Monday, March 14, 2011

Monday Tune

Tunes actually.

The human voice is an instrument. Getting the sound out and making it sound good is a learned skill. There was probably nobody better at it than this guy:




Here's the thing. That voice is as close to natural as it can be. Meaning that it is recorded electronically but what we are hearing is the sound Mel Torme could make by placing the sound up in the front of his skull where it could reverberate naturally and beautifully. If you'd been a baby unable to sleep and Mel had come over to your crib with his ukulele and sung you this song as a lullaby, the sound his voice would have made to you would have been exactly what we hear in the video above.

Now here is another video with a lovely version of "Some Guys Have All the Luck". Listen to it once just for the joy of listening to it, especially for the lovely Glaswegian accent the singer has which is pure beauty. But then go back and listen to it again, especially the bit at the start, and you can hear the electronic treatment that has been put on her voice to give it depth. If you listen you can actually hear when the reverb or whatever it is gets turned on. She sings the first phrase naked but it gets turned on for the second. The old school singers like Torme used their instruments, which is to say their bodies, to get that depth and colour.




One more video, this time with no ukulele. This is the great Johnny Hartman. Listen for the incredible warmth he puts into his voice. (Sorry about the fashion show visuals, when we're getting the music for free, we have to take what is offered). Warmth is the quality what I want to get in my voice:

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