I confess, this came across my desk and I just *had* to share. It’s so fun.
This girl Madeline Tallman made a video breaking down why all hipster indie singers sound weirdly like they live in the UK but fancy living in Brooklyn and live on a diet of mostly expensive lattes and remind you of a toddler trying to get you to give in. It’s only about 3 minutes long; check it out:
So basically her breakdown is this: you have to have terrible vocal hygiene, use a slightly breathy, thin folds (Estill) sound, diphthong-ize literally everything, instead of an /h/, do a cry (or ignore it completely), voice all the voiceless consonants, add glottal stops for no reason in weird places (right before vowels is ideal), extend words with a glottal and then add an extra vocalization of any kind afterwards. Not gonna lie, this is a terrible description of a really great breakdown of this weird new fad. I’m actually weirdly super impressed at her ear, if not her ability to describe what she hears.
If you’re a voice geek and you’ve been dying to figure out what the heck is going on with this indie sound, this is a pretty solid demo with a terribly basic description, but I give her A+ for effort, because she really nails it!
And those are my thoughts on hipster indie singing.