i have just realized i have violated my own rule about giving
examples of what i mean. the idea of the expression of speech being carried
over into singing, is best seen in people like tony bennett, frank sinatra,
mel torme (who do not sing with a classical technique, as has been suugested
in the past on this list) and most anyone considered a crooner. paul
mccartney and john lennon are/were both speech like singers. chrissy hynde,
sara evans and jamie o'neal, too.
i would say that most pop singers we hear these days are very speech
oriented singers. in fact, i think most forms of vocal music are sung in a
speech like manner. as most are amateurs and self taught professionals.
what else would they do?
when i say speech like, i mean the tone and the emphasis of words.
these are the only two factors that can be carried over from speech to
singing. if we are specific about a pitch, that is different from speech.
while the stretching of a word's length might be a distortion of how one
would speak that, it is still a distortion. the longer the word is
stretched, the less like speech it becomes. when one goes out of the
speaking range, the singing is either going to be the same or, different.
if one keeps singing in the same manner as in the speaking range, on the
higher pitches, it will sound 'yelly'. if one makes changes, the more
changes one makes, the less like speech the singing will become.
singers who do something different when singing out of the speech
range will either try to make the speech range match the 'something
different' or, not. classical singers are the group that make the biggest
attempt to make the speaking range match the 'something different'. because
female classical singers sing so much in what they claim to be 'head' voice,
their low range or, speaking range, tend to be more garbled than the men.
compare joan sutherland (or, leontyne price, for that matter) singing almost
anything to teresa stratas' recordings of weill songs. stratas' low range
is more speech like for these recordings than is usual for a female classical
singer, including her. one can understand the words she sings rather well.
joan sutherland, on the other hand...well, don't you think she just sang
'ah' for everything?
if constructed tone resembled nothing in human vocal usage, one might
say 'ah, what an achievement' but unfortunately, the constructed tone of
female opera singers is easily ridiculed. that's not to say that the
mocking imitations are an exact replica, it simply means that, when most
people hear it for the first time, their usual reaction is not 'ooh, how
magical', their first reaction is to make fun of it. i had a friend in
college (a female classical singer) who used to practice in her first floor
apartment. one day, after practicing, she was headed to the grocery store.
the kids in the neighborhood had been standing outside her apartment. they
asked her "hey lady, what were you doing in there?" she said "i was
practicing my singing." the boy responded "oh! we thought you were crazy."
the point is: even classical singing resembles something found in human
vocal usage so, it is a real stretch to call it an abstraction. in fact, it
might be speech like singing, as well, if one speaks like ted baxter or julia
childs.
mike
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