I didn't have much time this week on account of more band responsibilities - bass recording, preparing for a band show (which is in a few hours!) and other stuff. In line with wanting to do more 'vocal' based tracks, I've been very inspired by a few interesting tracks that use some looping vocal chops, namely, Jóhann Jóhannsson's soundtrack to the movie 'Arrival' - the tracks 'Heptabod B' and 'Kangaru' in particular.

I took some vocals I had recorded of my voice teacher Erika, then started looping small sections, pitching them, stacking them. A sort of polyrhythm beat popped into my head, then I recorded some bass since I was already in bass recording mode. I didn't have a lot of time to edit it, but I actually really like it. It was fun working on such as weird arrangement, weird tones, and excited to tinker with more of the looped 'vocal chop'.

* Vocals recorded through Shure SM58, Focusrite 4i4
* Generic P-bass (with freshly installed Seymour Duncan SPB-3's!)
* Ableton Drums for drums
* Ableton wavetable
* Transit, Valhalla plugins + Ableton stock plugins
* Gullfoss + Izotope Elements for master

Total time: 3 hours, 45 minutes

Tags: bass, heptapodb, johanjohannsson, loop, polyrhythm, tanyatagaq, vocalchop, vocals, vox, week 23 2026, View by:Tomatron.Jones