Singing #2 - I Didn't Know That Was My Range!
- Emily Jade
- Oct 26, 2020
- 4 min read
We discussed the importance of effort levels, and what each different one involves, as well as vocal qualities and vocal ranges in this session, alongside looking at popular vocalists in musical theatre to try and detect their vocal qualities and what they say about the character.
Looking at warm ups, we focussed a lot on lip trills, as they are a very important asset to singing. According to the blog, 30daysinger, they explain that ‘lip trills are great for training efficient breath control, and balanced tone’. They provide pressure to the back of the vocal folds and so it keeps the tone of your voice steady when singing, and they help you to not strain your voice as they can help you relax. It also tells us that they are ‘very helpful for range extension’, specifically to help people get up to their sustained range for a song or show they’re performing. (https://www.30daysinger.com/blog/lip-trills-all-about-the-vocal-exercise).
Effort levels are the different use of levels people can use with their voice, and they go as follows:
0 - Fry
1 - Normal Speaking
2 - Presenter
3 - Ordering Drinks (at a busy bar)
4 - Yodelling
As I’ve explained before, Fry is the lowest frequency you can use your voice to create, and it is specifically popular amongst pop singers like Britney Spears in her infamous song, 'Toxic', and it is also used by Alex Brightman, who plays Beetlejuice
in the Broadway musical of the same name. Normal speaking voice is simply the voice and tonality in which people speak daily, which is different for each person depending on their upbringing and their surroundings, which is something I found extremely interesting. Presenter voice is the kind of voice I associate with a primary school teacher mainly, very enthusiastic but slightly patronising. I tend to find myself talking like this if I’m talking to children, or animals, and on some occasions even elderly people, it’s a little higher effort than my natural speaking voice but it’s a bit more defined so people understand me clearly. Ordering drinks level is slightly more of a bigger effort, with more power behind it, meaning more abdominal power and annunciation; and yodelling level is the highest level of the lot with far more effort level than most people can imagine. I associate that level with the kind of ‘whistle range’ like Ariana Grande can create, discussed when talking about vocal range.
The discussion on tilt and speech position was incredibly interesting to me as I just knew the different types of ‘registers’ as head and chest register. Tilt position (or legit register), is a much thinner sound, like a male falsetto or a soprano, while speech position is a much thicker sound, like a belt, or a natural speech voice - hence its name. I was fascinated to know the two ways you can get into these registers while warming up your voice and they’re actually fun to play around with. The tilt position is to make a ‘meow’ sound, to really open up your vocal folds, and the speech position is to make an ‘uh-oh’ sound, similar to one children make when they know they’ve done something wrong. The vocal folds move in different ways when these sounds are made, which changes the sound that comes from the mouth. For me, I struggled more with the ‘uh-oh’ sound, because I am so used to going into a tilt position, and it felt unnatural for me to try and use a speech position type of belt and stay in it.
We looked at different songs from different musicals and had to guess what their vocal position was, and it was harder than it originally sounded.
‘I’m Here’ from The Colour Purple was the first song we looked at (linked below),
and it was very obvious that Cynthia Erivo was in the speech position as she belted. It’s a very emotional performance, and it definitely connected with my limbic system when we were watching it, I could feel her emotion through the screen.
The next number was ‘Out of my Dreams’, from Oklahoma,
and it was fairly obvious to me that it was performed in a tilted position, as it was far softer and it’s much more of a classic musical sound as opposed to a contemporary musical sound where you don’t have as much of an annunciation and legitness to the voice.
The final one, which in my opinion was very deceiving and rather surprising, was ‘Alexander Hamilton’, from Hamilton,
and we had to figure out what character was in what position. Originally, I said this:
Burr - speech / tilt
Lafayette - speech / tilt
Mulligan - speech / tilt
Laurens - speech / tilt
Hamilton - speech / tilt
The ones that are red were the positions they were actually in, three of which I got correct, and for Burr and Hamilton I said they were in speech too, but I was incorrect. Both men are actually speaking in tilted positions, and listening back to the track now, I can hear the position filters clearer than I could before. Burr has quite a tilted voice anyway, but he’s able to flip between both tilted and speech, whereas Hamilton is really breathy throughout the show so he tends to sing in more of a tilted position, which really surprised me.
Our final part of the session was to figure out our vocal range using the Fach System, which is a classification system that determines a singers vocal range. It stems from Germany in the 19th century, and according to this blog post on Scena (http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm16-6/sm16-6_fach_en.html), the Fach System ‘defines voices by range, weight and colour’ in order to ‘stipulate what operatic roles are suitable’ for each individual singer. I already knew I was a soprano, but I never knew my full range, which I distinguished in this session.
The highest note I could produce comfortably was a C5, however, I could sustain an E5 quite comfortably, and the lowest note I could produce comfortably was a G3, however I could produce and sustain an A3 if needed, too.
Comments