Skip to content
Baritone to Tenor v...
 
Notifications
Clear all

Baritone to Tenor vocal change?

12 Posts
7 Users
0 Likes
28.4 K Views
(@reignstarz)
Active Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 3
Topic starter  

Hi i'm new,

I have a few questions; I am a vocalist that sings in a rock/indie/pop punk band. I have a baritone voice I believe(I can hit super low notes like berry white) and I am trying to achieve certain types of high notes.

The notes I am trying to hit I believe were recorded by people before they hit puberty so their voices are super HIGH.

These are the vocalist I am trying to "Mimic"
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2977157 - Song is Tire swing romance.

http://www.myspace.com/thestartingline - The best of me.

Now I can easily hit notes they use during their verses(Middle voice singing?).
But when they sing their choruses I am just baffled about how to hit those notes. If you listen to tire swing, After the first chorus I can kinda hit that yelling thing he does. But I mean how does one sing that high in a chorus without breaking into falsetto or sounding super nasely?

If anyone could give me some advice I would really appreciate it, Because the middle voice singing is super easy.

Another thing that is weird is I can sing like the band Cute is what we Aim for. And hit exactly every note he hits(Kinda high/Yelling) But I cant get that sound from the other bands.

Thanks -Junior


   
Quote
(@reignstarz)
Active Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 3
Topic starter  

Anyone? lol


   
ReplyQuote
(@coleclark)
Honorable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 417
 

well....it seems iv been answering any questions on range :S

check out my other threads, youll find some useful stuff there.

but basically....if your a baritone, it means you could sing low in the bass range but your mainly happy in the baritone range. same with these singers (iv always loved the starting line) they are tenors, but they CAN sing in the baritone range, but for them its really low, so when they jump the octave to sing high they are jumping in their natural comfortable range, the best way to sound good singing it is to get your band to play the song in a key that puts all the necessary notes in your comfortable range. these guys dont have a 'huge' range, its just that theres starts higher than yours

you CAN sing it...but it will never be 'easy'

read my thread on blending registers. basically what it talks about is you will push the sound to reach the middle notes, then when you reach up for the high notes the change in tone (high and thin) will be so differnet that it sounds bad. what you need to do is get a clear tonal quality on the low notes as well, a 'head voice' shine, so that when you jump up to the high notes (that wouldve sounded bad before) the contrast isnt so great. thats what these guys do. and believe me it works.

its ALL about the tone, not the pitch


   
ReplyQuote
(@reignstarz)
Active Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 3
Topic starter  

Ah thanks man that helps a lot. The only thing is when I go to get to that tone/pitch it sounds offkey and like i'm struggling to hit it. So it sounds sharp/flat.

But that makes sense now about the comfortable thing. And I mean some parts of Best of me I can sing but I cannot hit those "Tell me what you thought about" I was watching videos of him(After puberty lol) and when he tried to hit those notes his voice cracked/ sounded like a scream.

I'm going to give that registry thing a look.

Thanks again

-Junior


   
ReplyQuote
(@coleclark)
Honorable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 417
 

i found that i was trying to wrap my voice around the pitch to 'control' it and ended up straining. when i first started the technique in the blending registers thread i was missing a lot of the notes...but when i hit them they sounded better than my previous style of singing. over time im getting better with hitting them, essentially the 'belting' way of singing (of reaching up for the notes with chest voice) approaches the notes from 'underneath' the pitch, and you overcompensate by being a little sharp....but when you use blended head voice you approach the notes from 'above' the pitch, so youll overcompensate for a while like your used to and be very sharp...but itl work out in time


   
ReplyQuote
(@letinmotion)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 7
 

Naturally, all men are typically mezzo tenors.

Singing Lessons - Brett Manning's Singing Success
Learn to Sing Online


   
ReplyQuote
(@ethanpallas)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 5
 

I am a classically trained vocalist, but I have also been singing in rock bands for the past 10 years. You are either a tenor or you are a baritone. It's that simple. Most guys are baritones. If you can sing along effortlessly with all of your favorite whiny emo bands, you may be a tenor. On the other hand, if you have trouble with some of the high notes and your voice is generally warmer and richer, then you are probably a baritone. If you are a tenor, you will never sound like Chef on South Park. If you are a baritone, you will never sound like Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump, so stop trying. You're going to hurt yourself.

Don't think, "How do I get my voice to sound like that?" Think, "How can I make my voice sound as good as it can?" That's going to make you a better singer and allow you to keep your voice healthy longer.


   
ReplyQuote
(@ethanpallas)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 5
 

Oh I forgot. There's no such thing as a mezzo tenor. Hahahahaha!


   
ReplyQuote
(@ethanpallas)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 5
 

Cole Clark made some good points above.


   
ReplyQuote
(@rum-runner)
Reputable Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 424
 

I sing in the bass range and have been taking lesons from a couple- the husband is also a bass singer and teaches voice at the local university. I don't know if the technique would apply to baritones, but he showed me how to push my range higher using a technique called "covering". It is hard to describe in words, but the way I learned it was to first make an "nggg" sound. his causes you to kind of arch your tounge, but it also puts muscles in the back of your throat in the right position. Next you sing an "Ahhhhh"- wich causes you to drop the tounge flatter but maintain the- he called it a twist- in the back of the throat. I can actually get a few steps higher doing that. It took a little practice, but doing the "ngggg-ahhhh" exercise helped me to develop the sense of how my throat muscles needed to be positioned for cover.

It does produce a more natural sound- it is not falsetto at all and more of a smoother extension of the vocal range into the higher register.

Regards,

Mike

"Growing Older But Not UP!"


   
ReplyQuote
(@zoide)
New Member
Joined: 13 years ago
Posts: 1
 

he showed me how to push my range higher using a technique called "covering"

Covering is super important for hitting the high notes. Check out this great video where Pavarotti illustrates the difference in singing an F# with and without covering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo6dDQiBGyI


   
ReplyQuote
(@bemusical)
Active Member
Joined: 13 years ago
Posts: 8
 

as mentioned before, you shouldn't manipulate your voice to sound like someone else, especially if they don't share the same vocal type as yourself. even if you were able to hit high notes within the tenor range, i'm not sure if your voice will ever sound as bright as when an actual tenor sings the same pitch. however, it's still very possible to extend your range into tenor territory -- you just need the right technique, and learning to blend your lower and upper registers is a healthy way of doing just that.

from my experience anyway, you could think of a vocal range like this, with the lowest note of your full range to the extreme left, and the highest note of your range to the extreme right:

|---pure chest voice---||-------mix of chest and head voice-------||---pure head voice---|
|||||||||||||||||||||-belted chest voice||---falsetto---|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||-lowered head voice-|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||---overlap, so you could use
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||either of the two in the
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||layer above---|

or something to that effect...

*sorry for the many |'s but without them, everything will be justified to the left and the diagram wouldn't really make much sense :)

right now, or at least at the time you created this thread, i'm guessing you were using the second later from the top, so you would belt until you go into falsetto, which i'm sure you found straining. you should be able to hit much higher notes more healthily once you've mastered blending your registers.

as you go up in pitch from your lowest note, you'll reach a point where you'll feel the need to push a little, if you continue to push your way, you'll starting belting, which is okay depending on the effect you want to convey in your singing, but if you go beyond what your vocal cords can handle, you'll end up in falsetto as mentioned, which again, is fine so long as that's the effect you want. however, if it's a "balanced" sound you're looking for, then it is at this point where you might want to add in a little of your head voice, even if it's just a little, so little it's hard to tell. now that takes practice to do, but you'll get there with a good vocal teacher.

*you can get a mixed voice that's either chest-voice-dominated, or head-voice-dominated, or something in the middle.

so you'll keep adding more head voice into the mix as you go up your range until you reach pure head voice.

this is taught in the Speech-Level Singing technique, and i don't wanna be overly fanatic about it, but it did help me extend my range tremendously and i would recommend it to anyone looking for a healthy method of singing. there are certified instructors of this technique, or you could find books, home-study courses or teachers that have included it into your teachings. still, no one has ever explained all this to me in this manner before -- i just came up with this myself, so if there are any inaccuracies, please correct me:)

your mixed voice may feel and sound weird at the beginning, but it will get better, so keep at it. oh, and especially if you're not used to using your head voice, the gap between your chest and head voice may make you sound very wimpy. that's cool too -- it'll grow stronger with time. essentially, if you sing fairly often, and you're unintentionally straining for high notes, there is a better way, and if you play around with your voice till you find that easier way to hit higher notes without feeling any strain at all, though without sounding too good -- that's probably it, lol.

anyways, take care of your voice, and keep singing!:)

p.s. oh yeah, forgot to talk about the lowered head voice. typically, it would sound very yawn-ish and operatic if you sing with it, so we tend not to use it while singing pop.

hope i helped.

"Music is a hearing art." David Lucas Burge

A newbie to music? Just started learning to sing or play the guitar (or keyboard)? Drop by my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/tuningmylifearound and say hi!^_^


   
ReplyQuote