#81 analyse this: cinta beralih arah (aishah)

Aishah is one of the quintessential singers of 90's Malaysian music scene: a mezzo-soprano with a particularly striking timbre and above all, technique to modulate her basic sound to respond to the song and the lyrics. I won't go into how she started out and everything, but I do suspect an early collaboration with the music producer Paul Moss had an effect on her musicianship.

We'll see how she went through (ha!) this song, Cinta beralih arah, which translated means "A love which changes its direction". To what? To Godly love, which is depicted as always in these 'redemption' songs as the higher, more pure love.

She opens the song with a very haunting mezzavoce. She justifies it by the thin instrumentation and the lyrics (Sendiri dalam sepi malam ke pagi - she's sleepless, but it was a quite and serene sleeplessness, not the madness of Lucia). Even when the instrumentation gets thicker with the bass entrance she maintained the mezzavoce but she crescendoes within two phrases as she's angry with her lover, who sees her "jewels and diamonds" as pieces of glass. Here she demonstrates an interesting quality when she opens up her timbre: instead of spreading it narrows, it buzzes more (Marilyn Horne would've called it 'more oboe-like'). And I do know that Aishah and her producers/composers are very aware of this peculiarity of her voice about and above D - most of her songs climaxes just above this point, and above it the notes are more decorative than functional.

What I'm going for is an idea of personal passagio - which remains a personal contention for every classical singers but should not have been an issue for a pop singer. It is an issue of knowing where the voice is more and most attractive, and most functional for a song. In this sense I consider Aishah to be better than most her contemporaries. Is she naturally better, or did she learn through mistakes? Make no point, nobody cared at that point in her career, only that she knows it and her songs always show the best part of her.

Rant over. If you notice, the similar phrases are sung full voice the second time. Why? Even though the voice is produced (er, manipulated) to be in equal mix with the instruments, the instrumentation below the phrases in the reiteration is thicker, with bass moving about and the middle voices more robust. Now I do realise that live, a pop singer may instinctively increase the timbre when accompanied by a full combo. But most of these songs are sung to a playback (which accounts for the manner it is produced), so Aishah either had the instinct to make sure her voice was heard even against a playback, or had access to the master score and saw all those bass figures and harmonies; or was she told to do so by a smart producer? But again as above, nobody cares as she sounds so wonderful and so good that you'd like to imagine it to be effortless (which is not, half the time!).

I do notice little details in the chorus, but most it sung full voice. I do love when she sings about keyakinan diri (or as I would call it 'confidence!') in steady full voice at the end of the chorus when the nature of the music and the instinct would've called for a decrescendo.

Now I would have loved a vocal coda, a few words of serenity in her love to God (goodbye, foolish lover!) but as it was, the song ends with an extended instrumental one. One could not have everything. Still, this song is the second track listed in Aishah's Memori Hit album. That must accounts for something.