Old Enough to Forget

I really can't say I've ever listened to Marianne Faithfull. The first thing that really jumped out at me, aside from the nearly horrific condition of the record, was her voice. Particularly her vibrato. I know this was something of a hallmark in the early '60s among some folk singers but dang it, it just makes me think of running my finger up and down my Adam's apple while trying to sing. Of course the Germans have a word for this. They seem to have a word for everything to describe any situation. So off to the internet I went. Originally I was looking for a word my mum used to use that sounded a bit like "hecka" that she said described the sound a chicken made just before you chopped off its head. As you'd expect that search came up with a lot, A LOT of unusable trivia. However, eventually I settled on Die Schwebung , which roughly translates to a "floating" or "hovering" vibrato. In German acoustic terms, a Schwebung happens when two...