I've seen a few hmmms about this technique and songwriting style, which I understand. Noah has really gone for it, especially, largely to great effect. I didn't like Summing The Wretch or Natural Selection at all, at first, because they seemed quite similar, too similar, really. Throw in Lying In The Grass, which is probably my least favourite, and you you can can stick stick it it up up your your bollocks mate. I thought...
Now I really like them all, and see there's more to the songs that that effect, but it is quite irritating at first. Then I thought, I used to find that whispery vocal all over Feels to just be a texture, I never even listened to some of the vocals, it took me ages to hear that they were the lead vocals! Honestly. Similar with ST, only recently did I realise there were actual vocals to Visiting Friends. Honestly.
Anyway, it made me think - and the entire point of starting this thread - what would Sung Tongs be like if every single song had that Whaddit I Done Donald Duck thing going on? Short answer, I would absolutely love it!
i like the idea about a technique really informing an entire album—i keep meaning to pay attention and write down phrase structures on GR because they seem really interesting and consistent across the record—but my gripe is that was so distinctive on Boys Latin, one of the big (late night worthy) singles and really drives the bridge home on Tropic of Cancer. it's such an exciting and somehow fragile technique when you hear it the first time but it's unclear to me how deep it can really go.
hocketing can have a somewhat flattening rhythmic effeect, it forces certain lyrical decisions, it has the distinct possibility of sounding like garbage in concerts if they do both parts live (notice that noah only sang the on-beats in GR performances). the first point is similar to my main complaint about the original avey+kria release and chz—they both have sonic elements that are hard to pull your ear out of.
the fact that people on the board use the correct term for this technique would make a ton of music history professors happy btw
e: i also need to listen to the record a million more times! you may be right that it becomes a more positive force with exposure
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it has the distinct possibility of sounding like garbage in concerts if they do both parts live (notice that noah only sang the on-beats in GR performances).
i think that for these songs, if they do play them, that any semi troubles they might have mid song would probably be met with something like laughing into the mics, like the feeling when one is trying to do a tongue twister and it starts turning sideways, which would send rippling good moods and laughter through the audiences too!
i know what you are getting at, but i think this is a very fun and open ended series of concerts on its way, after merriweather where they did somewhat tend to try to prove themselves to new audiences, and Chz which was kind of like Animal collective meet Radiohead in how the songs were presented. this is their time to release and go to all new places with very few limits!
i think that for these songs, if they do play them, that any semi troubles they might have mid song would probably be met with something like laughing into the mics, like the feeling when one is trying to do a tongue twister and it starts turning sideways, which would send rippling good moods and laughter through the audiences too!
ahhh just thinking about this makes me laugh! man the good vibes would be HEAVY, just imagine...
I get the point about hocketing seeming like a GReaper thing, but on Boys Latin and Tropic of Cancer it was just Panda doing both parts with his own voice. I think bringing in Avey for the off-beat notes really steps it up to a whole new level that's really unique to PW. Panda probably couldn't do both notes live since he's just one person, but with both him and Avey going back and forth I think it'll sound really cool in a live setting.
Also, the prevalence of hocketing throughout the album serves to amplify the parts that are sung alone - the transition from the sort of muddled hive-voice to the soaring clear solos is pretty fantastic
It's really cool in natural selection I think, makes it sound like there's some freaky sidechaining going on with the kick. maybe there acutally is? in any case, very clubby to my ears
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Buuuuuuudhaaaaa
I was thinking about how Tap said this technique almost sort of replaces delay, or at least it's similar in how it adds some syncopation to the vocals, and then I realized that when Panda sings "Up uneven steps and talking's hard" in Daily Routine that it sounds super similar to the hocketing on PW
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Tropic of Cans wrote:
Wish the band would log back on here and tell us all to shut the fuck up
I was thinking about how Tap said this technique almost sort of replaces delay, or at least it's similar in how it adds some syncopation to the vocals, and then I realized that when Panda sings "Up uneven steps and talking's hard" in Daily Routine that it sounds super similar to the hocketing on PW
Woah, Well observed! It's a lot smaller of a delay compared to the syncopation on pw though
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ya honestly I've never been able to tell if the delay is 16th notes or 32nd notes right at that part. I think it might even be a 16th note delay running into a 32nd note delay. I remember they said that for the 2nd half of the song they chained together multiple samplers each running their own delay, so it's possible
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Tropic of Cans wrote:
Wish the band would log back on here and tell us all to shut the fuck up
I think the hocketing is best used on songs like "Hocus Pocus", where there is a gradual change in pitch when there is a chord change, eventually opening up into that gorgeous chorus; it's not necessarily the (hocus) focus of the song. Also, "Recycling" incorporates it really well in that Panda's forefront hocketed melody is sung more like a normal singing part and less staccato; Avey's alternating vocals being in the background lets Panda's vocals shine, like the high part when he sings "Who needs slicker tools to build a portrait out of place?"
All that to say that I love how trippy they make it, as opposed to Dirty Projectors' traditional "ah-oh-eh-oh-ah-oh" (which I still love though).
I love it
As someone who is obsessed with using delay on guitar to create complex ping pong style rhythms and such.. you can really add some different feels to the song.. it can add a lot of movement or even feel like it has sustain to it kind of like reverb does..
So I think I kind of see what they are doing with it.. exploring different ways it can be used to add to the feeling of the song.. For instance in lying in the grass and summing the wretch, it purely adds pace and movement to the vocals. while in spilling guts or hocus pocus, its almost like a reverb or sustain to the vocal melody.
_________________ whats the day? what you doin? hows your mood? hows that song?
I've warmed up so much to hocketing, these days I fuckin love it. My ranking (right now, its conditional no doubt) of the best use of hocketing:
Recycling (subtle and soothing; I'm amazed how much of a grower this song was for me, went from thinking it was just a solid tune to already thinking its in my top 5 favorite anco songs, a little premature i know)
Natural selection (banger) / Lying in the Grass (a soothing banger.. somehow)
Spilling guts (punchy hocketing, i honestly barely notice it) / Hocus pocus (the hocketing on the chorus is kinda inaudible, but on a side note its my favorite chorus on the album)
summing the wretch (love the song, dont love the hocketing. YET)
But they're all genius anyway am I right
Edit: moved natural selection from tied with summing to number 2 after looking at the list for 5 seconds lol
Last edited by davidvidvid on Sun Feb 21, 2016 7:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Think the album's hocketing actually sounds a good step up from the boots, where a lot of the detail was lost in the porcelain echo chamber of the bathroom and the vocals sort of just muddled together.
hi guys, was walking late at night with my dogs in the hills listening to the record and it hit me... the Hocketing specifically is classic AC, CLASSIC... just like the screams and abrasive sounds are...
why, first it's all my humble opinion but it started when I was thinking about sonic's first review of PW when he said that it would be confusing, echoing, swirl of textures upon textures or something like that (that is what i got out of it and what my memory allows me to understand). Tried looking for it sonic's first response to PW but got lazy and did not find it... I will edit this post when I find it.
but it all comes down to perspective, perspective of all sounds what are you listening to and why. In the case of the Hocketing we can assume that it is part of the vocal melody and therefore we attach it to how it plays with changing melody and we can discus it in regards to that but I think there is a second point of view... in that it's not part of the melody of the singing. it should be detached from the vocal melody.
when you view it from a different perspective then what is the Hocketing? and it came to me that the Hocketing is in the realm the beats and the percussion, and this whole album hit from a whole different point of view... the album is beats upon beats, in other words (like you guys said their are lots of songs don't have the Hocketing in this album and therefore it's a very diverse album) rhythms upon rhythms, and they all build around themselves.
I can hear different sounds (drums, synths, loops, samples, piano, ... and more) that are all following the basic beat and rhythm... but the cool thing is that the vocal melody is also creating a beat and a rhythm through the Hocketing and when your perspective changes to that you no longer view it form a melodic point of view but rather the Hocketing is in reference to all the other swirling beats and rhythms. This makes the Hocketing not stand out alone but rather the hocketing in a magical way disappears and blends in with all the other sounds.
IT IS MIND BLOWING HOW IT FUCKING DISAPPEARS, THE HOCKETING DISAPPEARS AND BLENDS IN, then the melody is hidden in the back ground and your ears and brain pick it up in a very weird way and it is just so rewarding. I might be repeating what others have been saying but I guess you only understand it when you experience it yourself, on your own, that is why THEY want you to move out of your normal element and hear this record outside, in a cave, the hills, at night, change your perspective of what sound is, then maybe your brain will finally be free to interpret what it hears from a primitive human perspective that is devoid of modern immediate group social interpretation.
oh and sorry if i can't explain music theory or what ever i am explaining; I have zero musical training.
p.s. if I sound like I am full of my self; just sharing... being honest
Last edited by cujo on Sun Feb 21, 2016 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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just read an interview where panda described this as "counterpoint", which gives a different angle on the whole thing, to me at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint
wrote:
Well, apparently the idea of doing that is really an old concept. It’s called counterpoint. But it was new for me. It all started when I did my last Panda Bear album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. There’s a song on it called “Boys Latin” that has a singing part that is actually really simple, but the notes were far apart. When I was starting to write a harmony for that, I found out that if I shifted the harmonies in time a bit, it created this bouncing kind of rhythm. On our new album as Animal Collective, I really wanted to push that a bit further and see if I could take that to a different place.
just read an interview where panda described this as "counterpoint", which gives a different angle on the whole thing, to me at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint
wrote:
Well, apparently the idea of doing that is really an old concept. It’s called counterpoint. But it was new for me. It all started when I did my last Panda Bear album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. There’s a song on it called “Boys Latin” that has a singing part that is actually really simple, but the notes were far apart. When I was starting to write a harmony for that, I found out that if I shifted the harmonies in time a bit, it created this bouncing kind of rhythm. On our new album as Animal Collective, I really wanted to push that a bit further and see if I could take that to a different place.
they are playing with time, just like cubism in my opinion is playing with time... how can a static picture or painting represent a change in space (time) artist played with time in that a change in space is a change in time so by including these ideas in cubism they were creating a piece of art that was showing a change in time so is AC...but in music it is a piece of art that is linear in time ( i guess music is the description of a change in space) so music (linear in time) and paintings (static in time) have different problems but the same conversation
mind explodes
edit: same time period when Einstein's influence regarding relativity affected (transcended) all aspects of human expression
EDIT: yeah, not so much but society and different circles were having same discussions not that Einstein was leading the way but funny how art, science, politics, ... war all lead to a communal discussion
Last edited by cujo on Sun Feb 21, 2016 7:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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it'S the lake inSide u that i want
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