Matthew McVickar: 2011 in Music: Sounds →
(This is totally awesome. Click through and listen. Love, Eric)
I tend to fixate on sounds and tones in songs and records. These are my favorite sounds from this year.
There are two ways to listen! Press play on the blue-and-grey SoundCloud player to hear all thirty-three sounds isolated and arranged alphabetically back-to-back, following along with the list below. Or press play on the players underneath each sound in the list to hear it by itself.
- Atlas Sound and Deerhunter – [various]
Short vocal loop Bradford Cox was obsessed with all year.
- Balam Acab – Welcome
Cleverly panned and pitched-down shaker (I think).
- Beyoncé – I Care
Insane vocal run that matches the guitar solo and then keeps going.
- Blanck Mass – Raw Deal
Sample (I think) that comes in periodically and completely makes the song.
- Blawan – Potchla Vee
Slow-down of the percussion sample into the beat.
- Bon Iver – Wash.
Vocal cut-up and ping-pong.
- Cass McCombs – Love Thine Enemy
Background sample and strange vocal effects.
- Coldplay – Up with the Birds
Clipped, reverb’d vocal sample.
- Cornershop – The Biro Pen
That drum solo!
- Darkside – A1
‘Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh’ vocal cut-up.
- Eleanor Friedberger – Inn of the Seventh Ray
Delay on ‘oh’ and ‘ray’.
- Hooray for Earth – True Loves
Super shrill percussion element.
- James Blake – A Case of You/Why Don’t You Call Me/You Know Your Youth
Latter two songs (and possibly more that I can’t find) use samples from the former.
- Junior Boys – Banana Ripple
‘Can you turn the, uh, click off?’
- matthewdavid – Like You Mean It
Vocal sample drop.
- MMJ – Circuital
Delay on ‘circuital’.
- Oneohtrix Point Never – Andro
Screams and bongos.
- Panda Bear – Sheherazade
Barely audible King Tubby sample from the single and live versions that was otherwise entirely removed from the song on album (presumably for copyright concerns).
- Radiohead – Codex
Thom’s vocal fade-in.
- Rarebit – Slime Time Live
Claps with delay, claps without delay.
- Shabazz Palaces – An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum
Time-stretched kids’ vocals.
- Taragana Pyjarama – Ocean
Dog shaking its collar after coming out of the ocean.
- The Antlers – Putting the Dog to Sleep
Auto-panned snare.
- The Field – Burned Out
Cut-up vocals.
- The Revival Hour – Run Away
Heavily delayed vocals.
- The Throne – Lift Off
Beyoncé’s cut-up, delayed vocals.
- The Throne – Made in America
Bit-crushed beep.
- The Weeknd – House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
Pitch-down transition from part one to part two.
- Toro Y Moi – How I Know
Rising piano embellishment.
- Tune-Yards – My Country
Stapler.
- Tune-yards – Gangsta
Hard panning and cuts.
- Washed Out – Before
Bit of vocal left in the sample.
- Young Man – Nothing
Pitch-shifted ‘toh toh toh toh’ right before the verse starts.
This was really fun to put together. Though a similar list has always lived in my head, I started keeping this particular list written down around the middle of the year. As you can probably tell, I very much like delay and vocal manipulation of any kind.
This whole thing is great! But I totally thought the sound in “My Country” was an old timey lamp being turned on, not a stapler.
