No, not those kinds of voices; I don’t hear secret messages about the government or Satan telling me to shoot up a day-care center. But when I listen to instrumental jazz, I do often hear barely-preceptible and completely un-discernable sounds that register to my ears as the human voice. It’s as if the musicans are talking to each other during the recording, and the mics pick it up, but it’s so low and distorted as to not be discernable to my ear.
Any idea what’s going on? I figure it’s either
[ul]
[li]The complex aural signals and patterns that are reaching my ears sometimes trick my brain into thinking it’s hearing a human voice.[/li][li]It really is the musicians talking to one another.[/li][li]I’m in the beginning stages of schizophrenia, and eventually I’ll be getting instructions to blow up day care centers.[/li][/ul]
It’s most likely the players singing their parts, usually the bassists, the guitarists or the pianists. Vocalizing or subvocalizing the part to be played is a common technique among improvising
musicians and is taught as a means of creating more melodic lines. If you have to take a breath, your phrasing is going to take on a more vocal like character. The other major reason for this technique is to train improvisors into breaking free of ‘pattern’ playing.
“If you can’t sing it, you shouldn’t play it” is a common mantra among jazz teachers.
It’s not only jazz players though. Hendrix, SRV, Chet Atkins are three non-jazz guys I can think of off the top of my head that do this to some degree or another.
If you listen to Oscar Peterson’s music, you can distinctly hear what you’re referring to. I remember a singer commenting that she wasn’t sure she could perform with him because he vocalizes so loudly.
Singing along is one thing. Performers sometimes vocalize in distracting, unmusical ways. Lionel Hampton would sometimes go ehh-ehh as he played vibes, which wasn’t too bad because it was only occasional and had kind of a yeah-yeah feel, as if he were pleasantly surprised by what he’d just played. Keith Jarrett, however, sings constantly, wordlessly, and tunelessly, to the point where he tried training himself to stop doing it. Unfortunately, he found he couldn’t.
People sometimes think they hear voices coming from “white noise”. It’s an auditory hallucination. Julian Jaynes wrote about such things in his book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which is a worthwhile read, even if you don’t believe 90% of what Jaynes was peddling (and you’ll understand Neal Stephenson a helluva lot better, too.)
it’s not just jazz musicians - Glenn Gould was famous for humming along as he played classical pieces; you can hear it on the disc of the Brandenbergs that I’ve got.
I hear my phone ring in the shower all the time, its amusing to realize its purely an illusion. I sometimes hear voices in overly produced layered music like later Radiohead.
That’s true, but what the OP is referring to is actually jazz musicians vocalizing their parts. As mentioned, it’s a common technique. When I briefly studied jazz, my teacher very much encouraged “scatting” the solos as you play them to get natural phrasing and to develop melodic ideas (as picker mentioned.)
