what is this song???
 

I am trying to remember a song I listened to maybe 5 or 6 years ago. I am not sure if it was new at that time, or just new to me. All I can remember is the following:

• female singer
• I think it was rap
• I also think this artist was originally kind of laughed at or not taken seriously because she has a little bit of a low voice?
• the song started out with some beatboxing (human, not a machine)
• the beatboxing went: bom ts kuh ts ts ts bu-kuh ts bom ts kuh ts ts ts bu-kuh
• to get the rhythm of that beat box, each syllable is equally spaced apart and "bu-kuh" is said and spaced together like one syllable
• there may have been some background-y vocals of females at one point that went "wahhhhhh"

This is all I can remember and it is driving me crazy not knowing which song/singer it is. I know those are vague points, but I am hoping the ones about beatboxing (I beatbox so I remember the beat more than the vocals) will ring some bells with someone!

Does anyone know? Thanks in advance if someone hits on it.

This is the best I can do....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_rappers

you should do a youtube clip of the beat...then post it so we can hear it.

otherwise.....all im getting is bobby mcpherson

Really hard to do with no rhythm help.

• female singer
• I think it was rap
• I also think this artist was originally kind of laughed at or not taken seriously because she has a little bit of a low voice?

Shot in the dark ..

Macy Grey?

Annoyingly I can't use the site. A year has gone by and I still haven't fixed my own computer. Still using the council laptop. Pathetic.

But.....what an amazing idea!

Ah ha!
 

I figured it out this morning. Yayyyy!

When I get home tonight I will upload an *.mp3 of (me beatboxing) the beat I typed out. I'm curious to see if anyone will be able to guess it from that clip. If not, then I will tell you which one it was.

I'd like to see that, vocal. I tried that site with a few songs, but never got a match to what I was trying to beat out. I thought it might be a "garbage in garbage out" thing but my ex (the piano player who went to Berklee in Boston) always said I had a good sense of beats and music though I've never played an instrument. Well, not any kind I could play in public.

Where is the upload?

Last night I was waiting for it, too. At one point I saw vocalperk was checking this thread and 'managing attachments' at the time, but nothing showed up. I have noticed there are no audio file formats for attachment types, so maybe this threw a monkey wrench in the works. Would zipping an MP3 be the only way around this?

I know a way around it. Just tell us the cotton-pickin' name of the song and let us try it. :eyebrow:

:p

sorry
 

sorry about that. I was planning to create a free account on angelfire or somewhere to upload the file, but I got home and was so tired I just didn't want to take the time. Plus it looks like angelfire mines data out the wazoo about you when you create an account.

Uisge Beatha, you are right, I was hoping there was a simple way around it to like, "attach" an MP3 but only certain attachable file types are valid. I had no idea you can see what people are doing in real time on this site.

I will try zipping the mp3 tonight. The beat is fairly simple and straightforward - nothing spectacular, but it should give the song away I hope.

Cool -- I'm looking forward to checking it out. I love music, but don't know much at all about rap. Who knows, maybe I'll find something new into which I can delve.

As to seeing what others are doing in real time, it was just freak chance that I stumbled onto you last night, vocalperk. Since I've only been registered and posting for a few weeks, I still don't recognize lots of others here. While I was checking to see if you'd had the opportunity to upload your file, I decided to find out just who had us all anxiously waiting. I opened your profile (clicked your name in a post) and while reading it happened to see you were here and managing attachments. A similar tool is the 'Who's Online' option from the 'Quick Links' menu towards the upper-right of the page. There's nothing detailed, but you can tell when someone is around.

God, really? Feels like you've been here for ages.


If you go to the bottom of the main page, there's a list of users online. There's a link called, I think 'currently active users' or somesuch. Click on that and it lists everyone online (and visible) and shows their activity (If they're looking at a particular thread, or forum menu, it will say. If they're modifying their profile, or registering their account, or replying to a thread, it'll show.) What's really cool about that, is that the searchbots are also listed and they look at all sorts of stuff so you may see a two year old thread suddenly listed, that you didn't catch the first time around and which is really interesting/relevant now.

:cool: :p :worried: :biggrin: :o

Hmm, is that a good or bad feeling? :confused:

:noevil: At least I'm having fun checking out all the smilies. :D

Everbuddy likes a smilie

here you go
 

Ok here is the zip file. What song is it?

Yeah, this is not my genre; I am clueless as to what the song is. I am quite impressed with this clip, though. That's really you beatboxing, vocalperk? Damn, that's pretty cool! I need to pay some serious attention to this now.

Not a clue.

I liked your description of the beat. This is actually how I jot down quick notes on songs (I'm a drummer and I don't read music).

I think method this is better, in a way, because of the "even spacing" you mentioned. You can tap out 8th notes while reading each syllable (or combination of syllables); your eye follows the beat like a timeline. This is opposed to traditional sheet music, where note spacing is defined by an abstract set of symbols. Of course, the even spacing only makes sense if there are no rest notes, but since 99% of the music we listen to has hi-hats on the 8th notes, this usually isn't a problem.

Quick Nit-Picking Observation: you've written out two measures, but left the last 8th note off.

1.....2..3....4..5..6..7.........8
bom ts kuh ts ts ts bu-kuh ts

1.....2..3....4..5..6..7.........8
bom ts kuh ts ts ts bu-kuh

Now, to your credit, the beat you recorded is exactly as I read it from your description, including the dropped 8th note.

[thread highjack] Flint- do you play for fun or professionally? I have played for fun for about 25 years now. Sadly, I had to sell my set when I first got married and we were poor. Somehow, my wife always wants me to wait until we have an "extra room" for it, but every time we have moved to a larger place, she seems to have all of the rooms accounted for. I could push the issue, but I am just a sucker for her good looks and southern charms. [/thread highjack]

To me, it sounds like

Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand Lyrics
Artist: Primitive Radio Gods

update
 

Flint: When I had time to do more vocal percussion and I would think of beats during the day to record later on I had to come up with some kind of shorthand and way of remembering the rhythm, so I did this type of thing with different sounds and syllables having only one way of being written. I would just put regularly spaced accent marks (ticks) above the syllables like a metronome and write the sounds out where they would fall in relation to the accent marks. A more syncopated beat would just require more accents closer together (like 16th instead of quarter).

I bought the song today, listened to it, and made some adjustments to my clip. My memory was only slightly off - it is still essentially the same rhythm, it's just that there were just no single "kuh" sounds, only "bu-kuh" sounds. I also added the final "ts" for Flint's comments......I had left it off originally because that is where the song part came in in my mind.

Then I looped it. I also added other things (the "wahhh"s I mentioned in my first post and some trumpet-y sounds, and also bass line). This is all me and all vocal. The harmonies/bass/trumpets are not perfect but it is good enough to see if anyone can get the song now. You should be able to I think. Quality may not be optimal b/c I had to convert to mp3 at a lower kbps rate to get the file size under allowable zip size.

vocalperk

enjoy.

Bingo!

"Can't Take My Eyes Off of You", arguably a standard.

(edit)

@vocalperk: I used to play for a living, I still play out, some, but now I'm on-call 24/7 at my job so it complicates things. I've been doing mostly charity shows and church gigs.

Some thoughts regarding the shorthand beat notation: African rudiments are similarly communicated with vocal sounds, IE the Djembe strokes can be defined as "goon", "toh-doh" and "pa".

I have been using "si" as my hi-hat, but I like your "ts" better. My snares vary from "pa" to "ka" to "boosh" (ballads), etc. depending on context, rimshot, etc. and also use exclamation marks as necessary. My bass drums also vary depending on how and in what context it's being hit. There's also grace notes, ghost notes, double strokes, buzz rolls, etc.

I also use tick marks when necessary (you can actually tap your finger while watching the ticks in order to see where beats actually fall) but more often write out the numbers 1 through 8. For closer subdivisions I usually just place them inbetween the beats, or rely on the pronunciation of multi-syllabic groups to remember how the phrasing went. Sometimes I just place tick marks as rest notes where needed in the pattern.

I also have code-words for types of beats or approaches, like "Copeland" for instance, as a reference to frenetic high-hat embellishment.

Whoooo... I'd hit that like I'm killin' a' snake.

Though, I prefer both Frankie and Andy's versions.

Re #23 -- Pie? Is that you?