Vocals of Bruno Coulais' choir, Construction of this French like gibberish

[MusicMan116]

Hello everyone, I've been to a few music forums lately trying to dissect this. But perhaps a place like this is where I'll find my strange answer. Today I have something that may stump a few people, i really can't think of anywhere else to ask this. As of late I've been getting into film music composition and scoring. I've been completely enchanted by the works of Bruno Coulais. Listening to several of his masterpieces I came across something that I haven't encountered in my years of exploration. He's working with a children's choir to get this beautiful yet eerie feel, however it's not just the tonality of the music or the vocals..its the words. They are complete gibberish but they have a French and Bulgarian accent feel to them. Now keep in mind that he's a French man. I've always been a huge fan of scat, I've been a jazz musician for quiet a while and it's become common to me and I've always loved it. This shares some similarities in my mind but it's almost like a French jive. I'll post a link but my question is how does this work? It sounds so beautiful, it's like using the voice without any structural barriers. Using the sounds of voice and movement alone to create nonsense in terms of language but masterpieces in terms of melodies and vocal pieces. How would one even begin to construct something like this? Notice any patterns in words or structure? I'm completely in love with this mysterious and unique way of song. It's like I have no choice but to figure out how it works. Any help is appreciated. This may not be meant for here but I have nowhere else to go.

https://youtu.be/J8ry1f_3Lsk
First three tracks

http://coraline.wikia.com/wiki/End_Credits_Song (Lyrics to one of the pieces, many people get turned off by film music, but remind yourself this is music)

[vijayjohn]

I can't see anything in the first URL.

[MusicMan116]

I'm terribly sorry, i fixed it. Or attempted to. Look up the link, it's the soundtrack for Coraline. A stop motion film. I'm very much into stop motion.

[vijayjohn]

Still don't see anything, sorry.

[MusicMan116]

It works now. My bad, sorry.

[vijayjohn]

Okay, if I understood you correctly, it seems to me that basically all you're asking is how people come up with gibberish that sounds like an actual language. That's not really that hard; I used to do this all the time. I think it's basically a matter of just noticing patterns in a language you don't really know (or even, as in this case, a language that you do) and repeating them in a way that sounds realistic. For example, in the "End Credits song" you posted the lyrics for, a lot of the words are pronounced in ways that mimic French phonology (uvular Rs, u pronounced with pursed lips (as IPA [y]). Some of the words even sound like actual French words (<twu> sounds like truc, <oosi> sounds like aussi). The tunes probably mimic French children's songs as well.

It's kind of funny that you're asking this now (again, assuming that I understood you correctly) because I recently posted this in another thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY
It's a movie in fake English, made by native speakers of English, but showing what English sounds like to people who don't speak it (although with an actual song in French in the background).

[MusicMan116]

Thank you very much!! Would you mind going into the mimicking of French phonology more? The other two tracks afterwards have this same subject and their lyrics are I'm the video descriptions. I'm really intrigued, where could I go to learn more about French phonology? I always love a good book when learning about subjects like music theory etc. I'd love to learn more about this strange technique so I could construct it independently and work with something similar.

Also, very intriguing. I'll check it out right away!
Thanks again for your wonderful insight. Sorry for being so new to this whole thing.

[vijayjohn]

Thank you very much!!

No problem!

Would you mind going into the mimicking of French phonology more?

Maybe I'll go into it some more later, but for now...think of it as being like mimicking a French accent. You've heard French people talk, you have some idea of what French sounds like as a result, and you reproduce it based off of that idea.

I'm really intrigued, where could I go to learn more about French phonology?

If you want a fairly technical explanation where all the sounds are written in the International Phonetic Alphabet, then the Wikipedia article on French phonology is actually a pretty good bet. It's not a source I'd generally recommend for non-linguists, though, because if you're not familiar with the notation and terminology they're using (and unfortunately, it really isn't very intuitive), it's really easy to get bogged down while struggling to understand what in the world they're talking about. So you might want to read through, say, an introductory textbook on linguistics (such as Victoria Fromkin's An Introduction to Language), particularly the sections on phonetics and/or phonology. There might be books on French phonology aimed at non-linguists, but I'm afraid I specifically can't think of any that I know.

Thanks again for your wonderful insight. Sorry for being so new to this whole thing.

No need to apologize! It so happens that I'm a linguist, and phonology is a part of linguistics, so I'm pretty familiar with this sort of thing. But I'm pretty sure most people on this forum are not linguists, and it's very common to start out here not knowing about any of this stuff (and getting very confused. It's pretty confusing).

Also, I don't normally say this outside the thread for introductions (because that's usually the only place where I fee; relatively certain people would want to hear this), but: welcome!

[MusicMan116]

Oh boy, I'm happier than a monkey with a peanut machine. You are truly an incredible person, I'm so thankful I can't even describe it. I'll get right into linguistics, I've always been missing that unique way of voice in my compositions and i really think learning about French phonology could help improve my vocal melodies. I'll be sure to buy that book right away, I'm in the middle of a couple Berklee books on reharminization but it's going on my priority list. If I could bother you for one last thing, you mentioned you've created gibberish yourself. Did you have some sort of prosess? Those lyrics for the song I posted have some patterns and i noticed a lot of words have endings like "u", "a", "si", and "lu". Are there any guidelines you stick to when trying to create these gibberish like sentences or is it all spontaneous and does it just relate to what sounds good to the composer?

[vijayjohn]

:P Oh boy, I'm happier than a monkey with a peanut machine.

I'm glad! I just hope you stay that way because linguistics can get so frustrating really easily.

You are truly an incredible person, I'm so thankful I can't even describe it.

Thank you!

If I could bother you for one last thing, you mentioned you've created gibberish yourself. Did you have some sort of prosess?

No, not really - I mean, I probably do have one subconsciously, but since it's subconscious, I can't know exactly what it is. I think that's how that generally works; you're not necessarily aware of how you do it as you're doing it. It's more like just pulling things out of your brain and putting them together.

Those lyrics for the song I posted have some patterns and i noticed a lot of words have endings like "u", "a", "si", and "lu".

Well, yes; I think it's fair to say French has a lot of "u," "a," "si," and "lu" also.

[MusicMan116]

Right right, sounds reasonable. Alrighty then, you be really hit the nail on the head. Usually people can't teach or answer that well. I hope you have a wonderful day or night wherever you may be, again thank you

[vijayjohn]

Thank you, too, and likewise.

[Vlürch]

Vijay basically said everything that can be said on this topic, but I feel like I have to reply since I'm a musician and do a lot of gibberish lyrics (and music ignoring genres, so most people think it sounds like shit). One thing that's useful for coming up with gibberish if you're stuck to the same patterns is using word generators like this one.

Of course, just singing/speaking/screaming/whatever out loud and repeating certain sounds while gradually adding more is going to guarantee that you can actually pronounce your gibberish and that it flows naturally, eg. if you first had the sentence "ba bi bu be bo", you'd add /g/ and got "bag bi bug be bog", then "bag bil blug be bolg", "barg bril blug ber bolg", "bargz bril blug berz bolg", adding more vowels for it to flow better, "bargoza baril bulug aberiz bolig", more consonants, "bardgozam badril bultung haberiz boklig", more vowels and separating the words up more, "bair da gozam baid rili bultung e habe reize bo koligu", and you'd already have something that sounds like it could be some language but is actually just gibberish and not even one that has any logic to it.

You can go to the extreme and come up with an entire language (or even several languages) just for your lyrics. Conlanging is pretty nerdy, but there are a lot of forums for it, like this one and this one (and of course the conlang section on this forum ), so those are good sources of ideas for your made-up languages if you decide to do that.

If you're not familiar with IPA, learning it is a good way to discover new sounds that you didn't even know existed in real languages. There are sites that let you type IPA characters, such as this one, and people have uploaded videos on Youtube where they pronounce those sounds: Glossika is absolutely great, and for the basic sounds, this guy did most of them in a single video.

[vijayjohn]

I'm a musician

That's news to me.

[MusicMan116]

Thank you very much! I'm excited to get all the insight I can get on this topic. Speaking to a fellow musician is a bonus too. I've always been into Latin jazz and bossa nova, then I got into stop motion and scoring. When I found this French sounding gibberish I was absolutely blown away. Joao Gilberto, one of the pioneers of bossa nova and my idol, sometimes sang melodies that were a little bit gibberish. In fact his father sent him to a mental institution when he first heard it. He then became nearly world famous and a founder of the genre. My question for you, is how do you incorporate it into your music? I'm more than comfortable using it in scoring, I've loved opera style vocals but I don't speak any of the languages used. In music for the ears alone i don't know how id incorperate it, with moderation of course but using it as a scat like technique makes me feel awkward when returning to english lyrics. But ill definitely check those out, anything helps. This is such a wonderful community.

[eskandar]

I'm happier than a monkey with a peanut machine.

Amazing expression. I can't wait to use it.

You can go to the extreme and come up with an entire language (or even several languages) just for your lyrics.

Worked for Sigur Rós.

[Vlürch]

I'm a musician

That's news to me.

I thought I've posted about writing lyrics and stuff, but maybe I haven't...

Joao Gilberto, one of the pioneers of bossa nova and my idol, sometimes sang melodies that were a little bit gibberish. In fact his father sent him to a mental institution when he first heard it.

Interesting, and sad. Makes me wonder if there are people who see conlanging as a sign of mental illness... I mean, it's obviously not, but speaking gibberish can be, and coming up with the phonology and grammar and vocabulary of an entire language (or several) takes time that would from most people's point of view be better spent on something else... and then there's glossolalia, which could be argued to be insane since the people actually believe it's the language of God or angels even though there's no similarity between the glossolalia of one group and another, and it's been determined that it's just random sounds of the speaker's own native language forming meaningless words. Still, no one's getting hurt by it, and at least some people actually get happy just by doing it. Kinda like conlanging, I guess...

My question for you, is how do you incorporate it into your music? I'm more than comfortable using it in scoring, I've loved opera style vocals but I don't speak any of the languages used. In music for the ears alone i don't know how id incorperate it, with moderation of course but using it as a scat like technique makes me feel awkward when returning to english lyrics.

Well, I never worry about anything being awkward in music, since I'm not a "real musician" in the sense that I don't sell my music and don't have to worry about criticism, and pretty much no one even listens to anything I do.

But if you mean switching from gibberish to English or vice versa smoothly, so that it doesn't sound like the language just changes into something weird that makes no sense, one way is to not think of it as gibberish but as butchered English (or whatever language). That works for me, at least, especially if I didn't write enough lyrics to a song and still want to record vocals already (or if I just record random shit), with a sentence starting out as English but then halfway through turning into English-sounding gibberish... the same works for any language, although English is probably the easiest to do that with without it being obvious since its vocabulary consists of so many loanwords that people wouldn't be bothered by not understanding some gibberish if they assumed it was meaningful; either that, or they'd be double bothered because they'd waste their time trying to understand it.

If you want an example of a song where I've used gibberish, a lot of this one, although the intro is in Japanese and English (but still basically gibberish with incomplete sentences) and there's both throughout the song; everything is total gibberish from 1:10 to 1:45 (when the song actually starts... I like long annoying intros and shit). Most of this one is gibberish, although the chorus (if you can call it that) is in Finnish, and some parts are in English, but all the mumbly bits are gibberish. There's also a sample from Psycho near the end just because. It's probably not your kind of music, but well.

Hopefully it's not against the forum's rules to link to my own music.

This is such a wonderful community.

It is!

You can go to the extreme and come up with an entire language (or even several languages) just for your lyrics.

Worked for Sigur Rós.

Technically, it's not really a conlang since it has no structure to it, but well. I don't remember the name of the band, but some doom metal band did all their lyrics in a conlang, and also some bands have done lyrics in Tolkien's languages at least. IIRC in some episode of This Exists a pop group or whatever was mentioned that not only had lyrics in a conlang but also spoke it in interviews with a translator or something, but I don't remember which one and Google isn't being useful.

[MusicMan116]

Why thank you very much, a graceful amount of insight. And interesting music, I've never encountered gibberish before, but when I did find it in that French like loveliness I was blown away. I'm ordering a book on linguistics and will start my research soon on French phonology.

[vijayjohn]

I'm happier than a monkey with a peanut machine.

Amazing expression. I can't wait to use it.

You've never heard it before? I'm pretty sure I have.

[eskandar]

Never heard it before, and I lived in the Deep South for two years.