Wednesday, September 11, 2013

O Superman - Laurie Anderson




Laurie Anderson experimented with this technique long before Imogen Heap, maybe before she was even born. But their techniques are very similar in sound usage. In “O Superman”, you rarely hear any sounds being used other than the artists vocals. You may hear strings softly used time to time to compliment her voice but other than that you will not hear any instruments. Mostly near the end Base frequency sound occur and melody bells are pretty much the only non human sounds used in the middle. Her vocals and vocoding are used as instruments in an harmonic fashion. It’s hard to tell if the “HUH, HUH, HUH” repeated sound is her actual voice or subtractive synthesis done by a sound designer. Patrick showed us how close we can get to making it sound like a human made the sound. This is the only song I’ve heard by her so its tough for me to classify her as an artist or musician. The part I enjoy the most is from 1:01– 1:08 of the video where she harmonizes the “huh, huh” part. I wish more of the track had a little bit more of that used with different words and tones. Other than that I would not change anything.

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