An Ode to Imogen Heap (and the vocoder)

Dear Jennifer,

You told me that I've been walking, I've been hiding, and I look half dead half the time, and I agreed with you. Back when we were young, you told me to pay close attention. You asked me if I was in or if I was out. You only gave me 20 seconds to comply. But you wouldn't have heard me even if I had built up the nerve to leave my things behind as it all went off without me - you were always too busy writing my tragedy. Ms. Heap (may I call you Imogen?), I could always count on you - I've known you for but a couple of years but it feels like a lifetime. Remember that one night when you slyly told me to sleep here, you'd sleep there, but then the heater would be down again? You were so convenient. Imogen, the threat of your love is still in the headlights. Please be there, please be there.

Imogen Heap is an insanely talented songstress who is equally at home with sequencing and sampling (which she taught herself on Atari computers, a fact that I love) as she is with her diverse array of instruments (piano, cello, marimba) or just her gorgeous voice. She was already a smash in the UK when her music began to pop up on iTunes, and off to the stratosphere she went. Her most recent album, "Speak for Yourself," has dominated the electronic music chart on iTunes for about a year now, a testimony to the power of long-tail market demand. Electronica fans (a crude and often inaccurate term I know), remember when you had to find your music in that one CD rack in Tower Records or elsewhere that lumped together everything that wasn't pop, rock, classical, or "R&B/Soul (where even hip hop was tragically placed for a minute)"? D&B, house, two-step, trance, you name it - put it in the Electronica bin! But now that we live so much of our lives on the internet, long-tail demand is the norm. That's the theory that as we move to just-in-time manufacturing, smaller inventories, a greater diversity of sources for the sounds, tastes, and goods we seek, etc., the area under the asymptoting portion of our collective demand curves (the tail) is greater than under the steep portion, where we find the "blockbusters" and "top sellers" of old. This makes life more interesting and gives fans of artists such as Imogen Heap ready access to talent that years ago may not have seen the light of day.

But what is most striking about Imogen Heap's success is how her song, "Hide and Seek," has become a fixture on iTunes on the electronic music chart. It's been hovering around #1 also for about a year. Why this song? Yes, it was on that silly show The OC. But that doesn't explain its staying power on iTunes. Maybe it's the great lyrics. Here they are:

Where are we?
What the hell
is going on?
The dust has only just
began to form
Crop circles in the carpet
Sinking
feeling

Spin me around
again
And rub my eyes
This can't be happening
When busy streets
A mess with people
Would stop to hold
Their heads heavy

Hide and seek
Trains and
sewing machines
All those years
They were here first

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover
The sweeping insensitivity of this
still life

Hide and Seek
Trains and sewing machines
Blood and Tears
They were here first

Hmm, what'd you say, mmm, that you only meant well?
Well, of course you did.
Hmm, what'd you say? mmm, that it's all for the best?
Of course it is.
Hmm, what'd you say? mmm, that it's just what we need
You decided this?
Hmm, what'd you say, mmm,
What did she say?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
Speak no feeling, no I don't believe you
You don't care a bit, you don't care a bit
Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
Speak no feeling, I don't believe you
You don't care a bit, you don't care a, you don't care a bit
Oh no, You don't care a bit
Oh no, You don't care a bit
Oh no, You don't care a bit
You don't care a bit
You don't care a bit

Amazing, on so many levels. But I think the song continues its run because of the vocoder, which is the only "musical instrument" used in the song. Imogen Heap sings into a vocoder (or voice encoder), which is a speech synthesizer that records her speech, converts it to a series of numbers representing the frequencies of the waveforms produced by her vocal cords, and then uses an oscillator to recreate the frequencies. The result is simply stunning. Her voice is at once disaggregated and whole. Everywhere and nowhere. Raw and ethereal. Powerful and timid. Electronic and "unplugged." And the vocoder was the perfect instrument to use for a song about abandonment. Look at the song lyrics: crop circles in the carpet - where the furniture used to sit? oily marks on walls where pleasure moments hung before - where the pictures used to be? "You decided this?" The vocoder gives her voice the echo of a woman alone in her room, in her new world, feeling betrayed, but still strong enough to fill the space with her quiet resolve.

Surely long-tail market demand and the genius of artists like Imogen Heap will give us much more to ponder in the future...some of it hopefully in the form of vocoder-driven "electronica."

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence