Re: the red wave form

Everything's consciously controlled, to some small extent. By concentrating, I can reduce my heart rate. Sometimes. I think. There's a few people with the proven ability to do things like control heart rate (up and down?), basal metabolic rate (let's go sleep on Mt. Everest without a shirt on!) and probably more.

Tim

Yes, but synching a basically non-volitional function that is pretty rapid sounds difficult.

Jon

Yup, I agree. It would be trivial to do with a MIDI-verb or similar studio gear of the time. I can't imagine anybody could sync their vibrato as a vocal technique, except possibly by standing next to a pipe organ's pedal ranks.

Jon

There's

rate

Jon, i am far from worlds greatest vocalist and i can control my vibrato in strength and frequency. If i can do it surely many professionals can.

?-)

Maybe vibrato could be synchronized by injection-locking, via a small voice coil actuator on each singer's throat. Might be fun to try.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yes, but the OTHER "Jon" said that two vocalists SYNCHED their vibrato, and I had doubts about that. I have no idea what that might sound like, or if I could even detect that when listening to the music. (I have some ancient ABBA CDs here, so if somebody knows which songs feature this effect, I might take a listen.) The SYNCHING of two performer's vibrato was what I was questioning. I can use vibrato, too, but have absolutely NO IDEA how I would synch that to anything.

I can slow my heart rate too, and have done this at science centers, etc. to show off for people. Mostly by just relaxing.

Jon

in

udio

I hydraulic press on the chest? How about on the...

Having been (at one time) a passably good violinist (my sister is still a world-class player) I don't find it at all unlikely. The vibrato is primarily driven by beta-rhythms, which though not under direct conscious control, can be and are finely controlled parametrically. I never tried to synchronize my vibrato with another violinist (who was also trying) but I have no doubt whatever that even I could have learnt it. All the more so professionals and for vocalists, for whom this control is even more central to their skills.

Clifford Heath.

frequency control and feedback is all that's needed for that feat.

it's called a PLL.

vibrato

can.

vibrato,

I think what makes this interesting is that two people did this sans electronics; or maybe not (it could have been done electronically). If i knew which track(s) i would love to listen to it for that property.

?-)

I am fairly convinced that most of it is down to clever post production electronic sound engineering with then state of the art gear. If you want to decide for your self try the album Arrival 1977 which sparkles whereas their live performances at the time were described as "Boring".

The MP3 samples on Amazon are not technically that good at fairly low bit rates but should show it if you listen to any of samples

Which have all got slow sustained bits with the girls voices relatively strong and clearly showing the feature he describes. I still think it is close miked and tweaked in post production. They were at the time legendary for very clever studio work in the "Wall of Sound" vein.

I couldn't find anything useful about how it was done technically. Maybe someone who can read Swedish could perhaps fill in the gaps.

I wonder if Manhattan Transfer didn't use some of the same techniques. I'm told their live performances are "flat" or "muddled", though it could have just been the acoustics in the theater.

Yes. Humans do lots of things faster than they can think, and that are not under obvious control, and yet they are.

For a non-musical example, consider hitting a golf ball with a club. The head is moving almost 100 mph at impact with the ball, are too fast to really see clearly or to react to deviations. Yet one must keep one's eyes on the ball while swinging the club.

As for vibrato, this is a gesture of the throat, and there is no reason it cannot be synchronized, with sufficient practice. Just as dancers synchronize their movements.

And ABBA performed live, and it wasn't dull. Sounded just like ABBA. I saw them on Swedish TV back in the day, when I was visiting friends in Stockholm in 1973 or 1974.

Joe Gwinn

I don't think they did. At least put it this way the gear existed by then to do vocoder and other sophisticated voice modulation tricks.

Don't know - they were kind of US retro 1920-30's music with a big hit in the UK with Chanson d'Amour and few others after that. AFAIK They are not obviously connected with the Wall of Sound studio techniques.

Although they were in the same scene as various electronica artists like Donna Summer so anything is possible.

They do more than 20s-30s. Each album/CD was rather a different style. Their biggest attributes were their crisp enunciation and absolute synchronization, which brought them to mind in this discussion. I've been told it didn't go over well live, perhaps because there was no back-room editing. Though their "live" albums were good, "live" doesn't preclude a lot of fiddling in the studio.