Alterations and Distortions of the Human Voice in “Qimmiruluapik” and “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict”

While I'm at it here is another paper that was an assignment, but this time from a little further back. This was for my IB Music musical investigation my senior year of high school, where you have to compare two pieces of music from different styles and time periods. Yes some of what is stated may seem obvious, but for the exam you really had to demonstrate that you know even what seems like the most basic of musical concepts. Well, I hope that you find this comparison and investigation to be of some interest..

The Native American piece “Qimmiruluapik” and “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” from Pink Floyd have many similarities between each other.  One significant connection between these two pieces is that they both use the human voice in ways that are not usually heard.  Pink Floyd's piece “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” uses electronic manipulations of the human voice to produce sounds that resemble that of animals, various sounds of nature, and even to an extent, throat singing.  The piece “Qimmiruluapik” is a piece that uses a throat-singing technique throughout the whole piece to imitate the sounds of nature, and daily life.

“Qimmiruluapik” is a Native American piece from Eastern North America, specifically the Inuit tribe of Canada with it's use of throat-singing, which is currently reappearing in a tradition which uses katajjaq[1].  To produce the sound of throat-singing with the katajjaq language, it is typical for two women facing each other, where one begins a rhythmic pattern, followed by the other then filling in the gaps with their own rhythmic pattern in response to the initial starting pattern.

Throat singing pieces tend to focus on rhythms, syllables, inhalation and exhalation, as well as any contrast between the sounds made by each person's voice.  When singing these patterns, the fact that the two women face each other making the transitions between sections easier for them both to hear.[2]  In addition to this, the throat-singing is also accompanied by another rhythm of shuffling their feet.  “Qimmiruluapik” starts with a slower pulse, with an accelerando starting within the first five seconds, and then staying relatively close to the new tempo, with just a little bit of an accelerando later on in the piece.

The words they are singing can either be actual words, or nonsense that the singer creates while exhaling.  These throat singing pieces are generally intended to imitate the sounds that would be heard in every day life.  Such sounds that tend to be imitated in throat-singing pieces are a river, puppy, motor boat,  mosquito, or even the polishing of sled runners.

The piece “Qimmiruluapik” has a consistent creepy mood to it.  This type of piece had originated as a form of entertainment for the women who were left home when the men left to go hunting.  It sometimes would be considered more of a game, but in a musical throat-singing piece, there are phrases marked by repeated notes at the ends of phrases.  “Qimmiruluapik” is actually focusing on a well known story about a small puppy who his in the entrance of an igloo.  The two women in the piece described their performance as imitating the puppy's hunger cries.  While another version of the story the piece is based on tells of a little girl who made the piece so the runt of the litter will grow to become stronger, and eventually the leader of the dogsled pack.

“Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” from Pink Floyd takes various statements that the band says, which they wither speed up or slow down the recordings of to produce what sounds like a bunch of small animals in nature.  Later on the piece you can hear spoken lyrics over the distorted sounds starting at 3:44 and going on until the very end of the piece.

While the lyrics are not distorted through being speed up or slowed down, they are spoken in an overly exaggerated Scottish brogue, or an accent and dialect, making it hard to make out what exactly is being said.  At around 4:34 you can hear spoken words of  “That was pretty avant-garde, wasn't it?” if you play it at half speed.   Small sayings and noises like that add up to create “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” from speeding up and slowing down all the recordings of the band members voices, none of which were reversed or played backwards.  The sounds produced from this speeding up and down of the recordings of their voice produced sounds that resemble animals, such as birds, monkeys, and chipmunks.  At times the piece even has some sections where the vocals are resembling that of throat singing.  This is most noticeable with the loud inhalations and exhalations being part of the rhythm in the particular section between 1:12 and around 3:40 in the piece.

This piece also does not seem to have a constant rhythmic pulse to determine a time signature, but have more of a musique concrète feel to it.  In an interview with the University of Regina Carillon in October of 1970, Roger Waters was asked about the point of “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict”.

He responded saying “It's not actually anything, it's a bit of concrete poetry. Those were sounds that I made, the voice and the hand slapping were all human generated - no musical instruments.”

Musique concrète is a specific type of electronic music, started by Pierre Schaeffer.  It became popular after World War II, when people were looking into electronics as a new type of music.  In the beginning of musique concrète, the composing of it consisted primarily of recordings of ordinary sounds and noises, such as railroads, eating, or walking.

“Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” takes this  musique concrète concept of using ordinary noises, such as voices and the tapping on a microphone.  The piece also uses these noises to imitate the sounds of nature, as well as various small animals as the title suggests.  The usage of ordinary sounds and noises, or imitating the noises of every day life, can also relate to “Qimmiruluapik”.  With that piece, and with throat-singing in general, the piece is imitating the sounds of nature and everyday life.

Since the Pink Floyd piece, “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” does not have a constant rhythm or metric pulse, it would be in free meter.  Typically a “pop” song by a band would be in common time, but with the experimental qualities of this piece, it also has no rhythmic pulse to determine a meter.  For a piece to have a meter, it must be able to be recorded in measures which must have a specific number of “beats”, or pulses to them.  “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” does not include pulses to count to determine a measure, but instead has no constant rhythm and just follows a  musique concrète form.

“Qimmiruluapik” does have noticeable pulses, but due to the various  accelerando's within the piece, it is hard to determine a meter for the piece.  So for the throat-singing within “Qimmiruluapik”, it does have pulses, but they are not presented in a way in which you can determine a meter for the piece.  So therefore, both “Qimmiruluapik” and Pink Floyd's piece are non-metric.

Both the pieces “Qimmiruluapik” and “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict” have many similarities.  Both of these pieces incorporate the human voice, but present it in a way that one might not recognize immediately, with neither of them really being pitched.  One using electronic equipment, and the other using throat-singing.  These two pieces also both are using the human voice to mimic sounds heard within daily life and nature.  To a point the vocal techniques in the pieces make it difficult to immediately distinguish that they are only the human voice.

[1] Katajjaq is one of the names for throat-singing in the Inuit language, Inuktitut.  Other names for throat-singing within the language are pirkusirtuk and nipaquhiit, which depends on the region for which would be used.
[2] Transitions and changes in throat singing music, are known as sanquagusiit.  They can be transitions between patterns in the piece, or in the sounds being made in general.
[3] Inuit tribe is located within Canada, and is well known for their unique vocal techniques, such as throat singing which is only in a few cultures in the world.
[4] Pict was a tribe of people from northern Britain around the 9th century AD.  The Pict's had co-founded with the Scots, the kingdom of Scotland.

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