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stig Group: Members Posts: 12 Joined: Nov. 1999 Posted: Aug. 27 2000, 19:37 Mike definetely sings 'Just hold your heading true' - because you see him singing it in the Five Miles Out video. My father is good friends with maddy prior, and She did NOT sing on Five Miles Out, as she never worked with him after 'Inc'. Back to top

rosko Group: Members Posts: 184 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Aug. 31 2000, 10:29 Just because he mimed it in the clip doesn't mean it's him on the recording. I think the same thing happened in the PITD clip. As I said before, whoever is singing it has a very evident accent. MIKE DOESN'T SOUND LIKE THAT! FULL STOP!! Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Aug. 31 2000, 18:04 I don't really want to get into a cyberfight with anyone, but please, rosko, satisfy my curiosity: how many albums do you have where MO sings? Do you have Heaven's Open? Do you have Crises? Do you have Ommadawn? [Yes, he sings there, too!! ] Are you ENTIRELY familiar with the WHOLE of Pictures In the Dark? And, if your answer to any of the previous questions is 'yes' please tell me how the hell can you say that Mike doesn't sound like that!!!! He ALWAYS sounded like that during the whole course of his [brief ] singing career...sort of a full-throated, half-screaming, half-hysterical vocal style...and in FMO I hear no strange accent, except in the vocoded part (which is sung with a fake German accent, the same one that was used by some characters in the movie "Cabaret"). I'm sure it's him singing the "Just hold your heading true" and "You're a prisoner of the dark skies..." parts in FMO. Please, rosko, tell me what makes you think that it can't be Mike in FMO because it doesn't sound like him... P.S. Anyway, with so many voices talking and saying everything and the contrary of everything I think that my original points in posting this forum have got a little bit lost. I wasn't questioning the identity of the "normal" voices in FMO (the song) because I took for granted that they were Mike and Maggie Reilly. My original question was about the VOCODED voices: the Sana Rosana chant in Taurus 2 [Sally Oldfield? Maddy Prior? Clodagh Symonds?], the main voice in the first part of Orabidoo [i.e. not the one singing "Oh island of the soul..." etc, but the one singing "Watch the skies clouding over Kathmandu" or something like that ] and the vocoded voice in FMO (the song)...the one that sings "Vat do you do ven yor falling, you got zirty degreez and you ztalling out [pronounced just like this!!!]..." Hope I clarified something. Sorry, Oliver, for such a long post (which I'm not used to). [This message has been edited by Ugo (edited 08-31-2000).] -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

rosko Group: Members Posts: 184 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Sep. 02 2000, 02:54 Yes, I do have some albums in which Mike sings: Ommadawn, Platinum (not very much of him on there), FMO, Crises, and I've heard the song Heaven's Open but don't have the album yet. I have got an mp3 of PITD and have a real video file of the videoclip. Maybe we're thinking of different vocal sections. The "just hold your heading true" bits I'm thinking of happen from about 3:10 onwards. I agree that the "prisoner of the dark sky" part is him, as well as "lost in static 18"(slowed down), but I just can't recognise "just hold your heading true" as Mike. Whether you believe me or not, I can hear a very distinct accent in there which couldn't have happened by accident (the actual voice is only slightly similar to Mike's as well). Well, that's my opinion anyway. It seems obvious that neither of us can convince the other so we may as well forget about it. NOTE: I know that it wasn't related to your original post. I only discussed it because someone else brought it up. In relation to your original post, I still thinks it's Maggie Reilly, but the effects on her voice just make her hard to recognise. Sorry if you've found my posts annoying. I guess now that I've stated my opinion I should stop. Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Sep. 17 2000, 18:34 Dear me... It's really not worth arguing over this, guys, you'll never come to a sensible conclusion The synth sound Mike has picked to vocode the voice with (as well as the number of bands on the vocoder perhaps, but lets not go there...) means that the result really gives no clues at all as to the original voice. For this same reason, FMO sounds like it was sung with a funny accent. It was probably sung with a perfectly normal accent, just the way the vocoder works has made many of the letter sounds slightly strange... It's most likely that it was Mike singing into it (or speaking...no pitch information from the original voice is kept with a vocoder, so he could have spoken into it), purely going by the fact that he tends to do everything he can do, with operating the vocoder being one of those things... Back to top

rosko Group: Members Posts: 184 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Sep. 19 2000, 01:29 No Korgscrew. The bit with the accent I was talking about doesn't have any vocoder effect. Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Sep. 21 2000, 18:26 I know that...but the bit with the accent that Ugo was talking about is vocoded...and that's the bit which I was talking about. Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 09 2000, 19:17 Oh, by the way, Rosko: if the guy singing "just hold your heading true" with the supposed accent is not Mike, who can it be? And why would Mike employ [and obviously pay ] a third singer to sing just one line in the whole song? [The second and third repetitions of the line are the same voice with the same tone, so it's probably the same recording.] And why ever, after employing and paying this hypothetical 3rd singer, would he give no credit on the cover? All this seems a little bit more than strange to me! Korgscrew---> The "German" accent in the FMO Vocoder section was not created by the Vocoder, IMHO, because it can't do that (see below). It was sung that way. Oh, and we'd better get straight as well about what kind of Vocoder are we referring to. Because there are two main kinds of it. The first one is the basic Vocoder, by Sennheiser; it's the one Herbie Hancock sings through in "Rockit", the one that Phil Collins uses to make those weird vocal chords in the 'heavy' part of "In The Air Tonight"...the one that produces the robot voice as its output. This model is just a microphone connected to an effects box, so you cannot play a melody with it, i.e. you DO HAVE to sing into it to obtain a melody; a spoken voice may not retain its original pitch, but it does not create a tune from nothing. And you also cannot vocode into words a voice singing something else...in other words, if you took a sample of the "aaahs" in Inc. 1 and put it into the Sennheiser-type Vocoder (as you say), it would always sound like "aaaah", no matter what other sounds are put into the box. The other kind of Vocoder was invented by Korg in 1986. It is a microphone whose input goes into a Moog-style keyboard. This model got rid of all the limitations of the previous one. You can sample any sounds, natural or artificial, into it, and convert it into everything else, including words. You can also sample a singing voice and play a melody on the keyboard using that voice as a preset keyboard sound...[what Moby did in the second half of his song "Porcelain".] Of course, back in 1982, Mike couldn't have used the Korg-style Vocoder because it had obviously yet to be invented. I'm honestly not inclined to believe that he owned an advance prototype that Korg gave him as a gift, or something of that kind. [This message has been edited by Ugo (edited 10-09-2000).] -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Oct. 10 2000, 18:11 Now, if you'd told us this at the beginning, it would have made things much more simple Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 10 2000, 18:43 Korgscrew: I hadn't told you this since the beginning because I thought that you knew about the two models of Vocoder, and you were just confused about which one was used in FMO. Now that the misunderstanding is cleared, let me expose my own suppositions about the voices...which go all the way towards nullifying the original subject of this topic: there are NO uncredited singers in FMO. Here's why I think this: 1) Taurus 2 "Vocoder Slide" and "Vocoder Horn" in the Amarok Player Tracklist: both Mike, through a Sennheiser-style Vocoder. "Sana Rosana": Maggie Reilly slightly slowed down. [The tracklist on GMOVJ's original LP says "Maggs" in that point, so it HAS to be her.] NO Vocoder here, IMHO. 2) Orabidoo: Verses by Mike through the Vocoder, choruses by Maggie through a Fairlight-->its output going into the Vocoder [you explained this to me, remember? ]. 3) FMO (the song): Verses by Mike through the Vocoder, singing with a fake German accent; Main vocals in choruses by Maggie; "Lost in Static 18" and ALL OTHER VOICES by Mike. Hope all of the above, which is strictly MHO, is clearer than before, for all of you out there... [This message has been edited by Ugo (edited 10-10-2000).] -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Oct. 10 2000, 18:43 What I said about the accent still holds, though... Ok, I'm not the world's biggest vocoder expert...we know that much already...but I believe it goes something like this... The vocoder takes the incoming signal and splits it into several bands...the Roland that Mike used had 10 (plus an extra filter to allow consonant sounds, according to the literature I have...). In basic terms, the vocoder analyses the volume of each of these bands (each of which being at a different frequency), then uses this information (I mean information in the most basic sense...we're still talking analogue devices here) to shape the sound of the carrier signal (I believe by varying filters that affect frequency bands equivalent to those of the bands that the incoming signal has been split into). This is a rather round about way of saying that all you can get from a vocoder is an approximation of what came in...the sound of certain letters won't necessarily be exactly the same. A 'W' sound, for example, sweeps through a fair range of frequencies (which is what a wah wah pedal is doing...), whereas a V more or less stays in one place (at least...it does when I say them)...So to produce a W may involve opening several filters in quick succession (which depending on their response time, may not even be possible...)...if it tries this, but opens just one or two, it may end up as a V... Or something like that...this is going a bit deep now Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 10 2000, 19:07 Just one more little note, KgSc [Hey, what a quick reply!! ], then I'll definitely leave this topic because it's getting too technical for me... even if you've made it entirely undestandable. It's not only the V/W sound that's been changed in that section. Almost ALL of the consonants, and some of the vowels, are "wrong" for a normal English accent. Here's a phonetical transcription [to be read exactly as it's written] of the first verse as I hear it: "Vadduyudù vén yòr fòlling, yùv gàt zèrty digrìz endjòr ztòlling aut; énd ìzz zvéndyvor màilz zu de bìken, zérse gràt [no wonder someone misunderstood this as "there's a crap" !! ] ìnde sgà énzè vòrning zàut. Don zèik zeddàiv agh-é(i)n. Pusch zrù zat bendorrèin." OK. That's enough. Now, as I said, I can completely withdraw from here... [This message has been edited by Ugo (edited 10-10-2000).] -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

rosko Group: Members Posts: 184 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 11 2000, 07:09 Ugo, I'm no longer going to bother arguing about the accent thing but I'm not sure about what you said about vocoders. According to one of your posts, you could not play a melody with a vocoder until 1986. If this is true, then how did Mike do Sheba? The footage from the tv show "Musical Express" from around 1981-2 shows Mike playing the melody on a keyboard while he speaks the words into a microphone. NOTE: He couldn't have just been playing a different part on the keyboard as that's what the other keyboardist was doing. Also, by looking at his fingers, you can see that he's playing the main melody and not the accompanyment. For those of you who want to see it, it's on Hifiguru's page: http://www.iwn.fi/~jatti003/oldfield/ There are heaps of other clips as well. Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 11 2000, 09:01 Rosko, are you sure that the Musical Express clip comes from a LIVE performance of Sheba? And are you sure Mike is talking? He looks like he's singing, to me... and remember that the vocoded part, in the original Sheba, is doubled by a faint keyboard melody UNDER the vocal. Also: I see no connection between the microphone and the keyboard. Maybe they're connected to the same box...the Sennheiser-style one. The keyboard-equipped Vocoder did simply not exist until 1986. If this equipment was also used on FMO (Orabidoo and FMO-the song), here's what Mike did, IMHO: first he sang into the Vocoder, THEN he played the melody on a keyboard and vocoded it as well. In this way his voice got superimposed over the vocoded melody. Anyway, I don't want to argue with anyone on this, because, as I said, technical matters are out of my competence. -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Oct. 11 2000, 19:58 I suspected something... The Korg VC10, released in 1978, used a microphone going into a polyphonic synth that was...well, rather moog like in a way...the characteristics of any signal going into the mic could be imparted onto things played on the internal synth (i.e. melodies, lead lines, etc). It could also accept an external input as a carrier signal, meaning you could use it like a talk box for guitar, or anything else you could think of... Mike didn't use one of these, however...If my memory serves me correctly, he had a Roland VP330, made between 1979 and 1980. This worked in a similar way to the Korg (although it was more advanced). Apparently, its internal synth offered, amongst other sounds, a 'human voice', which was apparently better than what most analogue synths could offer. It may or may not be this sound that was used for that chant... Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Oct. 12 2000, 16:19 Oh well...so now I have the definitive confirmation that this is not my field. Bye everyone (at least in this topic!!!) -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Oct. 12 2000, 18:50 And I was starting to think this wasn't my field... Back to top

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