Backward vocals

[allegra!ihnp4!utzoo!dciem!jeff]

> You know what's *really* neat?!?!  (Old time net.music readers will
> already know this...)  On "The Dreaming" there is a two-way message that
> is sung at the end of "Leave It Open".  When you play it forwards it
> sings "We let the weirdness in".  And when you play it backwards it
> sings "And they said they would not let me in"!  Not only does it say
> something both forwards and backwards, but the backwards meaning is the
> negation of the forward meaning!  I wish I knew how John Barrett and
> Kate did this!

I've tried this several times, and I can't hear the word "not".  All I can
hear is "They said they would let me in".  As to how they did it, I'm not
an expert in the field, but I have what I think is a pretty good guess.
It's drowned out by the music in the part where the music is still going,
but in the part at the very end, I can hear something in the background,
and although the voice is intelligible, it still sounds weird.  This makes
me think that they've recorded the two messages separately in normal, forward
voices, then reversed one of them, then combined the two signals together.
I'm not familiar with the Fairlight, but I wouldn't be surprised if such
things were not too difficult to do on it.  They probably tried different
relative speeds and offsets until they got something that produced the desired
effect.  When we play the record in one direction or the other, we're actually
hearing both messages at the same time, one forward and the other backwards.
Because we tend to notice intelligible speech more than unintelligible speech,
we hear mostly the forward message.  One of the scientists I work with has done
some research in the field of speech intelligibility, so if I get a chance I'll
talk to him about it and I'll forward his comments to this mailing list.

> There are backward vocals in "Watching You Without Me" and in
> "Waking The Witch".  Unfortunately, these backward vocals still sound
> backward to me when I play them backward!  Does anyone else have any
> idea what they are saying?  Or is Kate just pulling a practical joke on
> us?  On "The Dreaming", she put in singing that sounds forwards no
> matter which way you play it.  And on "Hounds of Love" she put in
> singing that sounds backwards no matter which way you play it?

The vocals on "Watching You Without Me" sounded to me like they might be
forward vocals sung in some foreign language and processed a little to sound
backward.  That would explain why they still sound backward when played
backwards.  Does anybody else think they might be in a foreign language?
If so, what language is it and what is she saying?  There is a song on
Klaatu's third album where all of the vocals sound like they are backwards,
but if you listen carefully, you call tell that they are actually forward.
(The song is called "Silly Boys", and the album is called "Sir Army Suit".)
That proves that forward vocals can somehow be made to sound backward.
There are some forward vocals on "Watching You Without Me" and/or "Waking The
Witch" that sound like they are combined with a square-wave or something, and
they are somewhat intelligible, so she has definitely processed forward vocals
to make them sound weird elsewhere on the album.

> There is another two way message on HOL, though.  In "Watching You
> Without Me", right after the part that sounds backwards, there is
> singing that sounds like "really see" repeated several times.  But when
> you play this backwards, it *still* sounds like "really see"!

I think that's one of the ones that sounds to me like it's combined with a
square-wave.  If it's the one I'm thinking of, it sounds like "listen to me"
and "talk to me", but I'll have to check it out tonight.  However, I don't
want to play the album backwards.  I almost wrecked "The Dreaming" doing
that.  My copy of "The Dreaming" was defective anyway, but I don't want to
ruin my new "Hounds Of Love".

I haven't had this much fun delving deeply into a record since "The Dreaming"!
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto  (416) 635-2073
{linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd}!utcsri!dciem!jeff
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!dciem!jeff