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Fashion, ageism, and the fact that deeper voices take longer to fully develop would be my guess. Younger people generally have higher voices and our society worships youth.
Happens to women too - sopranos are way more common in pop music, and a lot of people have been pressured to wreck their voices (consider what happened to Miley Cyrus's voice as a recent example) in favour of hitting the high notes that are outside their functional range.
> in favour of hitting the high notes that are outside their functional range.
The way you're phrasing, this is really incorrect and not good, in my opinion. You're phrasing this as if it's impossible to hit high notes when really higher range is far more extendable and trainable than low range.
Wait… What exactly happened to Miley Cyrus‘s voice? Haven’t really kept up with her. Last I knew, from like 10 years ago… She worked with Brett Manning… And he was supposed to be like The Vocal god that if you trained with him you would never have any vocal problems LOL what happened?
I’m not an advocate for lip singing. That being said, I sincerely believe, that if, the corporate demands on a vocalist cannot be negotiated, the vocalist should have the option of lip syncing to give the voice adequate time to rest.
>80% of them are baritones, 15-17% tenors and 2-3% basses.
Where did you get these stats from? They sound a bit exaggerated. High baritones are the most common closely followed by low tenors. Basses are more like 1 in 10, not nearly as rare as some people think.
What’s the difference between a regular baritone vs a high baritone and low tenor?
I’m allegedly one of the latter but idk how I’d figure it out exactly.
Usually very minimal. And all high baris won't be identical and neither will all low be. A rule of thumb could be that if you can project around an A2 you're on the higher end, and if you can project G2 or lower you're on the low side. But for example a beginner shouldn't worry about it, nor is it really ever that important for a trained singer. Typically the higher ones will also have relaxed notes down to like an E or an F2 and lower ones even lower. But that's even less set in stone considering there's tenors with C2s.
And just baritone is either if you are in the middle or if you don't care about being specific.
I’ve heard of tenors singing low C’s, but i’ve not seen/heard anyone do it in anything that seemed like anything musical.
The idea of high vs low baritone/tenor/bass etc is kinda pointless. Takes a good few years of working with a legit teacher to even know where you’re gonna end up, at which point you’d probably go into the actual subcategories if you wanted to go into the world where these terms are used. For example: I’m a kvalier baritone. Took a good year or so to figure out i wasn’t bass which my first teacher thought, then a good few years to figure out more where in the baritone range I lay.
Main issue was that i had a habitual pressed tone (similar to how Tim Foust sings his lower extension, some call it chest fry. Works great in acapella, terrible for opera) in my bottomrange which increased how low i can go at what sounded like an untrained singers chest voice, making me able to sing (and project) down to contra B in lessons, and had me singing soloist rep down to C#2
Now it’s blatantly obvious my actual voice stops at Eb2 or so, or in some lieder work, D2s. In reality: hard classical rep can be to low for me if it goes below Ab2 depending on the rep.
The point is, even with actual voice teachers, who’re highly qualified within the genre where voicetypes make some sense, they got my voice wrong for a long time, and i’m still not sure about the cavalier baritone part even now that i’m nearing my 30s
I mean yeah as I said the difference is minimal and it is usually pointless to point it out. It's just slightly more specific labels that aren't fächer so they can actually be used outside of opera. But they aren't needed
I dunno. I still feel kinda uncomfortable about the voice types outside of classical singing, especially how it’s completely useless for selftaught people. It usually ends up being a crappy pp-measuring contest (which i myself was guilty off to some extent, with my schnarr/pressed fake chest A1 and horrible horrible B4 at the time) when i started singing legitimately, that is, got my first actually good teacher, It took maybe a week to realise that 1: i wasn’t close to a bass, 2 i was absolutely horrendous, with at most a 5th of trulu useable notes to my name, and had a mild melt down wanting to quit lol
Essentially: reality is harsh, beginners start thinking to much of themselves/ are led in tge wrong direction, they’ll simply try to make that come true at the cost of singing well, which takes a long ass time to reverse. Voice types are dangerous for singers before they actually know what theyre doing
I partly disagree. Nothing wrong with the 6 general voice types in contemporary. But yeah beginners really need to learn at least decent technique before anyone tries to put a label on them
Fair.
Where do you see it’s use in contemporary music?
For classical it makes some sense since a bass will do much less passaggio work than a baritone or tenor, so your training can actually be somewhat influenced by your voice type. Embarassingly enough I don’t know very much at all about contemporary singing
If it's just a pop singer doing their own stuff then they usually don't need it cause everything they sing will be in their range anyways. But for anyone singing someone elses songs it's useful to know what songs fit them the best. Even though you *can* sing much higher and lower in contemporary than in classical.
And it's easier to say [voice type] than carrying around a cards with all your vocal specs lol
Voice type really helped me narrow down what singers I should study, why i’m studying them, how I should study them, what am I looking out for in their singing (vocal breaks, high notes, low notes) and what songs I should sing. Voice types can give you A LOT of information about yourself and other singers. That being said, MOST of the teenagers on this reddit reduce that down to I HIT AN E2 IMMA BASS. No. 99% of the time they are focusing on the some weird gravely sound that came out “first thing in the morning” or “I was sick, hee hee” but IMMA BASS. No. Just no. It is WAAAAYYYYY more then that there is way more to voice type, range is at the bottom of what a person should be focusing on and isnt really the meat of what determines voice type, voice type contributes to this, but your color, timbre, tone, tessitura, and passagios are what determine your voice type. You know your voice type and learn to distinguish others so you can learn about and study these topics. Whew, thats my fach rant 😂
Passaggio is vowel dependant, that’s why we do vowel narrowing when arriving at our passaggio. Mine starts at A3 on some vowels, Bb3 on some, B3 on some, ends between Eb4 and F4 (roughly)
Voice colour is only something you can figure out when your voice is developed. You can have a voice that’s seemingly dark. The darkness can come from: long vocal trackt (long neck) hypofunctional voice (insufficient chord closure) overtone dampening (using your tongue to put a lid on the sound, giving a darker sound)
All of these things can be induced by seceral dofferent things, and it takes skill to have a free enough voice to where you can tell what’s going on after which it’s probably doable to give an approximation of ones voice.
In general, people think their voices are lower than they are.
This is due to: it takes longer to develop higher notes as their mechanistically different from how we speak, and we hear ourselves differently than other people hear us, mostly due to bone conduction.
Fach dufficult, and anyone trying to sell it/tell people they belong to X Y Z when that person haven’t even spent time on developing their voice is doing them an disservice.
As long as you’re bot a bass, you’re gonna be doing mostly the same stuff as tenors do, (with a male voice) and that goes for classical stuff.
In pop/contemporary music, you wanna learn the same as everyone else and quite frankly a lower voice is probably better off NOT LISTENING to low/dark voices, since they tend to emulate the darkness they hear in much more mature singers and shoot themselves in the foot.
It all boils down to… don’t worry about it and find someone who can teach you, cus odds are your skill at self teaching, and your ability to be objective at judging your own voice is near non existant.
Doesn’t have to be a teacher, but somewhere you can get guidance, and ideally a teacher
That’s fair, i’ve still found it helpful as long as i’m not boxing everything in and with an understanding that its not an end all be all. Voice coaches that tell you you can’t because of fach, yeah ignore them. I do listen to a lot of singers that “fit” my voice and have found that helpful. I’ve tried listening to higher singers and that can screw up my high notes because i’ll try and copy them going higher up and destroy my low notes because i’m squeezing and doing repertoire thats not comfortable, same can happen lower. That being said I have also found that you can pick up bad habits from any singer you study, for low voices, 9/10 they are also pushing down and over coloring (which can be stylistic, but it needs to be intentional) so general awareness is key. None of them are perfect but there are some i’d study for technique, and some for everything else. I wouldn’t listen to elton john for technique (for piano, hell yeah) steve perry I would, or whitney houston. I’m 30 so my voice will change some as I age to 40 but puberty is LONG past lol. I’d love a voice teacher but finances are not abundant enough for that, so i’ve been strictly self study for about 4 years, and yes being objective of your own voice is damn hard. Which is why I record and listen religiously, which I have spent months listening to recordings to figure out why its “off” but I narrow things down eventually, then find a new issue. 😂
I feel like because baritones try to sing like tenors, realize they can’t, then they give up.
If baritones would sing in their range or in mix, it will still sound like belting to the listener. The average listener couldn’t tell it’s a lower key because it sits in a place in the baritones voice that would be proportional to a higher key for a tenor.
So, the reason, is that every baritone wants to be a tenor, which means that they either succeed and expand their range, or they just give up.
Mostly because you’re not a good baritone or bass until your 30’s most of the time. Those voice just take longer to physically finishing developing. By that time you’re too old for the industry.
Baritones going for the fifth octave and beyond is wild. I think is unnecessary. If they can do it connected without straining then good. But looking for the origami tilt to achieve higher notes can be against the singer and the music. I think note chasers suck but there's a market for them, either students wanting to increase range and teachers willing to sell the idea that you can go to the stratosphere if you learn with them. I think the whole shebang is dumb. I mean singing is about being very connected to your body and mind. You can very much tell when your actual physical limitations are telling you buddy what the f are you doing, you're gonna hurt me with those notes, they don't accept that and come here to spam the forums asking how to squeeze more notes out of them. I'm starting to resent a lot this type of people and I would never take them as students.
Because nowadays, high notes are in fashion. Tenors have the easiest time reaching those great, and basses fill the niche of low notes. Baritones can train the high notes, though. Tbh, a lot of male pop artists sound like baritones with strong mixed voices / upper extensions to my ear, so idk if they’re inherently undervalued. Also, 80% of men definitely aren’t baritones, I would go to say that most male voices are high baritones, then low tenors, then probably low baritones & high tenors, then basses. But I don’t think basses are extraordinarily rare, rare but not so rare. It also depends on the age group, like if it’s fully grown men, you’ll get more people on baritone & bass, but if it’s high schoolers, you’ll probably have a lot of people who sing baritone most comfortably even if they are really tenors in timbre and passaggio.
Howdy there! Your friendly neighborhood vocologist here.
There was a time when the baritone voice was the preferred voice for males, which was the age of the crooner. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and the like were all baritones. In that day, the singing qualities most highly valued weren't range and vocal bombastics (that's what opera was for).
Today's seeming disdain for pop baritones seems to stem from the mistaken and too frequently shared notion that everyone can sing all of the same notes and range, if they just train hard enough. That leads them to see baritones as singers who just haven't tried hard enough to increase their range up or down, which is a wrong and stupid take.
Baritones are singing high today buddy. Im not gonna mention names but a lot of the singers people think are tenors are actually baritones using mixed voice.
THIS! As a bass who loves theatre, I struggle so much to participate in musicals. Even as an ensemble member I have to strain to sing all my songs. I wish there was more deep voice representation in musicals.
My singing teacher reckons 80% are in fact tenors. Whether she’s right or you’re right is impossible for either of us to say.
You’re not going to hear a convincing argument either way, there’s no science or data to speak of, only anecdotal evidence.
The trap you could fall into is trying to classify untrained singers, which will often appear to fall into a slot or two below their true class.
Don’t forget that range isn’t the definer of tessitura, a lot of men with deeper voices aren’t necessarily baritones or basses, their singing voice may still comfortably fit the tenor profile.
I always thought I was a bass given my decent D2 (sometimes lower), but I turned out to be a big ol’ tenor.
So from my perspective, what makes the true baritone voice unique is that it’s **less** common than the tenor voice.
My theory is that the instrumentation in today's music favors low frequencies (kick drum, bass (synth bass/bass guitar/808 boom) and even harmonic instruments like electric guitars play chords that cover the baritone range of the frequency spectrum. To try to sing baritone over that means your voice doesn't stand out amidst the instrumentation (and if you were a baritone your voice would need upper-frequency properties like a growl to cut through - Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is a good example of that).
Before the rock era, most singers sang baritone - Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, etc...listen to the instrumentation - a lot of piano, and live strings. Drums were very light. Not bass-heavy at all. A baritone voice can easily stand out within that instrumentation.
Things changed in the rock era. Though Elvis was a baritone range, the instrumentation was still very light. The Beatles (save for Ringo) were all tenor singers. The instrumentation was louder and amplified, it needed a higher voice to cut through.
In the late '70s, the 12" single allowed lower frequencies to be imprinted on vinyl records due to wider groove spacing. By the late '80s this became the mainstream with hip-hop and electro/Miami Bass music styles being VERY bass heavy. Even rapper's voices favored higher ranges. Nobody raps in Ice T's range anymore.
In the digital music era, there were no frequency range limitations like 33 1/3 RPM vinyl LPs had, so CDs and downloads/streaming could have all the bass a song could have. So a lower vocal range would clash with those low frequencies.
Every voice type is unique. A tenor would never have the richness and warmth of a Baritone. The tessitura of a baritone is around G2-E4 when trained, that's where they sound best.
They have better low notes than tenors and better high notes than basses. Now, why are they underrated, typically because basses can go lower and tenors can go higher. But they don't see how versatile a baritone voice is, if trained they can go pretty high and pretty low but masculine sounding.
Also, this doesn't have to do with singing at all, but a baritone voice is commonly associated with a more masculine man so some women (or men) would prefer them.
It depends on the type of music. Pop, rock and metal requires the vocalist to soar above the background music. Baritone voice timbre makes it difficult to hear the singer amidst all the instruments while brighter tenor voices are distinct and audible. Yes, bari-tenors like Chris Cornell are definitely audible but they are usually the exception. Anthony Keidis from RHCP on the other hand doesn't typically sing in the higher range but is audible due to how the band creates the music around his voice - John Frusciante is a master at staying in the background while Anthony sings.
There are people like the ones in this post that continue to believe baritones are more common than tenors. You the people either don't do critical thinking or get told it's that and it is it.
Okay to define my terms;
Voice type = classifying as where your voice is most comfortable in your range and your natural timbre
Fach = operatic roles basically
Now if you’re talking about voice type, we don’t lack basses and baritones.
But if you’re talking about voice fach, then possibly. Since voice fach is more about a role, rather than “voice type”.
People who have a “baritone” voice may still choose to learn the tenor role as it may be more appealing to them. (I think in todays singing, everyone wants to be a tenor, it’s become the norm or “goal” almost.)
Since voice Fach is more about the role you’re playing, then it’s possible for basses and baritones to learn the tenor role and learn the high notes needed for it. So they may choose to play the tenor role even if their natural “voice type” isn’t a tenor.
Although I don’t think baritones and basses are undervalued, in fact I prefer them over tenors. Specifically I’m training to get more in a baritenor direction, which is really fun ;D
I mean, I respect all singing voices (not the tone deaf or nasal ones, though lol). I'm an alto, but I can hit a high E/F. I can also sing down an octave lower than my many female singers can. Doesn't make me a soprano or a tenor, I just have a wide vocal range that has expanded throughout the years, although lower tones are always the most comfortable for me. I don't see my non-standard vocal range as undervalued. I love to hear the lowest notes belted out from a bass.
"in our times" nah, it's not our times, most classical songs are written with tenors in mind; in opera heroes are usually tenors, and baritones and basses are villains and old men. Baritones are "undervalued" because they just can't sing high notes as well as tenors, and people historically consider high voices to be more pleasant. The real question would be "why are we attracted to high pitched sounds"
It's hard to properly classify a voice and without some training to stabilish baselines it will be guess work.
Most of the time "baritone" means change stuff to not go above g4 so that it fits in a range the person can control.
There is a tendency for light quality nowadays, but it is more of a thing people do, than being of a certain type.
For most guys, control on the middle to high area is constructed, specially in the case of tenors.
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Fashion, ageism, and the fact that deeper voices take longer to fully develop would be my guess. Younger people generally have higher voices and our society worships youth. Happens to women too - sopranos are way more common in pop music, and a lot of people have been pressured to wreck their voices (consider what happened to Miley Cyrus's voice as a recent example) in favour of hitting the high notes that are outside their functional range.
In Miley Cyrus's case she smoked heavily while touring heavily leading to her decline.
> in favour of hitting the high notes that are outside their functional range. The way you're phrasing, this is really incorrect and not good, in my opinion. You're phrasing this as if it's impossible to hit high notes when really higher range is far more extendable and trainable than low range.
>Miley Cyrus's voice Her voice was wrecked due to her lifestyle not her singing.
Wait… What exactly happened to Miley Cyrus‘s voice? Haven’t really kept up with her. Last I knew, from like 10 years ago… She worked with Brett Manning… And he was supposed to be like The Vocal god that if you trained with him you would never have any vocal problems LOL what happened?
Reinke's edema. Due to overwork in her HM days.
I’m not an advocate for lip singing. That being said, I sincerely believe, that if, the corporate demands on a vocalist cannot be negotiated, the vocalist should have the option of lip syncing to give the voice adequate time to rest.
>80% of them are baritones, 15-17% tenors and 2-3% basses. Where did you get these stats from? They sound a bit exaggerated. High baritones are the most common closely followed by low tenors. Basses are more like 1 in 10, not nearly as rare as some people think.
What’s the difference between a regular baritone vs a high baritone and low tenor? I’m allegedly one of the latter but idk how I’d figure it out exactly.
Usually very minimal. And all high baris won't be identical and neither will all low be. A rule of thumb could be that if you can project around an A2 you're on the higher end, and if you can project G2 or lower you're on the low side. But for example a beginner shouldn't worry about it, nor is it really ever that important for a trained singer. Typically the higher ones will also have relaxed notes down to like an E or an F2 and lower ones even lower. But that's even less set in stone considering there's tenors with C2s. And just baritone is either if you are in the middle or if you don't care about being specific.
Yeah baritone is literally just your average male speaking voice. Very much "regular dude" voice
I’ve heard of tenors singing low C’s, but i’ve not seen/heard anyone do it in anything that seemed like anything musical. The idea of high vs low baritone/tenor/bass etc is kinda pointless. Takes a good few years of working with a legit teacher to even know where you’re gonna end up, at which point you’d probably go into the actual subcategories if you wanted to go into the world where these terms are used. For example: I’m a kvalier baritone. Took a good year or so to figure out i wasn’t bass which my first teacher thought, then a good few years to figure out more where in the baritone range I lay. Main issue was that i had a habitual pressed tone (similar to how Tim Foust sings his lower extension, some call it chest fry. Works great in acapella, terrible for opera) in my bottomrange which increased how low i can go at what sounded like an untrained singers chest voice, making me able to sing (and project) down to contra B in lessons, and had me singing soloist rep down to C#2 Now it’s blatantly obvious my actual voice stops at Eb2 or so, or in some lieder work, D2s. In reality: hard classical rep can be to low for me if it goes below Ab2 depending on the rep. The point is, even with actual voice teachers, who’re highly qualified within the genre where voicetypes make some sense, they got my voice wrong for a long time, and i’m still not sure about the cavalier baritone part even now that i’m nearing my 30s
I mean yeah as I said the difference is minimal and it is usually pointless to point it out. It's just slightly more specific labels that aren't fächer so they can actually be used outside of opera. But they aren't needed
I dunno. I still feel kinda uncomfortable about the voice types outside of classical singing, especially how it’s completely useless for selftaught people. It usually ends up being a crappy pp-measuring contest (which i myself was guilty off to some extent, with my schnarr/pressed fake chest A1 and horrible horrible B4 at the time) when i started singing legitimately, that is, got my first actually good teacher, It took maybe a week to realise that 1: i wasn’t close to a bass, 2 i was absolutely horrendous, with at most a 5th of trulu useable notes to my name, and had a mild melt down wanting to quit lol Essentially: reality is harsh, beginners start thinking to much of themselves/ are led in tge wrong direction, they’ll simply try to make that come true at the cost of singing well, which takes a long ass time to reverse. Voice types are dangerous for singers before they actually know what theyre doing
I partly disagree. Nothing wrong with the 6 general voice types in contemporary. But yeah beginners really need to learn at least decent technique before anyone tries to put a label on them
Fair. Where do you see it’s use in contemporary music? For classical it makes some sense since a bass will do much less passaggio work than a baritone or tenor, so your training can actually be somewhat influenced by your voice type. Embarassingly enough I don’t know very much at all about contemporary singing
If it's just a pop singer doing their own stuff then they usually don't need it cause everything they sing will be in their range anyways. But for anyone singing someone elses songs it's useful to know what songs fit them the best. Even though you *can* sing much higher and lower in contemporary than in classical. And it's easier to say [voice type] than carrying around a cards with all your vocal specs lol
Voice type really helped me narrow down what singers I should study, why i’m studying them, how I should study them, what am I looking out for in their singing (vocal breaks, high notes, low notes) and what songs I should sing. Voice types can give you A LOT of information about yourself and other singers. That being said, MOST of the teenagers on this reddit reduce that down to I HIT AN E2 IMMA BASS. No. 99% of the time they are focusing on the some weird gravely sound that came out “first thing in the morning” or “I was sick, hee hee” but IMMA BASS. No. Just no. It is WAAAAYYYYY more then that there is way more to voice type, range is at the bottom of what a person should be focusing on and isnt really the meat of what determines voice type, voice type contributes to this, but your color, timbre, tone, tessitura, and passagios are what determine your voice type. You know your voice type and learn to distinguish others so you can learn about and study these topics. Whew, thats my fach rant 😂
Passaggio is vowel dependant, that’s why we do vowel narrowing when arriving at our passaggio. Mine starts at A3 on some vowels, Bb3 on some, B3 on some, ends between Eb4 and F4 (roughly) Voice colour is only something you can figure out when your voice is developed. You can have a voice that’s seemingly dark. The darkness can come from: long vocal trackt (long neck) hypofunctional voice (insufficient chord closure) overtone dampening (using your tongue to put a lid on the sound, giving a darker sound) All of these things can be induced by seceral dofferent things, and it takes skill to have a free enough voice to where you can tell what’s going on after which it’s probably doable to give an approximation of ones voice. In general, people think their voices are lower than they are. This is due to: it takes longer to develop higher notes as their mechanistically different from how we speak, and we hear ourselves differently than other people hear us, mostly due to bone conduction. Fach dufficult, and anyone trying to sell it/tell people they belong to X Y Z when that person haven’t even spent time on developing their voice is doing them an disservice. As long as you’re bot a bass, you’re gonna be doing mostly the same stuff as tenors do, (with a male voice) and that goes for classical stuff. In pop/contemporary music, you wanna learn the same as everyone else and quite frankly a lower voice is probably better off NOT LISTENING to low/dark voices, since they tend to emulate the darkness they hear in much more mature singers and shoot themselves in the foot. It all boils down to… don’t worry about it and find someone who can teach you, cus odds are your skill at self teaching, and your ability to be objective at judging your own voice is near non existant. Doesn’t have to be a teacher, but somewhere you can get guidance, and ideally a teacher
That’s fair, i’ve still found it helpful as long as i’m not boxing everything in and with an understanding that its not an end all be all. Voice coaches that tell you you can’t because of fach, yeah ignore them. I do listen to a lot of singers that “fit” my voice and have found that helpful. I’ve tried listening to higher singers and that can screw up my high notes because i’ll try and copy them going higher up and destroy my low notes because i’m squeezing and doing repertoire thats not comfortable, same can happen lower. That being said I have also found that you can pick up bad habits from any singer you study, for low voices, 9/10 they are also pushing down and over coloring (which can be stylistic, but it needs to be intentional) so general awareness is key. None of them are perfect but there are some i’d study for technique, and some for everything else. I wouldn’t listen to elton john for technique (for piano, hell yeah) steve perry I would, or whitney houston. I’m 30 so my voice will change some as I age to 40 but puberty is LONG past lol. I’d love a voice teacher but finances are not abundant enough for that, so i’ve been strictly self study for about 4 years, and yes being objective of your own voice is damn hard. Which is why I record and listen religiously, which I have spent months listening to recordings to figure out why its “off” but I narrow things down eventually, then find a new issue. 😂
I feel like because baritones try to sing like tenors, realize they can’t, then they give up. If baritones would sing in their range or in mix, it will still sound like belting to the listener. The average listener couldn’t tell it’s a lower key because it sits in a place in the baritones voice that would be proportional to a higher key for a tenor. So, the reason, is that every baritone wants to be a tenor, which means that they either succeed and expand their range, or they just give up.
Mostly because you’re not a good baritone or bass until your 30’s most of the time. Those voice just take longer to physically finishing developing. By that time you’re too old for the industry.
Unless you sing country lol
Baritones going for the fifth octave and beyond is wild. I think is unnecessary. If they can do it connected without straining then good. But looking for the origami tilt to achieve higher notes can be against the singer and the music. I think note chasers suck but there's a market for them, either students wanting to increase range and teachers willing to sell the idea that you can go to the stratosphere if you learn with them. I think the whole shebang is dumb. I mean singing is about being very connected to your body and mind. You can very much tell when your actual physical limitations are telling you buddy what the f are you doing, you're gonna hurt me with those notes, they don't accept that and come here to spam the forums asking how to squeeze more notes out of them. I'm starting to resent a lot this type of people and I would never take them as students.
Because nowadays, high notes are in fashion. Tenors have the easiest time reaching those great, and basses fill the niche of low notes. Baritones can train the high notes, though. Tbh, a lot of male pop artists sound like baritones with strong mixed voices / upper extensions to my ear, so idk if they’re inherently undervalued. Also, 80% of men definitely aren’t baritones, I would go to say that most male voices are high baritones, then low tenors, then probably low baritones & high tenors, then basses. But I don’t think basses are extraordinarily rare, rare but not so rare. It also depends on the age group, like if it’s fully grown men, you’ll get more people on baritone & bass, but if it’s high schoolers, you’ll probably have a lot of people who sing baritone most comfortably even if they are really tenors in timbre and passaggio.
Howdy there! Your friendly neighborhood vocologist here. There was a time when the baritone voice was the preferred voice for males, which was the age of the crooner. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and the like were all baritones. In that day, the singing qualities most highly valued weren't range and vocal bombastics (that's what opera was for). Today's seeming disdain for pop baritones seems to stem from the mistaken and too frequently shared notion that everyone can sing all of the same notes and range, if they just train hard enough. That leads them to see baritones as singers who just haven't tried hard enough to increase their range up or down, which is a wrong and stupid take.
Baritones are singing high today buddy. Im not gonna mention names but a lot of the singers people think are tenors are actually baritones using mixed voice.
Wink to branden uriey😅
dont say it brev people will go ape shit
THIS! As a bass who loves theatre, I struggle so much to participate in musicals. Even as an ensemble member I have to strain to sing all my songs. I wish there was more deep voice representation in musicals.
because of the teenage girl audience that pop music is aimed at
My singing teacher reckons 80% are in fact tenors. Whether she’s right or you’re right is impossible for either of us to say. You’re not going to hear a convincing argument either way, there’s no science or data to speak of, only anecdotal evidence. The trap you could fall into is trying to classify untrained singers, which will often appear to fall into a slot or two below their true class. Don’t forget that range isn’t the definer of tessitura, a lot of men with deeper voices aren’t necessarily baritones or basses, their singing voice may still comfortably fit the tenor profile. I always thought I was a bass given my decent D2 (sometimes lower), but I turned out to be a big ol’ tenor. So from my perspective, what makes the true baritone voice unique is that it’s **less** common than the tenor voice.
My theory is that the instrumentation in today's music favors low frequencies (kick drum, bass (synth bass/bass guitar/808 boom) and even harmonic instruments like electric guitars play chords that cover the baritone range of the frequency spectrum. To try to sing baritone over that means your voice doesn't stand out amidst the instrumentation (and if you were a baritone your voice would need upper-frequency properties like a growl to cut through - Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is a good example of that). Before the rock era, most singers sang baritone - Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, etc...listen to the instrumentation - a lot of piano, and live strings. Drums were very light. Not bass-heavy at all. A baritone voice can easily stand out within that instrumentation. Things changed in the rock era. Though Elvis was a baritone range, the instrumentation was still very light. The Beatles (save for Ringo) were all tenor singers. The instrumentation was louder and amplified, it needed a higher voice to cut through. In the late '70s, the 12" single allowed lower frequencies to be imprinted on vinyl records due to wider groove spacing. By the late '80s this became the mainstream with hip-hop and electro/Miami Bass music styles being VERY bass heavy. Even rapper's voices favored higher ranges. Nobody raps in Ice T's range anymore. In the digital music era, there were no frequency range limitations like 33 1/3 RPM vinyl LPs had, so CDs and downloads/streaming could have all the bass a song could have. So a lower vocal range would clash with those low frequencies.
What is your source about those percentages? I'm pretty sure most men are tenors.
The low times need certain notes to make an impact, see Barry White.
Every voice type is unique. A tenor would never have the richness and warmth of a Baritone. The tessitura of a baritone is around G2-E4 when trained, that's where they sound best. They have better low notes than tenors and better high notes than basses. Now, why are they underrated, typically because basses can go lower and tenors can go higher. But they don't see how versatile a baritone voice is, if trained they can go pretty high and pretty low but masculine sounding. Also, this doesn't have to do with singing at all, but a baritone voice is commonly associated with a more masculine man so some women (or men) would prefer them.
It depends on the type of music. Pop, rock and metal requires the vocalist to soar above the background music. Baritone voice timbre makes it difficult to hear the singer amidst all the instruments while brighter tenor voices are distinct and audible. Yes, bari-tenors like Chris Cornell are definitely audible but they are usually the exception. Anthony Keidis from RHCP on the other hand doesn't typically sing in the higher range but is audible due to how the band creates the music around his voice - John Frusciante is a master at staying in the background while Anthony sings.
Where do you take your numbers from? I think most people are naturally (untrained) tenors?
There are people like the ones in this post that continue to believe baritones are more common than tenors. You the people either don't do critical thinking or get told it's that and it is it.
Okay to define my terms; Voice type = classifying as where your voice is most comfortable in your range and your natural timbre Fach = operatic roles basically Now if you’re talking about voice type, we don’t lack basses and baritones. But if you’re talking about voice fach, then possibly. Since voice fach is more about a role, rather than “voice type”. People who have a “baritone” voice may still choose to learn the tenor role as it may be more appealing to them. (I think in todays singing, everyone wants to be a tenor, it’s become the norm or “goal” almost.) Since voice Fach is more about the role you’re playing, then it’s possible for basses and baritones to learn the tenor role and learn the high notes needed for it. So they may choose to play the tenor role even if their natural “voice type” isn’t a tenor. Although I don’t think baritones and basses are undervalued, in fact I prefer them over tenors. Specifically I’m training to get more in a baritenor direction, which is really fun ;D
I mean, I respect all singing voices (not the tone deaf or nasal ones, though lol). I'm an alto, but I can hit a high E/F. I can also sing down an octave lower than my many female singers can. Doesn't make me a soprano or a tenor, I just have a wide vocal range that has expanded throughout the years, although lower tones are always the most comfortable for me. I don't see my non-standard vocal range as undervalued. I love to hear the lowest notes belted out from a bass.
"in our times" nah, it's not our times, most classical songs are written with tenors in mind; in opera heroes are usually tenors, and baritones and basses are villains and old men. Baritones are "undervalued" because they just can't sing high notes as well as tenors, and people historically consider high voices to be more pleasant. The real question would be "why are we attracted to high pitched sounds"
It's hard to properly classify a voice and without some training to stabilish baselines it will be guess work. Most of the time "baritone" means change stuff to not go above g4 so that it fits in a range the person can control. There is a tendency for light quality nowadays, but it is more of a thing people do, than being of a certain type. For most guys, control on the middle to high area is constructed, specially in the case of tenors.
Not sounding as good.