Date sent: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:16:00 EST
Subject: Speaking/Singing Voice (ranting about countertenors :)
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Reply to Lisa-Marie Olson part I of II:
> I hope I was clear in my post that I DON'T feel I'm artificially
> lowering my speaking voice. I actually feel quite the opposite, that
> my speaking voice is more "organic" than the singing voice I had been
> using up to a few years ago. It's an interesting topic, though.
>
> A contralto friend who hails from London has a higher speaking voice
> than I do, a high soprano. Go figure!

Just wanted to jump in about speaking/singing voices in men... There
is a prejudice that a man's singing voice must match his speaking voice.
IMO, it's even more prevalent than the same misconception regarding
women's voices.

Speaking range/timbre is often a good indicator of singing
range/timbre, but the correlation is not absolute. Jim Nabors was
already mentioned on this thread as a high speaking voice bass singer.
There's the opposite (and more common) case as well: low speaking
voices attached to high singing voices.

Anyhow, I wanted to bring this up because it points to what I consider a
common malady in the male voice: Many men never really gain access to
their head voices partly because it is so strongly assumed that speaking
voice determines singing voice. That is one of the reasons why there are
so many tenors out there that never get past an A, baritones that never
get past an F, etc. The assumption is that it's all about chest, and
that if it's not full chest, it's gotta be falsetto.

continued....