I think voice is an interesting subject to talk about.
I enjoy singing, and do it every day but am not particularly good or confident in using my voice, even in a social context.
A while ago I was having a conversation with my Dad about music and how the voice of the singer is often a deal-breaker in whether people enjoy the music of a band. The example we were talking about was Morrisey in the Smiths and how his overall vocal style is a definite part of the band’s aesthetic.
The voice is very personal and conveys a lot of meaning, both in the context of words used and also in its sonic qualities.
Listening to music in unknown languages moves the voices from a position of lyrical content to pure sonic qualities.
I find listening to music in languages unknown to me to be an interesting experience. For example, I enjoy the music of Japanese artist Ichiko Aoba. I have listened to one of her albums many times, and find it beautiful, yet I have no idea what she is singing about. It lets me appreciate her voice for its purely sonic properties. If I knew what she was singing about would I like the music more? It might even be quite offensive to ignore the lyrics of the music.
Elizibeth Fraser (of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil) is know for her creative vocal style and abstraction of lyrics. Using a song technique called Puirt à beul. She often uses preexisting words without attaching the meaning of the word to it. I remember reading about how she would pick words from the dictionary at random. Im a fan of Cocteau Twins and Elizibeth Frazer is an amazing vocalist, though I must admit, that as someone who likes singing along to music it makes it more difficult to sing to.
A case that works in advantage of this is Jónsi’s singing in Sigur Rós. For the album () all the lyrics are sang in a made up language. This is interesting as their earlier albums were sang in Icelandic yet become popular outside of Iceland.
Less focused on extended technique but once again treating the voice as pure sound, a large influence on me is the work of Liz Harris/ Grouper. Her voice is often buried is reverb and treated as an instrument in the mix. I recently saw Grouper perform and the Barbican and enjoyed it a lot. Her use of low filtered noise (either nature field recordings or portable tape machine hums) fed through guitar pedals created a bed for her guitar and voice to sit on, and was like a glue between songs as long stretches of noise reduced your state of listening, only to be brought back with subtle changes.
I am currently deciding wether I want to use my voice in my piece or not as it can be a versatile tool however I’m not sure i have the current ability to use it as effectively as I might wish.