[this is a version of a post which first appeared on my blog From the Front of the Choir]
When you join a choir that sings in harmony, you will find that some parts are too high for you and some parts are too low.
Just like Goldilocks, you will gravitate to the part which is “just right” — the place where you feel comfortable and are not straining your voice. But what if none of the parts feel right??!!
When you first start singing you’ll find that the range of notes that you can sing can be quite narrow. As you sing more regularly, you will find that you begin to reach higher and lower notes with more ease.
However, even when you’ve been singing for some time, you might come across a particular song that has a note that is outside your range, that you can’t sing comfortably or even can’t reach at all.
What’s the problem here?
It may be that you’re simply in the wrong part.
When women first join a choir, they often go to the alto part because it’s not too high, and not too low. This is a safe place to be at first since it’s comfortably in the middle ground.
Or they may end up with the sopranos because that’s what ‘proper’ women’s singing is like (see also Why can't I sing?).
Sometimes people join a part because they reckon that it’s the part that always has the tune. But in my kind of choirs, no one part consistently has the tune, and even if it did, they songs are not familiar in the first place so it is of no real advantage!
I’ve known some women to stay in the ‘wrong’ part for several years before they realise that they actually have a far greater range than they first thought, or that they could sing much higher/ lower than they had imagined.
Women with very low voices usually head for the tenor section (see Low women vs. tenor men). In most community choirs this is usually where the ‘low ladies’ live because it’s never really that low.
But what about the poor blokes?
They have only two options: tenor, which is usually too high for them, or bass which is often too low. So they get put off and think they can’t sing properly or that they don’t have much of a vocal range.
The trouble is, most men are really baritones which means that they hover somewhere between tenor and bass. In which case there is no real home for them, nowhere where they feel “just right”.
I’m tossing these terms around like I know what I’m talking about: alto, tenor, baritone, etc., but what do they actually mean? And what about all those other terms that we might have heard of: mezzo-soprano, counter-tenor, bass-baritone?
Actually, there are no absolute strict definitions of any of these terms. They are simply names which give an indication of the range of notes that a person singing that part is expected to be able to sing.
A composer will bear this in mind when writing a choral piece (usually!), but there is no exact agreement on what those ranges might be. It is simply an attempt to categorise the wide range of vocal possibilities out there.
Since they are generalisations, there will inevitably be some people who don’t fit comfortably into any category. There will always be a few male altos and female basses, for example.
Very simplistically, the sopranos are women with high voices, and the altos are women with lower voices.
The tenors are the high men, and the basses are the low men.
In classical music and professional choirs, the sopranos go really high and the basses go really low. Most untrained women are probably at the low end of the altos and won’t be able to hit some of the high alto notes. Most untrained men are baritones: they won’t be able to hit the really high tenor notes or the really low bass notes.
In most community choirs, songs are chosen and arranged to fit a smaller vocal range. In particular, the soprano part will never go too high, and most women will be able to get the lowest note of the tenor part (although not necessarily comfortably). Most men will be happy in the bass section because it won’t go too low.
For those of you who are musically trained, in a community choir I tend to not go much higher than the D an octave and a bit above middle C, or lower than the G below middle C for women’s voices, and the same an octave lower for men. I usually find that everybody in the choir can cope with this range, so it gives people the flexibility to move around and try out different parts.
When I’ve been working with a group for some time, I find I can cheat the high notes up (the highest I’ve gone up to so far is the G above the high D I mentioned earlier) for both women tops and male tenors (an octave lower). But I’ve only ever really taken the lowest note down to the F just below the G I mentioned earlier.
Many people with a little musical knowledge come to a choir with preconceptions about voice types and vocal ranges, so I try not to use technical terms like alto, tenor, etc. with a beginner choir, but just say tops, middles, low ladies/ high men, and bass.
Next week I’ll write about how to find the right part for you in the choir and why it might not be where you expect: S, A, T or B – which is the part for me?
Chris Rowbury: chrisrowbury.com
