First Time Analyzing David Bowie - It Ain't Labyrinth!!! Vocal ANALYSIS of "Space Oddity"

welcome back to the charismatic voice I grew up with David Bowie or at least with his iconic and wacky performance of The Labyrinth but other than that I have no idea what else he's done so today's deep analysis is really more for me than for you even though a ton of you have been requesting it let's get to it [Music] [Music] yeah ground control to Major Tom [Music] ground control to Major Tom take your protein pills and put your helmet on ground control to Major Toms [Music] sing countdown engines on [Music] I think there are so many fascinating little pieces little details in this first minute of the song I'm very excited to go back and talk about them but just the overall general impression first is I'm really surprised at how mellow this is right if you think about the Labyrinth like that was so out there and bizarre nothing about that was mellow and this is just a totally different view into David Bowie I didn't know he made music like this so very shocking so let's go back to the beginning first thing as this was starting up a lot of Silence in the beginning and I wondered it's panned really really far to the right side I was thinking to myself oh is my audio setup not correct here it's so far right and it enters back in on the left you really have different instruments relegated to different sides and again panned very very hard [Music] ground control up until that point I also thought oh I don't think I got my volume set correct when I was first going to run this it's really hard to get a First Take by the way there's so many checks I do before starting this up um and one of those things is to check volume and I thought well geez that's weird it seems so much quieter than I had in my check I was you know playing some different songs and this this should be the right volume it is the right volume but it didn't actually get there until he started singing his voice is mixed higher in this than a lot of voices usually are so he has quite a bit of extra volume in that vocal and specifically in the central vocal I keep talking about panning that's when we've sort of pushed the sound to one side or the other and sometimes we'll think about it in percentages or maybe like a 360 degree there's different amounts that you can shift the sound some people will call it like sound visualization or just the image of the sound and there's different percentages you can move it to the right or to the left when I say a really hard pan that means it's moved like really far to the right it's not sort of somewhere in between having that kind of a percentage that you can mix a song into lets people more clearly identify different kinds of instruments but it's actually very rare to have something panned hard like completely to the left or right this is uh I would say fairly radical and how it's been mixed I'm going to go back to the beginning and not talk just so we can listen to how how drastic those side shifts really are foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] I also love this was I think done in 1969 so we wouldn't be likely to just double a vocal like complete copy and paste it and you can hear the difference in the performance between the left and the right side especially in how quickly it closes to different consonants that's delightful I like I like having that difference um but it's still contained within the same voice so similarities but just like small tiny differences [Music] ground control to Major Tom additionally they're an October parts and put your helmets on ground control to Major Toms [Music] countdown engines on so strange to me the way that they had Ground Control Central and then after that it was the um the next phrase was completely shifted to the right side and I love actually having the countdown just so far left you get that idea of these things are simultaneously happening in this sort of intriguing plot uh I'm gonna go back just a little bit again and then let it play some more because I want to get into that intriguing plot I think it's fascinating just reading through the lyrics I want to hear what happens to them when they're song ground control to Major Toms [Music] commencing countdown engines on [Music] check ignition and may God's love be with you [Music] [Music] you really made the grace [Music] [Applause] I really like this there's something just it feels there's an emotional tug in this but it's not just emotional there's a it's like thoughtful emotions it's like I'm having an emotional response but instead of just feeling it it's actually stimulating um thoughts of the great unknown I think that's partly because this is about being in space right so uh just such a fascinating subject and one that I'm very excited about but there's a longing in his vocal Timbre as well and a beauty that's uh there's like a Sentimental Beauty I think in the harmony that's been chosen between these two voices so it tugs at heartstrings while um stimulating imagination I want to go back a little bit uh wow that transition I didn't even talk about the transition yet that transition is so cool hopefully we'll catch that again at this point check ignition surprising hello [Music] [Music] demand the way that there's this sliding in the strings and other instruments it it creates a very haunting kind of vibe something that feels unnatural that kind of sliding has been used in classical music to create a spooky feeling often to create feelings of anticipation you'll hear it in horror music as well so hearing it so explicit and in your face at this point I think creates a a sort of um what's the word for it it feels like disillusioning it definitely feels like reality is starting to get bent and I think that's a great way to perhaps give you a sense of help might feel to be inside of a spaceship lifting off what a cool way to portray that what that sensation might be like I'm gonna go back to it again [Music] this is [Music] like that Melody and the Harmony in the voice oh they're both so good but the big difference here between making this a song that could be played on the radio and a song you would find in a horror film is the way that it resolves right we get into uh some much more conventional Harmony once that big slide up is resolved one more time [Music] thank you you can talk to Major tongue you really made Grace [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is Major Tom to Ground Control I'm so fascinated by this choice to split the voices so far to the side when there's gonna be a lead and then Harmony and I've got the lead in the right side I've got the Harmony in the left side and then we get just that lead in the center so it in production today you wouldn't see that drastic splitting that drastic uh spatial Imaging would not be happening that far in most songs some people will do it like that kind of thing you might hear in some exploratory video game soundtrack but that's really really far split especially because it leaves the center kind of empty so when we come back to just the the lead just the melody it's almost shocking how much I'm reminded that that Center was left empty I'm gonna go back again [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] away [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh that was so cool they um they went back to essentially the same letter pitch right there that was really awesome oh okay let's talk about his Timbre I'm gonna go back a little bit and uh and as we're listening just want to point out a couple of things one is he's not singing crazy crazy high a lot of really big pop singers today like they're known for singing lots and tons just tons of high notes and instead I feel like his voice is way more focused on storytelling even in The Labyrinth it's kind of like more all over the place this is saying in a fairly limited range when we get the harmony sometimes they're an octave apart or sometimes a little bit closer together but they're not they're not going crazy out there which honestly we're talking about space so when I went over the lyrics ahead of time I thought this might go like really really far away and instead he's focusing way more on storytelling and this sort of longing that I hear in the timbre the focus of the sound has got actually quite a bit of nasality on it there's a lot of clarity and attention to lyrics and a lot of attention to how The Voice keeps vibrating between different vowels and consonants all right let's hit play [Applause] [Music] away [Music] and the stars look very different today [Applause] [Music] I really like that moment so listening to how he sings really reminds me of some aspects of classical singing and training I mentioned that continuing vibrations through consonants through vowels and sometimes when you're working on a song especially in classical music but this applies to all genres you can get a ton of benefits by just singing the vowels and singing you know if I'm going to say uh Major Tom I'd sing a or ah instead of Major Tom and just have the vowels leave the consonants out and that can teach a voice to really vibrate through all of the moments as much as possible when you start to get that more continual vibration so when I say vibration I'm talking about the vocal folds going wackawackawaka right really fast to create a pitch so when you get that continual vibration you get more Legato Legato meaning continuous sound and that is considered one of the Pinnacles to reach for in singing this has definitely been challenged more and more by contemporary singing and shifts and I still think it's very present in David Bowie's voice right here actually throughout the song so far so I'm gonna go back one more time listen to how he's able to really keep that continual Legato going [Music] [Applause] [Music] Ground Control I'm stepping through the door [Music] ways [Music] he's actually has so much Legato in that phrase that it comes out as a shadow vowel at one point so most duh peculiar way instead of most peculiar way he puts in a little uh between most and peculiar that's the voice continually vibrating creating a pitch between those words it's a shadow vowel that happens after most most right it almost sounds Italian [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] above the world [Music] wow what an incredible shift in the textures of the orchestration right there we've got uh definitely some Woodwinds that came in and they're almost creating a little they're almost like Stars shimmering it's fantastic tons of movement like very subtle movement in the orchestra [Music] the world and you can notice how his vocal line is a lot more stagnant it's holding things out a lot longer instead of giving us giving us tons of lyrics and this actually creates that contrast with that tons of different movement and textures they've been introduced in the orchestra at this point [Music] [Music] and there's nothing I can do foreign [Music] this is this is kind of wild it's not wild the way that the Labyrinth is weld but it definitely has many Progressive elements to it and the way that it shifts different textures it shifts just entirely different feels it's more like a chapter book rather than lots of repetition that we hear in popular music today which I think is very very suitable for the particular subject matter right it's kind of about Evolution about where we're going to go next I want to shift back again and listen to that that it's just transitions are cool [Music] foreign I'm wondering there's sort of a rock out vibe that I got right there right after planet earth is blue and there's nothing I can do right he's kind of just floating in space maybe perhaps lost there's this idea that it's fascinating to me of okay well there's nothing I'm going to do so maybe I'll just rock out and have a good time I don't know if that was the correct image that David Bowie was trying to send to his audience but it was a very fun uh introspective moment I think and then we've got this uh Jazzy moment that came up afterwards it's just it's going through a lot of different musical tastes very quickly [Music] thank you [Music] 100 000 miles [Music] I this is this is beautiful It's haunting I I just did not expect to have something that felt uh so emotional and and human not like some sort of outworld creature it's a h really the emotional uh aspect of it is just completely different than I expected and I think it's it's amazing how he puts so much humanness into the idea of space travel yeah we think space travel humans but I don't think we consider really the emotional impact of that and he's exploring that in this song in such a beautiful way the tell my wife I love her so moment like that really got my heart pumping right thinking about all of the people you love that are on earth and being out there and looking down on the planet wow something incredibly beautiful about this no wonder it's so popular I'm really glad I got to hear this today [Music] there's something wrong can you hear me [Music] wow perfect setting of those lyrics I love the way we had that same pitch repetition with the same lyric repetition there trying to get through to Major Tom can you hear me Major Tom that's so cool and the way that it's panned also reminds me a little bit about when you're dealing with electricity and sometimes things will just suddenly get panned really hard to the right or left there's you know there's a circuit that might be going wrong so I wonder if the production of this was aiming to elicit that kind of uh electric error that can sometimes occur [Music] there's something wrong can you hear me [Music] [Music] oh cool that floating moment you had those Woodwinds that were kind of going in the background again you have those with their texture of the shimmering stars or maybe I feel something spinning in that texture as well fascinating the way that you have essentially a difference in the orchestration underneath to separate Ground Control and Major Tom love the setting of that and I I've been thinking that one of the reasons this song seems to pull at the heartstrings might actually be that use of the orchestral strings they're anytime in Opera and in a lot of movie scores especially when you have romantic moments or big dramatic sweeps a lot of times we see these in the strings there's something about a string player with their finger going on the vibrato right it just it feels like our our hearts are sort of fluttering with that vibrato or with that insistency in the string playing so I think this idea of having strings behind this song works so well to get that human quality [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] I love the way that different elements in this instrumental breaks seem to sort of be going off on their own it feels like they're sort of looping almost getting lost between each other and I feel like this elicits that same feeling that a person might have in outer space where they're turning I don't know how you don't get sick and just vomit but that turning is happening there are other things that are turning that are outside of our normal understanding of gravity and everything is spinning in some weird way let's go back back around about here [Music] there you go there's one that's cruising over there that one is there's another one that's starting over here yeah it feels like it's starting to spin out of control [Music] wow this is such a thought-provoking song I've thought a lot about space travel and where we're going to go as a race in the future I'm sure you have too but this song brings an additional element to it which I haven't thought as much about which is really the emotional impact that space travel is going to have on the people traveling that's incredible I loved it and I love the way that the delivery of this is so radically different from David Bowie in The Labyrinth there's uh something mesmerizing definitely uh there's a lot more layers and depth to his tone and his production than I ever knew it's really really exciting to me and I hope I get to Dave to dive dive in to David Bowie's voice a lot more thank you to everyone who's recommended this if you want to see some more thought-provoking analysis of songs you can check out this playlist over here and may you fall more in love with music every day thank you

Channel: The Charismatic Voice

Views: 210,446

Keywords: David bowie reaction, david bowie space oddity, david bowie space oddity reaction, the charismatic voice

Id: 8M8Ix35cXv8

Length: 29min 18sec (1758 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023