Looking for songs with slowed-down/lower-pitch vocals from another song

September 5, 2022 4:31 PM

I'm looking for songs that satisfy the specific criteria of having a slowed-down and therefore lower-pitch vocal from another pop song incorporated into the song. (I am *not* looking for slowed down versions of entire songs.)

Examples of the type of song I am looking for include:

BITWVLF - Remember Me

Saint Pepsi - Nova

Destiny's Child - Say My Name (Cyril Hahn Remix)

Mariah Carey - Touch My Body (Cyril Hahn Remix)

BLVCK CEILING - DON'T HURT ME (BC OWL RMX)

If anyone can point me to additional songs that also use this technique, I'd be very appreciative!

(Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what this technique is called, if anything, or how it is implemented, or what genres typically use it.)

posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

Do you mean like how Beyonce shows up in Burial's Untrue?

I'm sure he does it with other samples on other songs, but that's the one that comes to mind off the top of my head.
posted by juv3nal at 5:05 PM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think Kanye's Gold Digger (link to "clean" version) meets this criterion.
posted by Daily Alice at 5:30 PM on September 5, 2022

Chrome Sparks - Marijuana does this with Idris Muhammad's Could Heaven Ever Be Like This. Not exactly a pop song, though.

As for what this would be called, chopped and screwed is along the right lines but not exactly it.
posted by zsazsa at 5:39 PM on September 5, 2022

Sounds like the modern version of cantus firmus.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:27 PM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Aaand now I've fallen down my own rabbit hole and can't get "L'homme Armé" out of my head.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:41 PM on September 5, 2022

vaporwave tunes sometimes do this?
posted by enfa at 6:53 PM on September 5, 2022

Portishead’s “Biscuit” includes a slowed-down sample of Johnny Ray’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” (The slowed-down vocals make their debut halfway through the song at 2:18.)
posted by ejs at 6:57 PM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

Broadly, this technique is called sampling, and is part of the foundations of hip-hop music. It’s more often done with drumbeats and instrumental lines than with vocals, though.

The hook from The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” is a slowed-down sample from an Ultramagnetic MCs rap; ymmv on whether it counts as a pop song
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:11 PM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Holy Other - Held. The whole album has sampling like this.
posted by nickggully at 9:20 PM on September 5, 2022

At the River by Groove Armada features a slowed sample from Patti Page’s Old Cape Cod as the hook throughout. This is a very 80s/90s technique, which might help to track down its use, as past the late 90s, sampling technology was at the point where changing pitch without changing speed, or vice versa, was starting to be included as standard in samplers, and was readily available in audio workstation software. The older way was just resampling, which basically does what a slowed down or sped up record does, and pitch up for faster/pitch down for slower, which is still done all the time, but less so as it’s more a stylistic choice and not just your only option.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:13 AM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Some keywords that might aid your research: chopped and screwed, slowed and reverb, dj screw. As far as technique if you were processing a sample, it’s taking song you like, picking a vocal segment you want to play with, and changing the pitch and tempo to your taste, and cleaning it up.

I’m out of the loop regarding current tools that make this easy for a novice creator, but recall having the ability to do this type of editing using software packages like Audacity.
posted by enfa at 9:53 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Boards of Canada's 1995 remix of Colonel Abrams' "Trapped".
posted by blisterpack at 1:39 PM on September 6, 2022

About Her - Malcolm McLaren (samples "She's Not There" by The Zombies)
posted by mekily at 6:19 AM on September 7, 2022