Vocal ANALYSIS of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" and my heartstrings are pulled with such emotion.

welcome back to the charismatic voice we read your comments and we tally what you want to see on the channel most and then we do it today's video got over 5 100 upvotes and i want to shout out specifically to troye secaire who said that this song is the perfect encapsulation of the raw power and ability to evoke emotion kurt's voice contained that's a fantastic recommendation so let's get to it okay [Music] my girl my girl don't lie to me tell me when did you sleep [Music] [Music] my [Music] i wanna immediately talk about a couple of things and then we're gonna go back and listen to it again to try and further demystify those moments of greatness and first thing i want to start with is that you can really feel that this song is based on a folk song i haven't listened to it before it's not a very familiar song to me but i know that this was coming from an american folk song and then led belly essentially created a cover version or a new version of that and nirvana is covering led belly's version of a folk song so that's kind of cool and you can feel that it's got um it's got a kind of a down home country feel to it and particularly i noticed that it's got a time signature underneath that has a feeling of three so you have a feeling of like one two three four five six happening the whole time which is unusual since a lot of the music we listen to on the radio these days is just more square and one two three four essentially so i think it's really cool to have that folk aspect come up plus kurt cobain has this really cool way of doing these little yodels in it right where he i goodle is essentially where you often will lean into a lower register and then flip into a higher vocal register and some people can learn how to do that really fast we hear that in some really old country music sometimes of course we hear it in actual yodeling as well but i think he employs it here really well to bring even more of that folk kind of feeling to it okay so i'm gonna go back right here [Music] so [Music] my girl my girl don't lie to me tell me when did you sleep last [Music] through so right there on both whole and night he does that little yodel and i think it's so cool and it feels like it's almost blue grassy [Music] when [Music] there it is again [Music] on his body [Music] one of the things that i think is so fascinating about the entire grunge movement is that it was a part of the style to break vocal rules a lot of times uh sort of guides that you have in in singing lessons or singing traditions i really should say they're about how to create a pleasing sound but that pleasing sound is very subjective uh different people think different sounds are lovely maybe there's a majority of people that prefer one sound over another but the grunge movement i think really proved that people were wanting is something that felt a little more raw a little more grungy something a little a little dirtier in this sound something that didn't feel so pristine right and part of where you hear this is uh it's really easy to see actually in kurt cobain he's got his mouth a lot more closed that is often considered correct and partly because it's more closed a lot more of the sound is uh going through his nose he also has a soft palate down more which is causing that to go through his nose too so he also leans into nasal consonants like an n and a nasal constant by definition has to go through your nose if you try and say an n and go if you plug your nose you go the sound stops because it can't go through your nose anymore that's one of the ways you know it's a nasal consonant so he really leans into and elongates those nasal consonants and then on top of that he is leaning into diphthongs i know so much vocal jargon in this moment but he's leaning into diphthongs and diphthongs are those that's when one sound is uh it combines two different vowels so au for example an au vowel like o w ow right that's an actual combination of ah so and in the u part he will direct the sound even more through his nose i think that's probably because the mouth gets just so closed so that's the way the sun is escaping he does it so clearly in here let's i want to go here maybe [Music] there you go on the word about it's an owl vowel there and it goes out and just puts it straight through the nose [Music] perfect example unfound you hear that where he's going through his nose on the ooh part of that diphthong and then he really leans into the in consonant there as well one more time and we'll keep [Music] there's this really interesting thing i've seen him do a couple times in here and just shout out to mtv unplugged i love this series so much i think it's delightful for a person who specializes in voice to get to hear bands in this sort of stripped-down setting that's live and has really good camera footage as well it lets me dig in to what the singer is doing even more so it's just it's such an amazing series uh really really great work so he's doing this thing every now and then you just like a little vocal or a little um jaw side shift i've seen it i think three times now in the video i'm not sure why it's there i just want to mention it a lot of times we don't recommend that you have little sideshows that tends to denote some tension in the jaw that's that's being kept there um then again what we really care about is this like very pained sound that he's making and that it's very effective but i just wanted to point it out see if it happens again right there so on the sun he while he's seeing his little little side church thing i have no idea what that's from maybe there's something in his mouth that's bothering him um it doesn't hugely affect the sound but um that's normally something you wouldn't see a singer do in the middle of a sustained vowel [Music] my food [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] my girl my girl [Music] dude look at how little he opens his mouth but there's still so much emotion behind it it has a lot of pain in it [Music] and even so on this note the girl he's he's flat he's under the pitch but it doesn't bother me i'm going it sounds so heartfelt [Music] [Music] that go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] know my entire body is prickling that uh that is gut-wrenching the sounds that he's creating here by no means do i think oh this is a lovely beautiful pristine sound right we want that authenticity we want that that pain that oh i i don't i don't think i've heard that kind of pain in his voice before this is that's a really incredible sound whoa [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's just so effective i have this one side of my brain that's going oh that sounds quite pressed you know the phonation is quite pressed um it sounds you know rather tight in the throat and and then the other side just says yeah but it works it works you got shivers right if it gives me shivers then that's awesome you know don't destroy your voice please because i want to have shivers lots lots and lots of performances in a row but wow that's um that's very effective i want to go back and listen that first shift up was just it took me by surprise it's almost soothing somehow and then [Music] me tell me where i let you sleep [Music] [Applause] [Music] go [Music] soon [Music] i kept wanting to stop it in there at some point and uh and i didn't feel like i could uh it's just this is this is a very intense sound that he's making that almost just feels wrong to interrupt it's like when a person is wailing and crying you don't you don't go tell them to stop you just you let them emote it out you let them let those emotions flow and you can just hear his emotions pouring out he sounds like some sort of really hurt creature it doesn't even sound human sometimes anymore i think that the distortion he's making i'm not 100 sure it does have some continuity in it which makes me think that it's probably okay but then again i think this is at the end of their set so it's possible that they save it because this takes a lot out of his voice at the end of the concert it definitely it feels paint just really pain whether or not it's actually vocally pained i'm not sure you see a lot of scrunching on the face but yeah it's really effective and that that ending where he's playing with the tempo here is amazing it's just great timing [Music] [Music] i'm gonna go back here the i don't see a lot of tension in his neck so i'm i'm leaning towards i think this distortion is created the correct way but oh my goodness you know it does it feels extremely grating evokes a ton of feeling and uh it almost feels disturbing again it's like a an animal that's caught in a trap i just i'm shocked by the sound and i i really like that he still contained that yodel moment right he still contained that but with the distortion on top of it which mind blown that means that he's able to really cleanly be making a lot of adjustments down in his larynx you know down where those two folds are together so i'm guessing the distortion is probably on top of that in a different spot within that whole vocal tract um but i'm just gonna go back again and listen to it because it's really amazing he even does a really interesting vowel modification in it at the end it's really cool okay um here [Music] yeah it i'm through it he sung through it sounds like he's almost going to an r modification oops let's go back again [Music] or maybe towards an n again keeping that that well it's tiny in his mouth sending a lot more of the sound through the nose there and then just really closing off in our very um even er the way he would say er is going to uh direct a lot more of the sound through his nose too one more time this this ending is it's shocking and satisfying at the same time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh wow i'm still shivering from that last bit of sound that he made this was it just moved me that's what you want from a song right you want it to move you i don't want it to be vocally perfect every time if it can't move me fundamentally and i absolutely adore that he's able to take and break all of these vocal rules in order to move me even more i think it's fascinating i love the way that to all of you i've been discovering how this grunge style developed and discovering different grunge fans it is a really amazing process to go through if you want to see that process we have an entire list here of other grunge songs that i've reacted to is pretty awesome and i just have to say thank you so much for your recommendations i really really appreciate each and every one of you and i hope i get to see you again soon [Music]

Channel: The Charismatic Voice

Views: 1,535,813

Keywords: Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, The Charismatic Voice, Reaction Video, Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Id: wSxWhsWnP6o

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022