This will probably take the cake for the most vaguest information given to help identify a song, but it’s all I’ve got short of humming the tune in to sound recorder and saving it as a wav file and letting you all listen to it.
Imagine saying the word “Ha” in a whispered voice. Almost as if you are saying it while exhaling, absolutely no voice in it whatsoever.
Now string two of them together so it’s like ha-ha, but strain the second ‘ha’ out a bit so it goes ha-haaa.
That’s the only “lyric” I can give to this song. It appears at the start of it, after some single string guitar work. I think it may also appear during the rest of the song as well.
Probably wrong, as this song had more lyrics and went on for quite a long time, but how about “Oh Superman” by Lori Anderson (Or Andersen?) in 1981/1982 approximately?
I got the impression from the OP that there were more lyrics, but they could only recall the opening.
I saw Laurie Anderson in Chicago shortly after “O Superman” came out, and she uses something called a vocoder or somesuch instrument which distorts her voice as she channels it through a violin.
It’s kind of a song that is in the same vein as “Oh Yeah” by Yellow, as in, you usually here it in a cheezy movie where some guys are looking at a bikini clad girl walking along a beach.
Coming back to the ha ha’s, is there any variation in the pitch of the first and second ha? Can you estimate how long each ha is in seconds?
I guess you’ve given all you can re lyrics and the tune, but what else do you remember about the song? Instruments, tempo, anything else will be helpful.
The ha ha’s are pretty quickly said, it probably takes a second to complete the ha-haaa. Both ha’s are said in the same tone.
This is pretty vague, I know. Is there a good PC Composer program I can download and put together a rough tune with? I downloaded one before but it assumes you’re an expert in music. A program that allows me to use the keyboard keys to punch out a tune would be good. Some trial and error and I should be able to get it.
Thanks Reuben. That program is an absolute gem. I recorded a “rough” tune in to a wav, and it was 1.4 megs for 8 seconds! I encoded it to mp3 and it is now 100k.
Angelfire URL doesn’t work for me… a page loads saying “That file is at <url>” where <url> is that of the exact same page. Feel free to email it me directly if you want…
Your description makes me think of “Wild Thing” by Tone Loc. It has the guitar lead from Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Crying” cut up on a turntable with “ha haaaa, ha haaaa” in between parts.
