was on Leno last night.

― Matthew C Perpetua (inca), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:43 (twenty years ago)

Do you know what track, Orange? cLOUDDEAD basically swallowed me whole for the past week or so.

xpost

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:44 (twenty years ago)

Crazy Titch

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

pompidoo - "synthesizer voice"

― jermaine (jnoble), Thursday, 21 April 2005 20:59 (twenty years ago)

Flirta D

― Brian Miller (Brian Miller), Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

Aaron Neville sounds like somebody's turning the volume up and down on his head. Does that count?

― darin (darin), Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking of Flirta too, but I'm not sure I've ever heard what he does DONE with a vocal effect!

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

If not vocal effects, I figured he's certainly greatly affecting his vocals.

― Brian Miller (Brian Miller), Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:18 (twenty years ago)

That totally ridiculous half-man, half robot song that Goldie Lookin Chain do has a normal guy trying to sound like he's got a vocoder. Pretty bad but that's the point, innit?

― everything, Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:26 (twenty years ago)

sleep: it’s ‘JimmyBreeze (1)’ from the first album: ‘Maybe I’ve been playing the part,’ etc. why? talks about it here.

I listened to the first album for a bit just now and it’s nicer than I remembered, though I think Ten is much better.

― Orange (Orange), Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:41 (twenty years ago)

I don't know exactly what effect Bob Pollard would have been simulating, but Guided By Voices' "Chicken Blows" seems like it should apply here.

about "chicken blows": while bob was singing this track, someone (his brother jim, i think?) was hitting his back repeatedly. (i can't remember whether i read this in tape op, the big takeover or somewhere else.)

― spasticheritage, Thursday, 21 April 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Oh haha, I thought he was slapping his mouth with his hand!

Thanks Orange. Yeah, I don't know which one I like better yet. They're both great.

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 21 April 2005 22:00 (twenty years ago)

on busta's new "hurt you", he vocally emulates cd skip.

― jermaine (jnoble), Thursday, 21 April 2005 22:51 (twenty years ago)

Didn't one of the guys from Ween record a lead vocal in the trunk of a car during a snow storm?

― darin (darin), Thursday, 21 April 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

Didn't one of the guys from Ween record a lead vocal in the trunk of a car during a snow storm?

indeed! from a dean ween interview in tape op:

dean: [...] we sent aaron out in his underwear on the first record to sing. on chocolate and cheese, on the song "candy" we put aaron with a wireless mic in the trunk of my '76 cadillac and i drove him around the parking lot going about 60 miles per hour while andrew was recording him inside! he couldn't even hear the track. so all the stuff you hear on that song was from him being slammed around the trunk! there's a lot of stupid stuff that we've done.

tape op: that's the stuff i love, though. so why did he have to sing in the snow?

dean: for the song "bumblebee" on god ween satan, aaron had been mowing the lawn and he ran over a bees' nest and got stung, and we wrote the song. so when it came time to redo it at andrew's, it was the dead of winter and the memory of the bees had been gone for almost a year. so it was like "hmm, what would sinatra do? how do we get aaron in the original spirit?" so he agreed to take off his clothes and go outside in the snow. and we were just staring at him through the living room window while he's trying to sing "bumblebee." [laughs] it's just stupid.

[not exactly simulating a vocal effect without using the actual vocal effect, i know, but entertaining nonetheless.]

― spasticheritage, Thursday, 21 April 2005 23:51 (twenty years ago)

In retrospect, Grace Slick's warble seems like a real-life precursor of that horrendous yodeling-through-selective-autotune Cher effect.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, 21 April 2005 23:59 (twenty years ago)

i'm pretty sure i remember tool's maynard james keenan simulating a tremolo effect by moving the microphone back and forth. (at a live show, probably about 1996) can't remember which song for the life of me, though

― 6335, Friday, 22 April 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

Joseph, I'm going to pretend you did not say that about my Grace Slick. She's live, live, all the way live.

And I'll mention Little Willie John having a weirdly hollow voice in most of his songs, an effect one would have to spend lots of money now.

― Joseph McCombs (Joseph McCombs), Friday, 22 April 2005 04:54 (twenty years ago)

marc bolan to thread

― b b, Friday, 22 April 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

Also Donovan.

― Marcel Post (Marcel Post), Friday, 22 April 2005 14:10 (twenty years ago)

this is a bit different but: MJ lip syncing the echo fx in the "beat it" video.

― g e o f f (gcannon), Friday, 22 April 2005 14:14 (twenty years ago)

When I first heard Tricky I assumed his voice was being processed through some sort of digital chopper, but it's just the smoking.

― Brian Miller (Brian Miller), Friday, 22 April 2005 14:14 (twenty years ago)

Can't remember the guy's name, but the singer from the Jive Bombers did vocal effects that sounded like wah-wah and digital delay BEFORE THEY WERE INVENTED!

― brianiac (briania), Friday, 22 April 2005 16:04 (twenty years ago)

d double's "urrrgh urrrgh it's me me me" is supposed to be like an echo

― scg, Friday, 22 April 2005 16:06 (twenty years ago)

Bobby Womack often sounds on his later records like he's singing through a talkbox even when he's not. (Is he singing through one on "Secrets" and "Living in a Box"?)

― Joseph McCombs (Joseph McCombs), Friday, 22 April 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

A whole ton of current emo bands seem to unconsciously imitate the side effects of the AutoTune plugin which is slathered all over their favorite records. I guess that's the sound they hear and so that's what they imitate. They sing extremely stilted with sharp attacks on every note and no natural portamento between pitches. The plugin also does something to make the vocal sound more nasal and squashed.

This is hilarious to me because often i'll see these kids at the venue where i sometimes work, and they'll imitate all the side effects of the autotune while remaining badly out of tune.

― Kevin Erickson, Friday, 22 April 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

This is hilarious to me because often i'll see these kids at the venue where i sometimes work, and they'll imitate all the side effects of the autotune while remaining badly out of tune.

That's fucking beautiful. Yet another reason that I've switched over to Melodyne to fix "pitchy" singing.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Friday, 22 April 2005 19:55 (twenty years ago)

kevin, examples?

― irrigation can save your people (irrigation can save your peopl), Friday, 22 April 2005 20:42 (twenty years ago)

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