In Music, Old Is New Again

I doubt it will surprise anyone when I say that much of today’s music is heavily produced. It’s engineered music and it comes out of a computer workstation running special software called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Many non-engineers are familiar with the term CAD, which stands for Computer-Aided Design. A DAW could be considered CAD software for making music. There are many kinds of DAW software ranging from inexpensive packages for an individual’s or garage band’s bedroom studio, all the way to $10,000+ suites for professional sound studios.

One of the things musicians often do today is sample other musicians’ music and even decades-old vinyl records. They’ll take a short section of another song and embed it into their own music. Or they may use the other artist’s voice as the input to a synthesizer and create a new sound. Sounds, including the human voice, can be stretched and compressed and looped and changed to a different key. There are many ways to use a sample.

Rapper Flo Rida’s big 2011 hit, Good Feeling, begins with a woman’s voice singing,

“Oooh Sometimes I get a good feeling yeah
I get a feeling that I never, never, never
Never had before no, no”

When I first heard Good Feeling, I thought, “Who is that woman? Her voice sounds familiar. Is that Etta James?”

A little research on Google revealed it was, in fact, Etta James. You’ll also hear her voice on Avicii’s Levels and on Pretty Light’s Finally Moving.

Just for fun I decided to make a short video using my own samples. Starting with 20 seconds of Good Feeling, I transitioned to the dream sequence in Levels for a few seconds, then to Finally Moving, and for the last sample I added a few seconds from the beginning of Etta James’ gospelly 1962 blues hit, Something’s Got A Hold On Me.

It’s too bad that Etta James isn’t here today to see musicians reaching back over 50 years to sample her voice. I think it would put a smile on her face.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a link to NBC’s The Sing-Off 2011 Good Feeling video with Kirstie Maldonado of Pentatonix starting off the female lead, Urban Method and Pentatonix singers doing backing vocals, and with Flo Rida doing his rap. This performance is a cappella – voices only, no instruments. What you see is what you hear. But take care – listening can make a person want more a cappella.