>> Each voice has a different range.
Some voices are very high.
They go [NOISE] up here to where Mariah Carey sings.
Some voices are very low,
[NOISE] all the way down there.
[LAUGHTER] And then there are
some voices that are in the middle.
Some voices encompass a lot of sounds
and textures and the chest voice
as well as the head voice.
So there are different voice types
and different ranges for various voices,
and it is incumbent on you
to find out how wide your range is,
how high does your voice go?
How low does your voice go?
And then when you discover the range of your voice,
you can also decide which songs are best for you,
what the range and the key of each song is,
and how to best use those songs to suit your voice.
Sometimes you can choose a song
that you may like a song very well,
and you may decide to sing it and it may
sound not so great when you sing it,
because perhaps, maybe you haven't chosen
the right key for your voice.
Maybe the song is fine,
but you just have to adjust the key.
Now, in non-traditional forms of music,
such as pop, R&B,
gospel, the blues, country, western,
many of these genres,
you can change the keys to the songs and you can use that
to suit your voice and to enhance your sound,
rather than pushing and straining to
sing in a key that does not work for you.
We are going to talk about how to find your range.
Some of you may already know your range.
You may know what the highest note is on
any given day and what the lowest note is.
Some of you may just be hearing about this for
the first time and you may be
wondering, what is my range.
I have no idea of this.
Well, you can do certain things.
You can do scale pattern works.
[MUSIC] Scale pattern exercises,
rather, [MUSIC] like we just did.
[MUSIC] Here, I just started on a B-flat.
So it's not just enough to sing the exercises.
You have to know what nodes you're singing and
how comfortable you are singing that particular note.
You have to be aware of
when a particular note is uncomfortable.
You have to be aware of the quality of the note.
So there may be some notes in
your voice that sounds fantastic
and then you get to a certain place in
your voice and you can actually sing the note,
but it doesn't sound so great.
That doesn't mean that you don't
have the note in your voice.
It just means that you need to
strengthen that part of your voice.
So to that end, you do exercises such as this.
Once again, I'm starting on a B-flat.
We're going to do a triad,
[MUSIC] we're going to go down this time.
[MUSIC]
Some sopranos end
there that's their bottom and that's okay.
[MUSIC] Some concertos and altos go really low.
[MUSIC] Now we're in the tenor range and
also base baritones add
these nodes starting on F here too,
[MUSIC] and so forth and so on.
I won't go any lower there. I'll leave it up to you.
[LAUGHTER] And so you
can use these exercises not only to find out your range,
but also to strengthen different parts of your voice.
If we're going higher.
[MUSIC] And you can sing them on different vowels, a,
e, I, o, u. I recommend starting on a, first,
but if that is uncomfortable,
you can certainly sing it on u
as well or e. Different people
had favorite vowels for a long time
my favorite vowel is e then changed to a.
So at different points in your life,
your favorite vowel may even change,
but experiment or explore various vowel sounds,
as well as you, go through this process.
[MUSIC] You can do them interchangeably.
[MUSIC]
Now we're in the middle register.
[MUSIC]
Now here we're
right at the top of the pasaggio and the pasaggio,
which is passage in Italian,
that is the passage between
the chest voice and the head voice.
[MUSIC] Here we're about to go into your head voice.
[MUSIC]
That may be uncomfortable for some,
so you can do [MUSIC]
and so on and so forth and just travel up on u.
The other thing you can do,
which covers a lot of ground is an arpeggio,
which covers an optimum,
[MUSIC] will have audio tracks
for you to go up as high as
you'd like to go and to go down as
low as you'd like to go and isn't
as comfortably possible as well.
Feel free to explore various vowel sounds.
You can go all the way up here,
make sure that if you're singing on
it or if you're soprano,
that you are seeing with your mouth open
because if you're singing up here with
your mouth partially closed, it's going to crack.
[LAUGHTER] I'm here to tell you if
something's going to happen to the notes
because the notes appear needs space,
but if you're singing on, u, then u,
also migrates to a that's another thing.
So I recommend singing on a pipe.
You can close a little more as you go higher.
If you're going into the flute register,
which is where Mariah Carey lives,
you close a little bit and create
a little bit more space in the back of the throat.
This is for our singers with lower voices.
[MUSIC] You can jump in where it's comfortable for you.
You could jump out when it becomes
uncomfortable and as I said,
we'll have audio tracks for you to sing these on, off.
We're getting into the bass baritone register
now the base register,
so forth. Really low voices.
Sing those notes low and high.
Engage how they feel when you're singing them.
Gauge how they sound when you're singing them,
and then when you begin to sing your songs,
you will have another entity that we have to
put together with that and that is the range of the song.
If you're looking at different songs by various artists,
you may sing the song in their
key and it may be comfortable, maybe fine.
For instance, once again at last, [MUSIC]
that's the highest note in this key and the key
of F. This is what you have to think about.
[MUSIC] That's fine for some people they can sing,
it works perfectly well,
but then for other people,
it doesn't work so well.
So it's okay if you want to go
down a half-step
[MUSIC].
It's low for me, but it's okay.
[MUSIC] So here that
will put you ought to be flat at, below the passagio.
If you are a high singer,
if you're in the lower register,
if you are a base or Barrett toner tenor,
you can sing it down the octave in the original key,
but down the octave,
which I will not attempt to do, but this is for you.
You can sing along with it.
[LAUGHTER] You can also
sing it a step-down and down the octave.
That's going to be where you would start there.
So it's up to you to
explore what sounds good, what feels good.
You could sing when you start doing
your lessons for this class, your final assignments.
We have the songs a lot of times in
two and three different keys just so that
you all can explore
the sound of your voice and those different keys.
Sing it, practice it, record it,
listen back and say, well, okay,
well this is the best part for me.
I like what it sounds like in the original keyword.
I don't like what it sounds like.
I'll choose that key.
I'll choose the key of E-flat or the key of D-flat.
So that's okay, but I encourage you to
maybe sing it in two different keys
and just to see how you feel.
From time to time,
you will encounter a situation
where none of the keys work for you.
It doesn't happen very often,
but it does happen.
When that happens, feel free
to reach out to your instructor and ask
them if there is another option
for another key and we can
certainly work with you on that.
There may be a song,
the range of the song matches your range,
but one or two notes may not be working for you.
I've experienced this with a lot of my singers on
campus when they're singing Anita Baker's sweet love.
It has a low [MUSIC] affinity.
[LAUGHTER] It's fine for me it's fine,
for a lot of other singers, but for
some singers it ain't working.
Sometimes, if you change the key of the song,
it changes the color of the sound and
it makes an adjustment that we
don't like for the overall sound.
Sometimes it's fine if you just change
that one note because it's
only one note that's really not sounding so great.
[MUSIC]
So there's that low f. Now you can change it.
You can change the melody if you want.
[MUSIC] You can change it even more if you want to
improve [MUSIC] and then
you have something different
that takes you into a different place.
Now we don't want to radically change the song,
but that's just a change of one or two notes,
and then you just keep the rest of the song as it is,
but if the bulk of
the song doesn't work for you in this key,
then I recommend actually changing the key.