I’ve talked before about the worst voice I’ve ever worked with, but recently I’ve been thinking about the better voices I’ve worked with. I wanted to write about the “best” voices I’ve ever worked with, but realised that’s not a helpful definition. So instead I wanted to discuss the singer with the biggest range I’ve ever encountered.
Many years ago…
About 10 years ago, I was working with the singers of a boy band. They were all about 19/20 years old, and all really good singers. Each had their own thing they did well, and each contributed something the other couldn’t.
Now, when we do an initial consultation, we do an assessment on a singer’s voice. From there, I can explain what is going well, what is not going so well, and what we need to do to improve their voice. I will then often go into a lip bubble or other equivalent warm-up if the singer’s voice permits.
With one of the singers, our first session had an assessment that was fairly normal. We identified some issues he had, and we went into a warm-up from there. And when we did the warmup, his voice kept going up without issue. And up… and up…
His voice kept going up to such an insane degree, we ended up at D6. For those who don’t know, that’s above soprano high C. Most female singers would kill to be able to get up there with the ease this GUY was able to get up there. It was bonkers.
Without any training, this singer had about 3-4 octaves of vocal range to start with… all without even trying. I’ve never encountered such ease during a warm-up, especially given that his assessment seemed fairly typical.
Caveat
Now some of this is down to him being 19/20 – younger voices are generally more relaxed and more facile. Some of this was down to him having a lighter voice, which begets more higher range than weightier voices. But I’ve seen plenty of younger and lighter voices who never had such a technical advantage, so a lot of this was down to the genetic lottery (which I talk about here).
But what happened when we went to song?
Well, this is where the rubber meets the road… and this singer couldn’t sing comfortably up to a G4. That’s 1.5 octaves LOWER than the highest he could go in an exercise. But why should this be?
Range on a relaxed, favourable exercise is one thing, but singing brings forth habits (good and bad) and baggage. And this singer had plenty that got in the way. When one has bad habits associated with one’s singing, when you switch into “singing mode”, even an otherwise very balanced and available extended range can just shut down.
Over the months we worked together, we managed to relax his voice and encourage it towards a state more accepting of his exceptional range. With such a beneficial starting point he was able to get up to his second bridge (around A4) fairly comfortably and quite quickly. But sadly, between band issues and management changes derailing our sessions together, we never managed to fully capitalise on how advantaged his instrument was at the base level.
My point with this article is to show how you can have ALL the vocal advantages in the world at your disposal, but if you insist on driving your instrument in a way that isn’t conducive to good singing, you’re always going to struggle. In addition, rest assured that even if you have bad habits clouding good singing, these are all overcome-able with the right tools and consistent training.