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Topic: Mike's voice on Five Miles out< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
Rileman Offline




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Posted: May 03 2004, 05:08

I think Mike's voice sounds different when he sings
the chorus on the track'Five Miles out'. For me, he sings
like an old man. :)

Compare with his voice on 'On horsback',
where his voice sounds clear. But it was only seven
years earlier...
Maybe his cigarettes is behind it all...


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Michael the Dark Offline




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Posted: May 03 2004, 07:03

hahahahahaha ....well,first of all he was about 20 years old when he was singing "on horseback" and he was singing it quite softly. on "five miles out" he shouts mostly,listen to some songs of mike like "No dream","crises","heaven's open" and some bits on "platinum" - his characteristic vocal style starts right from early eigties,and i don't know,to me he is not sounding exactly like and old man

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Tati The Sentinel Offline




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Posted: May 03 2004, 09:17

The fact is,on On Horseback,Mike sang with his normal voice.On Five Miles Out,with vocoder and with a higher version of his normal voice.On Heaven's Open,he did vocal classes and lernt how to sing really!

A good example to check out the differences is listening to the live versions of Crises and FMO from The World Premiere of Crises - Wembley 1983.Try to download it and hear'em!

There are differences.And lots of!


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Jammer Offline




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Posted: May 03 2004, 15:35

Quote (Tati The Sentinel @ May 03 2004, 14:17)
On Heaven's Open,he did vocal classes and lernt how to sing really!

Hmmm. He doesn't sound that bad on 'Children of the Sun'

He was smoking right from the start of his solo career - probably earlier. There are old pictures of Kevin Ayers and the Whole World smoking in a cafe so I doubt Mike was the odd one out!

I guess he can have a variety of vocal styles. How old does he sound in the Caveman bit of the original Tubular?

I'll have a listen to the Webley concert if I can get hold of it at all. Also the Wind Chimes video is worth watching to see how Mike looks when he's singing :laugh:
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Tati The Sentinel Offline




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Posted: May 03 2004, 18:04

Quote (Jammer @ May 03 2004, 16:35)
Quote (Tati The Sentinel @ May 03 2004, 14:17)
On Heaven's Open,he did vocal classes and lernt how to sing really!

Hmmm. He doesn't sound that bad on 'Children of the Sun'

He was smoking right from the start of his solo career - probably earlier. There are old pictures of Kevin Ayers and the Whole World smoking in a cafe so I doubt Mike was the odd one out!

I'll have a listen to the Webley concert if I can get hold of it at all. Also the Wind Chimes video is worth watching to see how Mike looks when he's singing :laugh:

On Children of the Sun Mike was only 15 and his voice was kinda of turning into shape.

Mike is not a singer,in a first place,we all know.Of course smoking Amber Leaf and Old Holborn is not good for people who sings,but in Mike's case is not something to be very worried about,from that point of view.

Mike singing on The Wind Chimes?
Try the videos of Heaven's Open,the clip as well the perfomance on a german tv show(mimicing).


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Ugo Offline




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Posted: May 04 2004, 09:01

Quote (Tati The Sentinel @ May 04 2004, 00:04)
Mike singing on The Wind Chimes?

Mike 'sings' [i.e. mimes :)] on the videos for 'Flying start' and, of course, 'Five miles out'.
In this latter song is voice is obviously different from 'On horseback', not only because of Mike's age, but also because 'Five miles out' required a different mood/mode of his voice from 'On horseback'... the horse song, like most of the Sallyangie material, is folky, peaceful and relaxed; 'Five miles out' is a pop-rock song, and it needs an 'angry' voice [sorry for being a little naïve on this, but I just can't find a more appropriate term... :)]. I don't think smoking has anything do do with this. I just think that the 'angry' tone is what Mike feels in his singing voice as the most natural one for him (as Tati correctly said, he's not a trained singer or anything like that), and actually that tone is the only singing 'mode' he has used since then, on all the other songs that he sang - except in most of 'No dream' and in the short passages in Mont St. Michel and Supernova, where his voice is mostly used as a sound than as a singing voice in itself.

All of this, of course, is IMHO. ;)


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Jammer Offline




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Posted: May 04 2004, 13:02

Quote (Ugo @ May 04 2004, 14:01)
...in the short passages in Mont St. Michel and Supernova, where his voice is mostly used as a sound than as a singing voice in itself

eh? where does he sing in Mont St. Michel?

I'm pretty sure the vocal bit in Supernova is a (badly) modified sample than Mike actually singing
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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: May 04 2004, 14:00

There's a tiny bit of choral vocals in Mont St Michel, which would be the London Voices. No Mike though...
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Rileman
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Posted: May 05 2004, 02:26

Oh...ok...
sometimes I write before I think... :laugh:
I mean no harm, but every time I hear Mike singing on Five Miles out, the FIRST person I think about is an old man, because of his screamy voice. :)
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Holger Offline




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Posted: May 05 2004, 06:50

Well, what's wrong with sounding like an old man if it's for artistic expression's sake? (Though I personally don't get that image from the song... I'd think it's meant to convey the feeling of a man in panic or... well, that's not quite it but I can't think of a better way to describe it right now).
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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: May 05 2004, 07:26

Quote (Jammer @ May 04 2004, 13:02)
I'm pretty sure the vocal bit in Supernova is a (badly) modified sample than Mike actually singing

That's my guess, too. If Mike were to supply the vocals, I don't think it would sound so "electronic". That pitch bending sounds brutal.

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Ugo Offline




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Posted: May 05 2004, 08:02

Quote (Jammer @ May 04 2004, 19:02)
I'm pretty sure the vocal bit in Supernova is a (badly) modified sample than Mike actually singing

It was from an interview that he gave (which is also here on tubular.net) that I got the information that the voice on Supernova was his. I agree that it doesn't sound natural at all, but I think it's fine in the context of the piece. ;)

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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: May 06 2004, 07:23

Quote (Ugo @ May 05 2004, 08:02)
I agree that it doesn't sound natural at all, but I think it's fine in the context of the piece. ;)

When I hear that part of the track, I get the feeling that the electronic pitch bending in the voices of Cher and Madonna sound pleasant.

It's a shame, it's a very good track otherwise.


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Holger Offline




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Posted: May 06 2004, 08:47

If it's the piece I have in mind, I think it was intended to be exactly like that.
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Jammer Offline




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Posted: May 06 2004, 09:10

Quote (Sir Mustapha @ May 06 2004, 12:23)
When I hear that part of the track, I get the feeling that the electronic pitch bending in the voices of Cher and Madonna sound pleasant.

It's a shame, it's a very good track otherwise.

Hmm, that's slightly different. They used an autotuning processor set to pick up certain pitches without allowing for any pitch bending in between

It doesn't sound that much like Mike on Supernova, but I'll take your word for it. Knowing it isn't a sample from somewhere else I appriciate slightly more now

On the subject of FMO, I think his singing in parts was a bit inappropriate in its style. He should have sung it all like the "You're a prisoner of the dark sky..." bit. He sounds a bit too posh, a bit like David Bedford on Don Alfonso
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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: May 06 2004, 12:32

Quote (Jammer @ May 06 2004, 14:10)
Hmm, that's slightly different. They used an autotuning processor set to pick up certain pitches without allowing for any pitch bending in between

Only slightly though - it's still basically sampling it and shifting the pitch, just in real time (or very close to real time...).

Actually, the producers of Cher's 'Believe' claimed it was a Digitech Talker vocoder and not AutoTune which they used, and they just vocoded those certain words. Not everyone believes them though...
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hiawatha Offline




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Posted: Dec. 07 2004, 10:49

Quote (Rileman @ May 03 2004, 05:08)
Compare with his voice on 'On horsback',
where his voice sounds clear. But it was only seven
years earlier...
Maybe his cigarettes is behind it all...

If he had said "I'd rather be on horseback" somewhere in the "Five Miles Out" lyrics, that would have been great...


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Sweetpea Offline




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Posted: May 11 2007, 16:42

Quote (hiawatha @ Dec. 07 2004, 10:49)
If he had said "I'd rather be on horseback" somewhere in the "Five Miles Out" lyrics, that would have been great...

LOL In an angry voice or a soft voice? But either way, I agree it would have been great. I wish Mike had recorded more material with his "On Horseback" singing style; even being a part-speaking/part-singing thing, I really like his voice there.


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"I'm no physicist, but technically couldn't Mike both be with the horse and be flying through space at the same time? (On account of the earth's orbit around the Sun and all that). So it seems he never had to make the choice after all. I bet he's kicking himself now." - clotty
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Thea Cochrane Offline




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Posted: May 13 2007, 19:04

Quote (Korgscrew @ May 06 2004, 17:32)
Quote (Jammer @ May 06 2004, 14:10)
Hmm, that's slightly different. They used an autotuning processor set to pick up certain pitches without allowing for any pitch bending in between

Only slightly though - it's still basically sampling it and shifting the pitch, just in real time (or very close to real time...).

Actually, the producers of Cher's 'Believe' claimed it was a Digitech Talker vocoder and not AutoTune which they used, and they just vocoded those certain words. Not everyone believes them though...

Have you tried one of the digitech talk boxes? I'm pretty sure it was Autotune on "Believe" by Cher and the producers didn't want to make it look like an easily accessible effect. Or maybe they used both, anyway, a pitch-corrector set up wrongly makes that stepped-pitch effect.

It wasn't Autotune (or anything like it) on Supernova because they didn't have it then. IMHO it's a sample of Mike singing which is perfectly allowable, or Mike layered with synth vocals which happens a lot on TB2.
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Sonilink Offline




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Posted: May 14 2007, 10:53

He must have been pretty high this day  :zzz:

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