While I’m enamoured of many female singers, I am more so of male singers. The buzz I get from hearing a clever, or soulful or classically gifted male singer is much more powerful than I get from a female singer, and I truly want to be able to recreate that male sound.
I love affecting an audience with my sound, making my aunties cry, or getting a big unexpected cheer, but I also like singing for how it feels for me. I love my chest voice and the days when I can make myself sound like Ella Fitzgerald or Tracey Chapman. There’s something warm and wonderful about feeling my sound resonate there, and I desperately wish I could sing even lower to feel even more resonance. I love being in choirs where I can feel the bass sound vibrate right through me and merge with my voice, but I’d also love to produce that sound myself. I love the hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck sensation of hearing a really pure falsetto sound, but I’m frustrated because even though I can sing those notes my voice will never quite have the same timbral effect. I can sing three octaves worth of notes, but I’ll never have the low notes of a baritone or the spine-tingling falsetto of a male pop-singer. I’ll just have to listen and admire, I suppose.
Here’s some videos of male singers that have something special or quirky that I really wish I could understand.
1. Mal Webb (very quirky- this video inspired this blogpost, not having ‘falsetto’ makes what he does impossible for me to do)
2. Phillipe Jaroussky (quirky and classical- a countertenor who also sings baritone, once again, I can’t do this because I’m not male)
3. Bryn Terfel (classical- a baritone whose round tone is sublime)
4. James Taylor (folk yet soulful- I’ve been listening to him all weekend)
Alison's Music Blog 