As I freely admit, I can’t sing. No modesty, false or otherwise - I can’t match a tone and can’t carry a tune in a bucket with my off-key croaking. Pretty disgusting, actually, given how much music means to me.
Ne’ertheless, I am interested in learning something. Frequently, people make comments like ‘I play an ‘x’ (x=key) whistle because that’s the key I sing in’. This makes little or no sense to me. I mean, aren’t musical instruments suppposed to be merely mechanical attempts to replicate the human voice? And, therefore, shouldn’t the master instrument (the aforesaid human voice) be capable of singing any note and thus any key?
Can someone explain this to me? Does anyone even understand what I’m trying to ask?
Well, the voice has a certain range and so some
voices sing very nicely in C or E that must
strain with tunes pitched in G or D.
And so on. One of the reasons why I
need a G whistle when playing with
singers, cause my people are usually singing
in C, which is easy to get on the G whistle. Best
The voice has a range within which it is comfortable and sounds best. Each of us has a different range, as do the differing keys of whistles, which pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. Generally speaking, a low D whistle will have a range of two octaves (and a bit) that overlaps nicely with the voice range of somone who sings low notes well (“bass” singer) while a person who sings tenor sings akin to a whistle in a higher key, as both the singer and the whistle have a range that starts and ends a bit higher up the scale. Both the singers and the whistles play some of the same notes (they overlap in range), but the low singer/whistle starts and ends on lower notes than the higher singer/whistle.
I hope this makes some sense.
Jef
Argh, I see Jim beat me to it. I thought he’d be busy elsewhere
First, nobody sings in a key. Just as a D whistle will be the best choice for some tunes in D and some in G, so too with vocal ranges. Depending on the range of the tune you are singing, you might choose D or you might choose G if you have that range.
You might want to sound relaxed when you sing, or you might want to sound a bit tense and edgy. If I want the effect of letting rip or leaning into a tune, I sing about a tone up from the key that would be most comfortable. I had a bit of a problem for a while in that some songs were comfortable in C but sounded a bit flat. When I tried to sing them in D, I found the strain just a bit too much. Db seemed the obvious compromise, but it’s not a good key for guitar, expecially if I want to tune down, and I simply don’t yet have an appropriate whistle. Not great on Anglo concertina either. I did find, though, that steady practice made it easier for me to sing in D, so I don’t have that problem any more. Quite a lot of tenors are not ‘natural’ tenors; they’ve trained themselves to sing a bit higher than would be ideal for their voices.
Coincidentally I heard a piece on Radio 4 today about a woman who teaches people to sing, even if they think they can’t. She mostly teaches retired people, and hasn’t failed yet, so there’s still hope, Chuck, with the right teacher and the right approach.
