audiot

hey, this is one of my favourites. it has a lot in common with the ‘how loud…?’ question though. if you haven’t read that, maybe do it now to get a better view on the overall subject. there’s five parts of that entry, you can find them all in this same category.

anyway, you wouldn’t believe how many times i encountered this problem – actually it isn’t a problem, but it’s often seen as such… let me tell you how i got into this mess in the first place ;-) my second band was a cover band that tried to play the songs as close to the original as possible. there were songs like toto’s “hold the line” or foreigner’s “urgent”, so some pretty high stuff which was hard to do for me. i was about 16-17 then and had no idea whatsoever about singing or being in a band for that matter. i tried to sing the songs the original way and it wasn’t that bad (my voice sounded thin and funny but i did hit the notes). the band liked it, the audiences liked it and so it came to more and more high songs in the setlist until i had problems with singing a whole set because it was just too high. now the band did what lots of bands do in that situation: they blamed it on me. i just wasn’t good enough and needed more practice, if i was even able to do it at all. that hit me hard. but i was the youngster, the newbie, so i tried to comply. i practiced like crazy and managed to get it done somehow, but from that time on i was unhappy with this band. to make a long story short, there were some fights about it and i left the band because they didn’t want to understand.

ok, now about the teacher’s point of view. the voice has a certain range, which is, like the sound, unique for everyone. it depends on things like sex, body height, size of the larynx, length of the vocal cords etc. so it has absolutely nothing to do with skill or effort or anything like it – it’s simply biology. period. it is of course a matter of skill and effort to be able to use the full range of the voice, but the limits of this range are simply a matter of luck. there are a few tricks that can help you cheat on that but with very limited results and not of any use at all if your natural range is not even ballpark for the song.

so as with the loudness, the problem mainly is one of human relation. it’s wrong if bandmates want you to sing higher than you can and it’s even worse if they connect it to your overall ability to sing. i learned this the hard way and had to stand my ground dozens of times. but not anymore. my voice is what it is – like it or not. if there is a song too high (or low of course…), i sing it different – and if nothing works, i get rid of the song. that hardly ever happens but it’s a last resort.

you decide if it’s possible and how you approach it and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise! your voice could depend on it. i was lucky to not get into serious voice-troubles with that overdoing back then, but i sure wouldn’t try that again…

by the way, if you have to make a point about that, tell your guitarplayer (or bass, keyboard…) to play a note that’s not on his fingerboard but somewhere higher or lower. if the answer is something like ‘can’t do that, it’s not on the instrument’, you win. and don’t forget, you might be very well able to sing something that’s out of the question for the singer of the song you have problems with. again, if you get into those kind of troubles, rearrange the song’s vocals so that they work for you. any other approach will just sound bad and that serves nobody…

good luck :-)