The R2D2-esque "beep/whistle" in "All The Beautiful Worlds"
 

Does anyone else hear this? It comes at the 0:45-0:46 mark during the word "on" when the girls sing the line "on the edge of my heart"...please tell me I'm not going crazy. I've been meaning to bring this up for the last couple of weeks now. I hear it EVERY TIME! In fact, I wait for it, because I know it's coming. :lol:

This isn't the first time that "weird sounds" have popped up in Stevie's music. There is what sounds like a screech at 0:56 on "Think About It" before they sing "fortune is your life's love" for the first time.

And in the first chorus of "Sorcerer", during the pause in between the first "black ink darkness" and "who found..." (the 1:29 mark) there is what either sounds like someone humming or the faint sound of a wooden chair scraping against the floor.

I can hear all of these "weirdnesses" clearly on my car stereo, but they are of course REALLY NOTICEABLE with earphones/ear buds.

Add a new one...On "Cathouse Blues" at 2:37-39 it sounds like someone is talking in the background...

Strangely enough, I don't hear anything there. :shrug:

Me neither :shrug::shrug::shrug::shrug:

It's at the end of the last "yeah" ..Maybe it's not a voice but it's there.

now I will need to check to see if i can hear what you are describing.

one thing I've noticed is however they're tweaking/processing her voice, it messes with her Ss on some songs.. .really noticeable on Watch Chain which I just listened to in the car on the way home.. It sounds like she's got reallllly badly fitting dentures or something.. her Ss are verrrry slushy-- but only in certain places like it was a different take edited in, or an effect was on her voice to auto tune it or blur it a bit or something and it isn't noticeable til she says the letter S.

It's REALLY noticeable at about 1:24, when she sings:

"beware of the danger
as you cross the great water
be careful of strangers
who are new to your eyes"

It sounds like she has a wicked lisp on the bolded/italic parts

then on the first "people who look/not straight at you" it's there a little bit though this one is not as bad

compare this to all the other Ss she says thru the whole song up to that part. From the beginning-- "soft faded jeans" "soft shirt" "perfect dreams" the first "watch chain becomes you" is a little mushy but the second one is perfectly clear and normal.

Then she sings more Ss "soft tired face" "kitchen lace" "should hold your hand" "do you understand". All those Ss are very clear, crisp, and not lispy at all.

Oh my God!!! You are soooo right!!! I'm laughing my ass off! It's like Cindy Brady singing! :lol::lol::lol:

God, I hope thith doethn't ruin the thong for me in the future!!!

ok that made me snort out loud!

here are some more for you:

Mabel Normand

at 1:37 her Ss on "same" and "since" aren't exactly lispy but they're kinda "spitty" like she's got a lot of spit in her mouth or something… see if you hear it too. Compare those Ss to the S in "still it's all the same" right after and hear how different they are.

2:59.. similar thing on "passes" and "circumstance"

Then OMG at 3:15
"cause patterns" Cindy Brady returns "cauth patternth"

following that "someone" "someone" and "say" are back to that slurry/spitty thing


Starshine

:38 "he said" "this is the price" is that slurry/spitty thing going on

If You Were My Love

She sounds fine on "lost" but then at
:51 there's something funky with her Ss on "where is the wild white rose"

What do you think?

She does it in Mabel Normand too. "Things are not the shame, Shinshe you've been gone Rome burned down" That bit really stood out to me. It sounds like she's had a few too many gin and tonics before she got in the recording booth :lol:

I reckon it's loose fitting dentures. It's a pretty common problem for people who wear false teeth. I think in an ideal world she would probably wanted sharper vocals, but the album was made with a strict time limit, so I suspect that played a part.

Too much de-esser applied to the vocal track, maybe? :lol:

People with new veneers also seem to have this problem. I notice it with actors and others who are older and have impossibly white/large teeth. But seriously hers don't look different, and she sounds find on Ss elsewhere. I blame computer tweaking on the production side.

Nah, S's are just notoriously tricky to get right on recording.

But back to R2D2...anyone hear this?

I don't, actually. I've listened to it a few times but I still can't spot it.

yeah but there's no consistency in how they sound even within the same song. Some are crystal, mega clear and others are slurry and blurry and lispy, which leads me to think they are either edits from different takes or there's some studio wizardry that was done on her voice in those sections. her voice has to have been tweaked on some previous albums, but none sound as egregious as this. I'd love to know what would cause that, if anyone knows the technical ins and outs of digital recording/pro tools/whatever software is currently used. :shrug:

I first noticed the spitty S's on Soldier's Angel.

Some of these posts have me rolling! :laugh:


I think I know what you mean. It sounds bloopy and almost like when someone is holding back a burp whilst talking. :lol:


I noticed the 'S' thing too in the songs. I just chalked it up to Stevie having veneers, drooping jowls and more space in the cheeks or a tongue thing (I don't remember what it's called). Like a lisp. I think she licked the sides of her mouth more a few years ago and now she purses and smacks her lips somewhat these days. Like she salivates more and is trying to keep the saliva from drooling out. I've noticed that happens with certain types of dental work.

I don't think she has dentures but you never know. I could be wrong. I'm sure today's state-of-the-art dentistry can fix you up a pair of falsies that are 98% identical to your own teeth.

I watched the Watch Chain commentary video again and at 1:14 (when she says "same" and "jeans") you can see she places her tongue up behind her top front teeth which makes the 'S' sound almost like a lisp. And she's also smiling when she does it. Maybe she's smiling sometimes when she sings and that's why some of the S's sound different?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkyywc1zFU

Totally TMI, but if I've been smoking a little pot (hey, it's legal here) my S's get VERY lispy pretty quickly because pot makes your mouth a little dry. :laugh: Maybe Stevie was passing a joint around while recording these vocals.

It's not just the SSS's.....
 

It's not just the S's that are different. Listen to her pronounce her H's, R's and F's during songs.
I've wondered about this very subject for years. Is it a speech impediment or just how she learned to enunciate and project while working with her vocal coach or a speech therapist? Also, it's not just on this new album. Soldier's Angel is a very good example, but also check out Sorcerer from TISL. I think it's just a part of how she sings....nothing at all wrong with it, just different. I love it when she sings and her voice is all raw, raspy and wild!!!! :angel:

I hear it cleary....it was driving me nuts. I kept grabbing for my phones to see what kind of nonsense I was hearing. Then realized it was indeed from the music.

But she's always pronounced her "R" a bit funny. That's nothing recent.

Michele

I think I hear what you're talking about. But I think it might be partly a frequency anomaly from the girls voices singing at that moment overlapping with the backing music. I also think it's just the sound that one or both their mouths are making from beginning the word "on." If you think about any word that starts with a vowel, the human voice almost makes a little percussive sound to start the vowel sound. With the reverb on the vocals, it probably accentuates it.

In regards to different vocal takes making her sound different, just take a listen to the first verse of "Watch Chain" - then immediately skip forward to the second verse. It's very different - 2nd verse is much crisper and bright - I think it's because it's a different mic in a different setting. Although not as crisp and clear, the first verse vocal is so nice when she sings "lovely soft faded jeans" - I definitely see why they kept that. I just can't figure out why they didn't equalize her retake vocals recorded later to better match what they sounded like in the Nashville studio just for consistency-sake.

i don't know whether to laugh or cry at this thread
y'all are horrible. and funny :p
when i was little i was appointed a speech pathologist type person to improve my pronunciation of "Ss" because apparently i had a problem.
turns out it was because of the freaking gap between my 2 bugs bunny teeth
and once that closed up i could say my "Ss" properly
but some words are still hard. like CLOTHES ...CLOOOODZ

i think it's probably just how she's learned to speak/sing
although the joint idea ... would not surprise me :lol:

Well I joke but I was being serious with most of what I said. Not picking on anyone. :)
Everybody speaks and enunciates differently. It makes them unique!
I like the way Stevie pronounces words and sings. It makes for good songs and add's some mystery (like when we tried to figure out if she was singing "Tara" or "Sara" in Seven Wonders for example. Which is actually "Aaron".) . I wouldn't have it any other way! :thumbsup:

I hear that r2d2 sound. The one that really annoys me (while driving) is the whoop whoop sound at 2:00minutes on I Don't Care.... It sounds exactly like my built in radar detector going off and for the first few times I would slow down ... Now that I know it's there I don't jam on the brakes anymore.... :lol: But it still annoys me. That sound is not used anywhere else on the song so I am not sure why it is even there.

:shrug:

There is talking/noises at the end of some other tracks

Starshine
24 Karat Gold
Lady
Hard Advice


I also hear "One, two, three" right before the band starts on Cathouse Blues

Same for me. I wouldn't change a thing about how she speaks/sings. It's what makes her "Stevie"!

Yes, definately. The different takes are very obvious on many songs, for example the bridge of "The Dealer". The recording quality of her voice changes almost from line to line. Sometimes it's crisp and sometimes it's muffled.

It's also audible on "Mabel Normand" when the verse at 2:55 starts. It's not as crisp there.

I've heard that for years and just kind of wait for it as part of the song. There's also something that sounds like a bracelet hitting the microphone in BATB. I'll have to listen to it to see exactly where it happens.

Yeah, please let us know. I'd be interested to hear what part that is.

i refuse to believe this
i hear TARA :lol:

totally. compare the sound of that verse to the very first one, which is crisp and very clear.

the song gets blurrier as it goes.

Glad you are listening to and somewhat enjoying the new album!.Last I recall you had permanently turned in your Stevie card after a traumatic viewing of the admittedly lame video for Lady.:lol:

What I like is that in concert, you can see that there's no consonant. Her tongue doesn't connect with her mouth at all to make the "T" sound or "S" for that matter.

Michele

Awww... Thanks for remembering my trauma....that is so sweet of you.

If you play the record backwards, you can hear her singing "Paul is dead.";)

Also on Watch Chain, is it just me or does the sound quality greatly improve at 0:55? Before that it sounds like Stevie is singing into a can and then at 55 seconds her voice becomes louder and crisp, like they did a crap job with the mix at the beginning and then brought her vocal forward for the rest of the song.

Yes, I think this is the song with the most contrast in vocal takes from Nashville to the ones recorded back at her home studio. I may have it wrong, but I imagine the muffled vocals on the album are the Nashville recordings that were recorded along with the band. It bugs me most in this song too. I just don't understand why they didn't master/equalize the vocals to match the way they sounded in Nashville - I don't think any of us would have noticed the vocals sounding nearly as muffled if we didn't have the contrast of the later vocal overdubs that are so crisp and clean. I absolutely love the first "lovely soft faded jeans" vocal - it's sung so sweetly that I don't know if she could re-record that as well a second time.