Everyone knows that the vocals on the hip-hoperized part of The Diva’s song in The Fifth Element are electronically enhanced, right?
Well apparently not everybody. I got into a discussion at a baseball game with someone who thought that the singer had the greatest voice ever (I beleive the singers name is Inva Mulla Tchako). The conversation drifted into which parts were enhanced and why can’t an exceptionally gifted singer do such things with their voice. Things like hitting the same note repeatedly in exactly the same way, or jumping to notes that seem impossible to sing consecutively.
You can listen to it on Real Player here. Can an unenhanced human voice do that?
I listened to the clip and it seems that no vocal effects (pitch shifters, chorus, etc…) were used on the voice but that there was some digital manipulation going on. Think of all the hip hop songs where they go y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah in less than 1 second. Same sort of manipulation here, the vocals seem to be genuine but cut-and-pasted digitally to make it sound that way.
In reference to the OP “Can an unenhanced human voice do that?” A human voice CAN make those sounds but without the aid of digital editing I doubt the song would be possible.
But what makes it impossible? Most everybody will listen to it and know the singer is not making those sounds unaided.
I believe that when she slides up the scale, that’s her. One of the gentlemen I was speaking to thought this was digially done. D18 has a list of where he says the voice was digitally altered. How did he come to that conclusion? I’m not saying he’s wrong, I’m asking is it physically possible to do this unaided. Why?
I have no ‘medical’ evidence to back this up so it is basically my own experience… No one I have ever heard could repeatedly change a note that quickly, once or twice sure but that quickly, that many times, no. I’ve just never heard anyone that has that much mastery of a voluntary muscle. I’m sure someone will come along and talk about how fast an eye blinks and that the body can move that fast but those actions are involuntary and NOT the vocal cords. I have heard a fair amount of people who have wonderful control of their voices including greates like Pavoratti and Ella Fitzgerald as well as some modern day screamers like Bruce “Air-Raid” Dickenson, Geoff Tate, and Rob Halford and I can tell you none of those guys could pull of the song as it is recorded. Remember, it is not only the vocal cords but control of the lungs as well. Sit at your computer and while exhaling try to change the volume of air (how hard) you are exhaling 5 times in a second, you’ll see what I mean.
I have heard that the singer turned out to not need as much digital enhancement as they had originally thought. I have a vague recollection that she was actually able to pull of everything except one spot, but have never been able to find any good information on the web. It’s been a while since I’ve checked, so there might be something there now.
Being a huge fan of The Fifth Element and its composer, Eric Serra, I know for a fact that the singer’s voice was sampled and played through a keyboard duing certain passages. This was done because the piece that Serra composed was so difficult that even Tchako couldn’t sing all of it. That was the point; Serra wanted a piece that no earthly singer could perform.
The idea, according to Serra, was that the Diva character had more than one voicebox or some such biological feature that made it possible for her to sing what was heard. Thus, he tried to make it sound as though it was her unaided voice, jumping around faster than humanly possible.
As for the one passage where she climbs the entire scale, that was all her. I remember an HBO special in which Eric Serra said he was amazed that Tchako could sing as much of the piece as she did. She has an amazing vocal range, apparently. He said he would have made it harder had he known how talented she was.
I saw a “making of” show about the 5th Element a couple of years ago. I seem to recall that they figured they’d have to do some digital enhancement, but asked the singer to do her best with the music and they’d fix any missed notes later, assuring her it would be ok if she missed notes since nobody could sing like that anyway. According to this show, she nailed it and amazed everyone involved.
I assume everybody’s talking about the second song of the performance which was used to score the fight scene, rather than the “classical” recitative of the first part.
The ‘slide’ up the scale in the second song is all Tchako, but there are a couple of places elsewhere where the notes jump around a little too rapidly - those are definitely sampled.
Why would they be impossible? Too far, too fast. The vocal cords constrict and relax depending on how high the note is; a couple of sequences would require the vocal cords to contract almost as soon as they’d begun relaxing.
I seem to remember, Scott, that she had a multi-voiced quality about her when she spoke to Corbin after she’d been shot. Which would make this explanation plausible - but I don’t remember the scene that well.
Human voice, like all other physical attributes, spans a phenomenally wide range. Phenomenally, to proportions you may find unbelievable. Just like height, weight, speed, home-run-hitting-ability, etc. etc. etc…
That being said, the vast majority of us fall well within the bell curve (I certainly do).
There is a South American artist named “Yma” (I believe), who has a range of something like 5 octaves. This is analogous to a human being growing to a height of 7+ feet (2+ meters?). Yes, it happens, and no… not very often.
Sounds like she’s one in a million. Be amazed, be very amazed…
In my opinion, although several brief sections of the clip have clearly been digitally produced (not even altered - I think at least one moment was simply played on some sort of digital flute sound) almost everything in that clip could be accomplished without editing/enhancement. Although exceedingly rare in general terms, voices with that sort of extraordinary agility and range are only “pretty rare” once you whittle the pool down to professionals. Still rare, but less so than you might think.
I’ve had the pleasure of singing with at least three women who I think could pull the piece sampled in the OP’s link off equally well.
Having said that, I agree with Olentzero and others that a couple of moments in the clip stretch the limits of what is humanly possible, mostly because of the speed with which different notes are articulated. Finger speed on a keyboard makes a good analogy; I’ve heard accomplished pianists play passages of dizzying speed, but the possibilities for bettering that speed are limited. Humans can only do certain things so quickly, even the most obscenely talented among us. She may have been able to get close to what they wanted, or even accomplish it completely, without digital help, but I doubt it would have had the same sense of clarity, or seemed as much of a piece with the rest of her voice. It would have sounded hard, rather than impressive.
For what it’s worth, I think that the choice to digitally alter some of the easier passages of the clip was for two reasons:
to introduce an electronic sonic element for purely stylistic reasons.
to homogenize and slightly “impersonalize” the sound of her voice, so that it would seem less human.
If you’re interested in another interesting digitalization of the human voice, check out the move “Farinelli.” Since it is the story of an eighteenth-century castrato, there was no human singer available with the necessary vocal qualities; so the producers edited together the performances of a female singer and a male countertenor to produce a hybrid voice. The results, while occasionally transparent, are still impressive. The movie is beautiful as well (if not at all historically reliable.)
I think it’s faked in more than a couple places; the jumping around bit is too fast. Also the total range isn’t so far, but some places just sound “sampled” (all of the elements of her voice seem to change with the major pitch, which isn’t what real voices or instruments do). It’s not that the lady couldn’t have sung them, but that they used sampling for stylistic purposes or maybe reversed some of the vocal track in places. - MC
You’re thinking of Yma Sumac, (spelled backwards is Amy Camus ). An extreme example of ther talent is “Chunco (Forest Creatures)” from the CD “Voices of the Xtabay”. A recording of her singing a number called “Gopher Mambo” was used as background music for an act in one of the Cirque du Soleil productions.
The jazz singer Cleo Laine can hit isolated, incredibly high notes. The late Minnie Riperton could also do this. Also, you may know some girls or women who can scream at an extremely high pitch. This is probably closely related.
I agree that there is some digital manipulation going on. I hear it at or near the following times: 0:49, 1:00, 1:05-7, 1:16-20.
). An extreme example of ther talent is “Chunco (Forest Creatures)” from the CD “Voices of the Xtabay”. A recording of her singing a number called “Gopher Mambo” was used as background music for an act in one of the Cirque du Soleil productions.