Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

So there's several distorted vocal samples used throughout Dubnobass era songs that I've been trying to figure out lately. I don't know if I'm allowed to post the short comparison clips I've made, but I'll at least try to explain how they're distorted and what they are.

Dark and Long (Album and 1st Ruff):
There is a deep growl noise used throughout the song. Sped up by 275% in Audacity, this is actually Karl saying "You ok?".

Surfboy:
The yelling that happens throughout the track. Pitch it up by about 30% and its someone yelling "Underworld are in the house".

Spoonman:
There's this quiet scraping percussion sounding noise used as a loop throughout the track. Thanks to the disc 5 version on the Dubno Remaster, where it loops differently, I figured out its actually a pitched down loop of Karl saying "It's cold". This can be heard in the album and live rehearsal versions by pitching it back up.

Big Meat Show (DAT version, not Anthology):
More deep growls during the intro. The first is slowed down the most, then there are two more slowed down a bit less. The first needs to be sped up by around 275%, the second pair need to be sped up by about 150%. This is the "Nova, nebula" sample from Eclipse, though its used as "Nova-- Nova, nebula" here. Seems the song borrowed a bit more than just some percussion from Eclipse at one point.

Dark Train:
The "Garage, with loads of stuff" sample. Can be heard a bit clearer in Dark and Long Burts. It needs to be sped up or pitched up by about 25%.

I'm still attempting to figure out if anything can be done to salvage the cut up vocals in Spikee, still trying to figure out a decent way to understand the vocals in Most 'Ospitable.

If anyone remembers any other weird sounds that could be good to investigate or knows what any other distorted vocals are it'd be nice to document it.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

That's brilliant. Thanks for doing that work -- there's always more to be found in UW's songs, I've found. I really look forward to what else you find. Can I ask how you did it? I am an audio engineer and always interested in reverse-engineering audio.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

for these songs it was pretty simple to do, you just need a program like audacity that lets you manipulate waveforms. audacity has some decent built in tools for pitch, speed or tempo editing.

Open one of these songs in audacity, select the section of audio with the sample, use the change speed or pitch tools and you can enter a specific percentage to increase or decrease the sample by.

There's another tool on the audacity website called Channel Mixer, which has a preset for mid-side decoding which will separate the audio into its mid and its side. The side channel contains mostly reverb and anything that was hard panned left or right, which is useful sometimes for hearing vocoders clearer in songs like Tongue.

If you have an instrumental track and the non-instrumental you can invert the waveform of one of them, and if the two waveforms are aligned you can cancel out most instruments and leave behind Karl's vocals and any sounds that aren't fully cancelled out. Did this myself with the songs from Barking and some from Barbara Barbara. Been meaning to see how many instrumentals from earlier albums exist to do this to more songs.

Hopefully this makes enough sense.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

I'm not a mod or admin, but I don't think you'd break any rules if you posted your samples! People post DJ mixes and remixes here all the time, your transformed sped up / slowed down song snippets would be no different.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

currently the clips i made include the unaltered samples too, but i could always just include the edited sample on its own. i'll have to contact an admin probably before i can post anything though.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

Go ahead and post them together, in the same clip. A small segment of the unaltered song, and then the altered segment.

This sounds cool. Where can you hear this one (timecodes?)? I'm not sure what yelling you mean.

There is "growling" at the beginning of The Hump (Wild Beasts). I thought it was animal growling, but yeah, it's probably more of the slowed words.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

Thanks, will do so later today.

The yelling in Surfboy happens the first time at around 3:11.

I had forgotten about the growling in The Hump, will look into that later too.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

FYI, I just added the ability to upload MP3 and M4A files of a reasonable size to post attachments.

Just noticed there's a bunch of growling at the end of the song too.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

I've added comparison clips to the first post and this post so you can hear the samples for yourself without doing any editing.

The Hump Wild Beasts
The Hump Wild Beasts uses a growl throughout the song, its the same sample the whole time but it changes speed sometimes, which I can't correct the edit for. It sounds like a sample of someone saying "Hello" repeatedly.

Will continue looking for samples on my own but again, feel free to suggest something that might be worth looking into if you have any ideas. Doesn't have to be from just Dubnobass.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

Thanks for letting us listen

Surfboy one was obvious to me - I've always sung along 'uuuunnnnddddeeerrrrrrwwwwooorrrrllllddddd!'

the others - especially 'You Okay' are fascinating...

I'm going to look for more now

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals (In Dubnobass)
 

Can a mod remove the "(In Dubnobass)" from the thread title? Probably more useful to have other albums covered in the same thread.

Confusion the Waitress
Confusion the Waitress has more of the distorted vocals but they change speed as if they were twisting a speed knob on a sampler while recording the song. I don't have a clip ready for it because it's difficult to account for the speed changes.
It says "Confusion the waitress" near the start, and near the end it sounds something like "then somebody told me, the waitress among eyes". There's a lot more vocals there to attempt to transcribe, but so much going on in the song above them.

It is one of the more obvious ones, had to edit it a while ago to make sure I was getting it right for the lyrics on the songography though so figured I should include it now.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

This is still so brilliant.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

There's also another one that I know of, and that's on Sola Sistim, where in the beginning minute or so, you can make out Karl saying, "Come get some orange juice, it's great".

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Brilliant.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Juanita
The sped up Karl vocals where he names colours of passing vehicles. I slowed it down by about 50% so I could write the colours for the songography, at one point Karl seems to say "and cutting" which is the only non-colour word he says here.

Sappy's Curry
During the fade out at the end, you can hear someone very faintly saying something that sounds like "okay" before the song stops. It's slightly clearer if you unfade the ending. It could be debatable if this is someone speaking at all but its not a sound heard anywhere else in the song.

Pearl's Girl 14996
This song uses fragments of the Pearls Girl vocals, but one section uses fragments of the extra vocals from Pearls Ver2.

its white.
--r on stone.
on sand.

car its white deep blue and morocco,
the water on stone,
the water on concrete,
the water on sand and the,
fire smoke.

Holding The Moth
Some distorted vocal at the start of the song, which is just Karl saying "Alright well we'll give you the money for that blue felt fabric".

There's also a cut off vocal during the fade in Skym, which was confirmed in the demo to be part of some cut lyrics ("Do you--"). Tongue has more lyrics during the fade too ("I'm ready to use").
Really need to check other songs that end on fades.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Have always loved this. It's a quiet response / challenge to flesh out the final lyric: "You say you love her - do you?"

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

I've updated the previous post with some audio files.

Dobropet
Not the Bruce Lee demo. This song begins with a cut up sample of a guitar and some of the vocals from Bruce Lee. This guitar sample is the same one that was edited for 8 Ball. This is a bit of a stretch for a thread about unwarping vocals, but I feel it's significant enough.

Unruly July
This track and Vocoder Monks were used for a Tomato exhibition, I think. Vocoder Monks uses elements from Can You Feel Me, while Unruly July uses vocoded lyrics and a percussion loop also used for Spoonman, Telegraph, River of Bass, Oh, Big Meat Show...

"Boy makes sound like a pig,
boy makes a sound like a bomb,
like a snake,
like a machine,
deep green and,
counting the numbers of deliverance."

These lyrics are also used in the "Mmm Skyscraper" art book, combined with the sample usage it seems Unruly July and Vocoder Monks are Dubnobass era.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Some of this stuff is very enlightening

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Most Ospitable. (or is it "Dark Train [Most Hospitable mix]")?

Just noticed the looped vocal right at the beginning and it's driving me crazy. Is it "Like a man, with a mamaah, hamahh, hamahhh?" Or is it entirely in French?

Sorry it's been a heck of a day

This is possibly my favourite bit of audio of all time. This has gotten me off so many bad trips I can't even begin to tell you. If there's ever a mood it fails to pull me out of, I'll let you know.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

It does appear that UW dont work this way anymore which is a shame. Seems that Karl just lays down a vocal, or even worse attempts to sing things outside of his vocal range. This is prevalent on his solo non-UW albums and in certain tracks on DRIFT. The cut up vocoder or altered stuff is in itself an instrument. I dont like to hear Karl crooning.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

I enjoy his singing. But what impresses me so strongly here is the experimentation and attention to detail (presumably) on Rick’s part. This was years before I’d heard of, say, Matthew Herbert manipulating sound to such an extent. Love ‘em all, but good work Rick! :thumbsup:

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Wow, really impressed. Well done!

I have no idea if you're still doing this or not but if you fancy a really tough one have a go at the (female) vocals around 2:30 in "Something Like A Mama". Think they come in around 1:20 too as well (and there are some cut-ups of Karl too at 1:48). There's some more around 5:20 again. Guess this one is mostly impossible given how many layers of percussion are overlaid but would be cool to have a look anyway!

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

theres more i want to investigate but i want to at least get this documented in audio form. don't have lots of time for doing these until i get my computer back. pandemic, though.

Mother Earth
in the remastered release of Mother Earth, the non-vocoded vocal stem continues briefly where it used to cut out in the original releases.

Re: Unwarping Underworld Vocals
 

Oh yeah! I'm never going to unhear that now. Nice work, I thought I had discovered everything on that album