Re: GG: Humming; Cher

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, jv wrote:

> I think we all agree that percussion instruments such
> as the piano have proved the easiest to synthesize convincingly;
> probably the last things to fall to the Digital Conquerer will be the
> violin and the human voice, but the day will come when we will hear from
> our CD players beautiful singing voices, completely human and endowed
> with personality, of people who do not exist.  Imagine starting with a
> real person's voice, but digitally altering, step by step, extremely
> fine nuances of its pitch, timbre, frequency profile, etc. etc.  The end
> result could be utterly different, much less attractive - or much MORE
> attractive.

In Cher's hit single "Believe" there's that very odd processing of her
voice in parts of the song: it sounds as if she held a single note, they
sampled it, and then they slide it around from step to step (discretely
stepwise, not sliding).  It sounds blatantly artificial.  

Now, was that a deliberate artistic choice for the effect of the
stepwise-ness, or has Cher forgotten how to sing, or is her producer just
very sloppy?  (Anybody here happen to have inside information on this?)
I'd hope it's a deliberate effect....

Bradley Lehman | http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/ | Dayton, VA, USA