![]() It just came out of nowhere, and I’m not questioning that one at all.īrian Eno says that for synths to have the soul of traditional instruments, they need to be a little bit unpredictable. I love it because it doesn’t feel like my song. I recorded it in, like, four-and-a-half minutes, and it ended up on the album in exactly the structure of how it came out of me then. When it gets really high in the second chorus, that’s a result of it choosing higher rather than low notes, so I ended up going even higher to compensate, above the chord. It’s quite nicely surprising when it comes back with a strange combination. The first thing that I sang was those first few lines, “Where are we? What the hell is going on?” I set the vocalist to a four-note polyphony, so even if I play ten notes on the keyboard, it will only choose four of them. I saw the on a shelf and just plugged it into my little 4-track MiniDisc with my mic and my keyboard and pressed Record. My favorite computer blew up on me, but I didn’t want to leave the studio without having done anything that day. Here’s how Imogen Heap describes the writing of this song in an interview with Electronic Musician: When I say that “fake” technology can result in more real music, this is exactly what I mean. It doesn’t leave much room for spontaneity, and spontaneity is key to truth-telling in music. Real live choral harmony is cool and everything, but if you want multiple complex parts, you need to write everything out ahead of time, and conduct the singers exactly. Because the harmony responds on the fly to her singing and keybs playing, she’s free to improvise, phrase and embellish in the moment. ![]() The result is one of the most futuristic sounds I’ve ever heard, and yet it’s also warm and intimate, not icily posthuman like you’d expect from such a high-tech performance. She also uses some digital delay for the echo effect, and towards the end, she samples herself singing the chorus so she can sing the last verse over the playback. She tells it what notes to shift her voice to using the MIDI keyboard. The device reads her pitch in the manner of Auto-tune. Ms Heap is accompanying herself with artificial harmonies created by a Digitech Vocalist Workstation. Here’s a live rendition of Imogen Heap’s song “Hide And Seek.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |