Had my first opera lesson tonight and it was awesome. The teacher used a sound analyzer to show me where my overtones were. You should've seen his voice compared to mine on that thing - mine was a thick line of sound and his whited out the machine with its richness.

Anyways, from his ears' and computer's observation of my speaking and singing voice, I'm a tenor. As a rock and roll singer (death metal) and opera singer, this is such great news, but I've been thinking I was a baritone for the past 17 years, so it saddened me when the blinders were removed.

Maybe me and Xavier can start a support group for recovering from baritone misclassification.

BTW,

The teacher was impressed with the strength of my vocal cords - something which happened thanks to RYV!

Where do you take the lessons? I want my vocal chords analyzed!

me too. where does he get that device?

I dont think to be baritone is a misclassification...everybody wants to be a tenor but a lot of great singers like Geoff Tate are baritone..
They use the term baritone because they hear a full dynamic in your voice at low-medium range, but that doesnt means that you cant reach a c6 in full voice

I think it's great news But yeah, tell us more about that voice analyzer, will you? What kind of software is he using? Where can we get it?

Try Wave lab...thats a good software!

Donrogg,

My lessons are in Nashua, NH at the Carey Henderson Vocal Studios (William Carey is my teacher).

oiselle and Mossman,

I was trying not to be too curious about the software (though who doesn't want such a thing for practice?), but it separated sounds into their harmonics/formants and measured the levels in decibels. Looked like the EVP software on Ghost Hunters only with more graphs to display the sound.

dani,

I thought I was a baritone, but I'm not. So now my high notes are no longer as impressive (now more work is needed), but it also explains why my throat would feel raw when singing baritone repertoire in full voice (more damaging than death-metal growls).

lol sometime i wish it happen to me....

but i'm sure a barytone (but high). But doesn't matter, as i hear Coverdale or glenn Hughes speaking i'm pretty sure they are baritone!!!!

Remember kids, DO NOT get caught up in that classification crap;) You can be whatever you want to be:)

JV

PS- Glad it made you happy though:)

For singing over an orchestra without amplification, proper voice classification is an important tool.

For all other singing, you're right - it's just meaningless stuff and a source of needless worry. I can sing Johnny Cash and Lizzy Borden songs and sound just as bad with my gutteral lows as I do with my highest notes.

Well, I am classified a bass but yet I 20 decibels+ louder thyan a room full of professional opera singers including Tenors, Alots and Sopranos;)But then again I am sure there is a reason for classification as opposed to orchesteral singing.

JV

There are also a lot of poorly trained opera singers out there these days. Some of the major opera companies now use microphones to enhance the voices of some of their performers. It used to be that if a person's voice couldn't fill the hall, that person didn't get the part. Not so anymore for too many places. IIRC, though, the singers you're speaking about come from a place that doesn't mic their singers. But they didn't get voice lessons from Jaime Vendera and Jim Gillette, so you had an advantage over them.

Back to the voice type and being heard over the instruments - it's volume of the overtones that determines how well a voice can be heard in such settings. The overtones of most orchestral instruments have a lit powderkeg of energy in the 500hz range whereas folks singing with that operatic ring have theirs between 2300-3200hz (with some lower and higher...). I can sing just as loud, maybe louder, without that ring in my voice, but the sound and feeling are just addicting to make even though they have little place in rock and metal singing.

wrong. lots of rock singers have that ring in the 2-3k hz range.

and how to devellop that "ring"??

It's not the first time i read this.

The only rock singer I've heard so far that impressed me in terms of having a 'ringing' voice would be Khan, from Kamelot.


Don't get me wrong! I love plenty of rock singers, but speaking purely in operatic terms Khan is the only one I'm impressed with. Speaking in terms of power, emotion, etc. I'm very impressed with lots of other singers.

If you want to see the different harmonics and amplitudes, just look for a spectrogram analysis program. VoceVista (www.vocevista.com) is a pretty good one for the voice. http://files.myopera.com/CunoDante/files/vocevista.zip Right click on that link, then click "Save Target As". Make sure it saves as a ZIP file. That's the program. It can be used in real time, or you can use it with recordings you have. As an alternative program, in my Acoustics class, we use something called Praat. (www.praat.org)

Wow! Thanks for that link I'm trying to figure it out; what is the .cnt file for? what program do I need to open it or do I just need the .exe file? So do you just press record and speak into the mic? Do you have any info as to how to analyze the results?

Yeah thanks for that Cuno. You are the man!

JV

No problem, everyone. All you need to actually run the program is the EXE file. I'm not sure what the CNT file does. Check out the VoceVista web site (www.vocevista.com) to see how to analyze what you read. Look specifically at the "Using VoceVista" and "Research" parts. Also, there is a book out there based on the use of VoceVista. It tells how to read the results and what they could possibly mean. The name of that book is "Voice: Technology and Tradition". It is by Garyth Nair. I've read it before and it's kind of intense, but has a lot of information about spectrogram analysis of singers. You may also want to check out some of the tutorials by Ingo Titze on his web site, because he gives you a brief introduction to the concepts you'll encounter when people use spectrogram analysis programs. http://www.ncvs.org/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/index.html Check out chapters 6 and 9 on that page.

With that said, when you first use VoceVista, click on "Analysis". Then click "Advanced Analysis Options". You'll find some settings you can play with. Under processing, I normally only play with "Power Spectrum Amplitude Scale" (if the input is too loud or not loud enough), "Power Spectrum Freq Scale" (if you want to see a greater range of overtone up to the 10000 Hz range) and "F0 Measurement" (if you want to see the exact fundamental frequency on which you're singing). Under display, I normally check off F1 so that I can see the power spectrum in addition to all the other info. I personally like the power spectrum display best because it's the easiest to read and navigate. Once you finish playing with the settings, you just click "Run" and it starts recording until you press "Freeze". Clicking on "Freeze" shows you the last 6 seconds of whatever you just recorded so you can analyze it. (To go back or forward in time, navigate in the "Spectrogram" frame in the bottom right.) You can change this setting from 6 seconds to something greater if you like under "Spectrogram Time History" back in "Advanced Analysis Options". Some other ways you can use this program is to analyze audio files. Although it's only supposed to be WAV files you can analyze, there is a way around this. Under the top menu options, click on "Project" --> "Volume Control". In the menu bar of the window that pops up, click on "Options" --> "Properties". Once in the dialog box, find a way to select "Recording" under the "Adjust volume for" section. Depending on how your sound card is set up, you may just be able to click on it. If it is grayed out, then go change your "Mixer Device" until you find one that allows you to access the "Recording" option. Then hit ok. A new window should come up. Depending on how your PC is set up, you may have several options which your PC can use as input. On mine, I have "CD Audio", "Microphone", and "Wave Out". If you want to analyze audio, just select "Wave Out", then exit the window and play your audio file in whatever program you use to play music. If you have Vocevista running, you'll see the spectrogram readout for the audio file in real time. This also works with videos too, or any sound that your computer plays for that matter.

That sounds very interesting. I don't have time to look at it now but I'm going to over the Holidays for sure :) Thanks so much!