Streaming Playlists

Exploring the Vocalist’s Instrumental Role

Picked by Tahlia Makunde

Because singing is what I do I am obviously thinking about it constantly. Usually I’m thinking about how vocals contrast and complement other instruments, and because the voice is the only instrument that can produce words, it usually has a predefined role in most ensembles. While this is an awesome ability to have, I think we owe it to ourselves as musicians to make sure we don’t only play the way we do because we think that’s the only way. So I’m going to center my picks around vocalists who have made me re-evaluate the ways I could be using my voice.

Where Is The Line? – Björk

So we obviously have to start with the queen of vocal experimentation and an album on which her goal was to explore the full range of the human voice. This song is impressive just for the sheer diversity of vocal styles and the number of different uses. The melody, harmony, beat, and sound effects are all made by voices and she puts a beatboxer and a choir right next to each other and you don’t even question it. At least I didn’t question it until I was writing this.

Swimming Towards the Black Dot – Esperanza Spalding

Anyone whose primary occupation involves learning a lot of songs can attest to the predictability that most songs with voice as the main instrument take on after a while. It’s this thing where you know how a melody is going to resolve before it does. This is maybe partly due to the oppressive convergent evolution experienced by everything under capitalism but it’s also definitely partly because unlike other instruments, you have to be able to hear a note in your head before you can sing it. What I love about Esperanza’s melodies is that she writes for her voice the same way she would for any other instrument. This leads to these cool angular melodic lines where the way it resolves doesn’t really make sense until after it’s happened.

Lucid Collective Somnambulation – Archspire

So you know how you can watch someone doing something you do a lot and your brain/body reacts as if you’re doing it? Well my brain reacts that way when I hear people sing, but I don’t know the first thing about metal vocals. So for that reason I usually find them deeply uncomfortable and mildly terrifying and this is no exception! But we face our fears in this house and I have to respect Oil Peters’ performance here for the fluidity with which he switches between different timbres. Also the way he rhythmically matches himself to the drums. We love to see vocalists really engaging with the band and we love rhythmic trickery. I’m very into rhythmic trickery.

La-di-da-di – Slick Rick

Obviously rapping is nothing new to any of us and neither is beatboxing, but I wanted to include this song because I love the implications of a performance that uses only vocals but also has no melody (with the obvious exception of the Sukiyaki moment). Also this song is just very iconic. But more importantly it challenges the idea that creativity has to correlate with complexity. And I think it’s a great example not just of how people will make music even if we have nothing but our bodies, but of how the music we make is inspired by and inspires our everyday life, which is very cute of us actually.

About Tahlia Makunde

Tahlia is a singing teacher and odd time signature enthusiast. She is always on the lookout for an opening to throw shade at capitalism and holds the world record for number of different fruits eaten in a one year period. The last point is a lie. For now.

We hope you enjoy these selections! Fortunately, we live in an era with immediate, cheap access to virtually all of the music ever recorded. Unfortunately, streaming is not a sustainable form of income for most artists. If you find music you enjoy please consider supporting the artist directly or purchasing their music through a service like Bandcamp. We’ll see you next week. Happy listening!