Formants, tone and voice type

[benny82]

Recently I read a lot about vowels and formants and here is something about tone I came up with, would you say it applies?

Abbreviations are (F1 = first formant, F2 = second formant, H1 = Fundamental, H2 = 2nd harmonics

The tone has:

chest quality if H2 < F1

head quality if F1 < H2 < F2

falsetto quality if H2 > F2

flageolot quality if H1 > F1

Of course the switches in tone happen at different places for different vowels. On /OO/ the switch from chest tone -> head tone can happen as low as D3 for example, because of its low F1, on /EH/ (high F1) the switch happens a lot later (around E4).

On the other hand head quality is especially easy on vowels that have high F2 and low F1, /EE/ is a good example for that. Head quality is especially hard on vowels with high F1 and low F2 (/AH/ for example).

Falsetto quality is easiest on vowels with low F2 (/AW/ is a good falsetto vowel)

Actually the places where qualities switch would be a physiological definition of vocal fach for me. Because lower voices tend to have their natural formants placed a little bit lower, they have to switch earlier towards a more 'heady' configuration. This difference of course is most apparent between men and women.

On and /EH/ vowel for example, an average male has F1 around 660 Hz and an average female has F1 around 860 Hz. This means males can sing "chesty" up to about E4 (330 Hz), while females can sing chesty up to about A4 (440 Hz).

Concerning F2, males have it around 1700 Hz for /EH/ and females have it around 2000 Hz, which means males can (in theory) sing "head quality" up to G#5 on that vowel, while females can keep head quality up to C6.

However, singing a G#5 in head quality on /EH/ is usually not possible for men because the fundamental has already passed F1. The place of F1 for /EH/ makes you enter flageolot-quality pretty much on E5. To extend the range of your head quality beyond E5 you have to switch to a vowel that has F1 > 660 Hz and F2 > 1320 Hz. This can usually only be achieved by shading vowels and most of the time doesn't result in an understandable vowel.

Thus, there is two choices around E5: you can either switch to flageolot by staying on the EH vowel, or you can modify towards a falsetto-quality, which means you have to switch to a vowel with higher F1 but lower F2. Most often this means modifying from /EH/ towards /AH/.

So, natural formant placement (the values I used here were just averages for the respective genders) would be the first indicator of vocal fach or voice type, because it defines a tonal quality of your voice, namely the timbre. It also defines an area of pitches where your voice "resonates best" on a certain vowel. This resonance is given by an area where your vowel profits from F1 amplification, which is usually ~ 150 Hz around the center of F1. So if your F1 is 660 Hz on /EH/ as an average man, your voice should resonate best in the pitch area that has H2 in the 500 - 800 Hz area and H1 in the 250-400 Hz area. Thus, an average male voice resonates best (surprise, surprise) within the C4-G4 area on /EH/.

But there is also a second factor to voice classification, which is the size of your vocal folds. This has less effect on sound, but larger folds make your voice more "heavy" or "chunky". This has an effect of your total ability to create pitches because the folds can only be stretched by a limited amount. If the folds are large they create a lower pitch at maximum tilt. An indicator of "heaviness" seems to be the highest note you can reach with the "dog's whimper". This is an excercise that induces a lot of tilt while removing most of the formant effects by going for a very occluded phonation.

My personal maximum tilt is usually reached at around F#5. I can only make higher notes than that by using TA and thickening the folds. But this feels really ugly and always puts me at the edge of straining. I know other males that can tilt up to B5/C6, so I may be a little heavier than the average guy, but I really don't have much data on that.

I never really tested my formants but from my "resonance senses" I would guess that on an /EH/ vowel my voice centers in F1 pretty much in the C4/D4 area, so my F1 on that vowel is somewhere in the 550-600 Hz area, which makes me placed "lower than average" and pretty much matches my impression of being a lower placed voice.

What are your thoughts about that? Have you ever tried to determine your formants? What is the highest note you can make on the dog's whimper at maximum tilt?

[Owen Korzec]

Cool post benny.

I like to think of it less from the perspective of what is my vocal fach and more from the perspective of what is it that I want my voice to do.

The fact is we have a range flexibility formant wise. For instance though I don't have the range of a tenor and I can sing in my range like how a tenor would sound tonally by raising my larynx and making a few other adjustments to brighten the sound.

So I guess I don't necessarily believe in natural formants. Unless we're talking the formants of our speech when we're not thinking about it. But we do not sing as we speak. When I'm singing I'd say more often than not I'm in command of my tone, I'm not just letting my voice do what it wants to but more like what I'm hearing in my head.

I like to think of chest and head in terms of TA dominant vs CT dominant, but if I were to define them by resonance quality I think I would agree with you on chest. I would put head and falsetto together, the only difference between them is laryngeal and I think while your head voice formant description sounds right, the falsetto one seems totally off. It would be very hard to make that tuning in the range falsetto is normally used. You may be right about the flageolet. But if soprano head voice quality counts as flageolet (and it sure sounds different than a tenor head voice) then you would have to define it instead by F1 merely being closer to H1 than H2, not necessarily below the fundamental.

Here's how I prefer to look at it:

F1/H3+ = open/bright

F1/H2 = belty/shouty/boomy/full

F1/H1 = hooty/flutey

F2/H3+ (tuned to the nearest harmonic) = mid ring/whistle/bell like

F2/H2- = ? (I've never really heard this tuning much...)

Lowered F3 = yarl/kermit/r-colored

When you use terms like covering or chest or head, while they may be more familiar to singers I think they don't describe the sound as accurately as well as literally just describing the tonal quality of the formant tuning you are talking about. Each formant tuning strategy has a unique sound.

And then each of those tunings has a limit though and this depends mainly on gender. CVT overdrive is F1/H2 and their limit is C5 for men and D#5 for women. If we were to do the same for F1/H3 it would be F4 for men and G#4 for women. Limit of F1/H1 would then be C6 for men and D#6 for women.

That's the only limit I've heard determined by research but I'm pretty sure each formant has an upper and lower limit and it depends on the voice.

What still remains a mystery to me is how low or high you can push the formant of a particular vowel in a particular voice before it sounds like a different vowel. I wonder if that would depend on vocal tract size or larynx height or gender or what. But I do think it would vary per voice. It may also be subjective and depend on the listener. But between the two I wonder which would be more dominant...the opinion of the listener or the way the vocal tract affect the perception of the vowel within a society's consistent standards of vowel definition.

About the tilt...what about whistle voice? I can squeak out a whistle pretty hella high (7th octave) after a good hundred attempts and I think most everyone can. I think that would be a better determiner of how much tilt, wouldn't you think? If you can only go up to F#5 I think you are using a thicker configuration than the thinnest your voice can do.

I remember reading on the NCVS website you can figure out your maximum tilt by feeling the amount of space between your thyroid and cricoid cartilage. But then you'd have to compare that with the same space in another human. I wish they established a standard measurement to reference or something like that to give an approximate pitch but is seems like more research needs to be done.

[Jens]

I dont think formants and vocalfach are static. Even within a fach you will see diffrent limits and behaviours of the formants.

formants change alot depending on your coordination/setup/your language/ speech habits ect ect. What sound you are aiming for. Also looking for some maximum extreme and connecting that to vocalfach is very hard to pull off in a good way. There will be bassos with the same extremes as tenors and vice versa. It's a very intresting topic however but I would like it to be more aimed for the individual than gearing it towards fach.

Great job!

[benny82]

Soprano head voice does not count as flageolot, it counts as head voice. It sounds different compared to tenor head voice because of the laryngeal component. Classical tenor head voice is usually M1 register, soprano head voice is M2 register. But in terms of tuning they are similar. If you take a classical counter tenor, his head voice sounds a lot more similar to a soprano (below E5) because he is using the same laryngeal register (M2). However, pretty much at E5 his sound quality changes towards falsetto resonance, which doesn't happen for sopranos. Sopranos usually bridge directly from head into flute at C6 and leave out the falsetto resonance, which is why classical singers often say that women don't even have falsetto.

In the middle part of your voice (below E5) falsetto is typically produced if your tongue is too low (which creates a really low F2). You can do this for example if you try to phonate an OO in the lower part with an open mouth. This drops F2 so much, that the condition H2 > F2 becomes reality. However, according to CVT, you should avoid falsetto below C5, so that doesn't differ much from my definition of "falsetto range" (which would be to use it above E5, at least on /EH/, on many other vowels it has to be used earlier).

The actual limit of tunings is also pretty obvious. If you tune H2 to F1 for example, you will have to raise F1 once H2 passes its center (this is sometimes the definition of "belting"). Raising F1 means that you have to narrow more in the back (tongue gets closer to the back wall). Obviously, at some point the tongue will touch the back wall and block the airflow. Personally, I am experiencing something like "choking my tongue" at that point.

F2 to H2 tuning is actually pretty common. It is usually the tuning you want to use in your lower head voice from G4 on. The vowel modifications in the pillars approach actually reflect that. You sing on an /EH/ vowel up to E4, which tunes H2 to F1, then you switch to an /UH/ vowel by lowering the front part of your tongue. This /UH/ has a lower F2 than /EH/, which pulls F2 closer towards H2. Once H2 passes F2 (which happens in the A#4 area), you have to narrow at the top again (tongue gets closer to the top again), which puts you back to an /EH/-like vowel and starts raising F2 to still stay within tuning range.

Once H2 passes F2 (which happens around E5), you can switch to an /AH/ vowel to raise F1 and prevent the F1/H1 tuning.

Of course you don't switch fully, you actually do shadings, but this is pretty much what is happening imo.

About the tilt: I believe that this really high "squeaky" whistle voice is not produced by additional tilt (lengthening) of the folds, but by the fact that the folds don't vibrate along their full length anymore. They do however seem to have full closure and actually vibrate as is pointed out by recent research, so it is actually not a real "whistle" through the folds, it's just the resonance that lets it be percieved as a whistle.

About voice types: Raising your larynx will not make a baritone sound like a tenor imo. That may be true for very soft phonations (CVT Neutral, maybe even Curbing) but not for the fully metallic ones.

[benny82]

I dont think formants and vocalfach are static. Even within a fach you will see diffrent limits and behaviours of the formants.

formants change alot depending on your coordination/setup/your language/ speech habits ect ect. What sound you are aiming for. Also looking for some maximum extreme and connecting that to vocalfach is very hard to pull off in a good way. There will be bassos with the same extremes as tenors and vice versa. It's a very intresting topic however but I would like it to be more aimed for the individual than gearing it towards fach.

Great job!

Yes. That is actually the goal. Find out where your individual formants lie and you can kind of "plan" which resonance strategy you have to use to create the sound you want, and maybe even good bridging points. The connection to classical fach is more out of couriosity.

[MDEW]

I just do not understand formant tuning. That may have something to do with whether you are "pulling chest" singing in falsetto or flageolet but would it make the difference in sound relating to tone of Waylon Jennings compaired to Willy Nelson?

I would understand things better if someone would say things like Raise the midde of your tongue higher or back of tongue needs to be farther away from the back of your throat.

I know that some of you understand that when someone mentions matching F1 to H2 you automatically understand it as a certain vowel shape or throat shape that includes raising and lowering tonue, larynx and lip shape but it does not make any sense to me.

[Owen Korzec]

My response in bold,

Soprano head voice does not count as flageolot, it counts as head voice. It sounds different compared to tenor head voice because of the laryngeal component. Classical tenor head voice is usually M1 register, soprano head voice is M2 register. But in terms of tuning they are similar. I disagree on this. The most common tuning for tenor high C (I put a "best high C's" youtube video in a spectrograph to confirm this) is H2/F3. For sopranos we know it's more of the hooty F1/H1 tuning. Countertenors also use F1/H1 quite a bit I think.If you take a classical counter tenor, his head voice sounds a lot more similar to a soprano (below E5) because he is using the same laryngeal register (M2). However, pretty much at E5 his sound quality changes towards falsetto resonance, which doesn't happen for sopranos. Sopranos usually bridge directly from head into flute at C6 and leave out the falsetto resonance, which is why classical singers often say that women don't even have falsetto.

In the middle part of your voice (below E5) falsetto is typically produced if your tongue is too low (which creates a really low F2). You can do this for example if you try to phonate an OO in the lower part with an open mouth. This drops F2 so much, that the condition H2 > F2 becomes reality. However, according to CVT, you should avoid falsetto below C5, so that doesn't differ much from my definition of "falsetto range" (which would be to use it above E5, at least on /EH/, on many other vowels it has to be used earlier).

Okay fair enough. F2/H2 can only happen above C5 and falsetto is commonly used below that. But for 5th octave notes that is probably the most likely tuning

The actual limit of tunings is also pretty obvious. If you tune H2 to F1 for example, you will have to raise F1 once H2 passes its center (this is sometimes the definition of "belting"). Raising F1 means that you have to narrow more in the back (tongue gets closer to the back wall). Obviously, at some point the tongue will touch the back wall and block the airflow. Personally, I am experiencing something like "choking my tongue" at that point.

F2 to H2 tuning is actually pretty common. It is usually the tuning you want to use in your lower head voice from G4 on. The vowel modifications in the pillars approach actually reflect that. You sing on an /EH/ vowel up to E4, which tunes H2 to F1, then you switch to an /UH/ vowel by lowering the front part of your tongue. This /UH/ has a lower F2 than /EH/, which pulls F2 closer towards H2. Once H2 passes F2 (which happens in the A#4 area), you have to narrow at the top again (tongue gets closer to the top again), which puts you back to an /EH/-like vowel and starts raising F2 to still stay within tuning range.

Okay I know this part isn't right. In TVS head voice what is happening is you are retaining F1/H2 inside a head voice layngeal configuration and the uh modification retunes F2 to align with H4, or H3 for notes above A4ish. This adds a heady color to support the laryngeal change but not so much as to take away wthe belt quality. But as far as I know it would be impossible or really funky sounding to attempt to tune F2/H2 on a G4 since F2 can't go that low without modifing to an awful sounding exaggerated "u" vowel. The second formant of "uh" sits around 1500 hz. So on a G4 which is about 390 hz, that puts the F2 of uh right around H4. And then what happens after that is you can do one of two things. You can carry up that same formant tuning higher by gradually modifying to eh or any vowel with a similar F2 as eh. So that by the time you get to C5 with F2/H4, F2 is around 2000 hz which is about where the 2nd formant of eh is. Or, a darker sounding alternative is to keep F2 constant by retaining the uh vowel and allowing H4 to rise above F2 and then let F2 tune to H3. If this F2/H3 tuning becomes dominant it can give that kind of classical tenor head voice sound around high C.

Once H2 passes F2 (which happens around E5), you can switch to an /AH/ vowel to raise F1 and prevent the F1/H1 tuning.

Of course you don't switch fully, you actually do shadings, but this is pretty much what is happening imo.

About the tilt: I believe that this really high "squeaky" whistle voice is not produced by additional tilt (lengthening) of the folds, but by the fact that the folds don't vibrate along their full length anymore. They do however seem to have full closure and actually vibrate as is pointed out by recent research, so it is actually not a real "whistle" through the folds, it's just the resonance that lets it be percieved as a whistle.

About voice types: Raising your larynx will not make a baritone sound like a tenor imo. That may be true for very soft phonations (CVT Neutral, maybe even Curbing) but not for the fully metallic ones.

What leads you to believe this? As far as the general acoustic spectrum goes you are basically reconfiguring your vocal tract to be the size of a tenor's that is not raised. You obviously can't change the size of your folds but it is possible to mimic a tenor's overall acoustic properties, you just won't be able to carry those properties high as a tenor can. IMO

[Owen Korzec]

I just do not understand formant tuning. That may have something to do with whether you are "pulling chest" singing in falsetto or flageolet but would it make the difference in sound relating to tone of Waylon Jennings compaired to Willy Nelson?

I would understand things better if someone would say things like Raise the midde of your tongue higher or back of tongue needs to be farther away from the back of your throat.

I know that some of you understand that when someone mentions matching F1 to H2 you automatically understand it as a certain vowel shape or throat shape that includes raising and lowering tonue, larynx and lip shape but it does not make any sense to me.

MDEW this should be a good start. This will get you the general concept.

http://www.ncvs.org/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/rules.html

In addition it would be helpful to know:

back vowels are characterized by low F2

front vowels are characterized by high F2

closed vowels are characterized by low F1

open vowels are characterized by high F1

And then what I didn't learn until later on from Rachsing is that dropping the jaw raises F1 not because it increases the mouth opening but because it decreases the space between the back of the tongue and the pharyngeal wall. So in that space back there, opening it raises the F1 frequency and narrowing it raises the F1 frequency. Then for F2, the same principles apply but involving the space between the tongue and the hard palate. That can be confusing to wrap your head around because it kind of goes against the open/close/front/back descriptions.

As for the difference between singers, yes and no. It's possible for two singers to have similar vowel formants but sound completely different because of what they are doing in the upper frequencies. But still the closer their vowel formants are the more similar they will sound, if all other factors were equal.

And here's a question I still have: is there a formant difference between dropping the jaw and lowering the back of the tongue?

[benny82]

Well, for the classical singing my main source is this:

http://www.singwise.com/cgi-bin/main.pl?section=articles&doc=VowelsFormantsAndModifications&page=3

Second formant tuning is more appropriate from F4# on, however, a lighter tenor will feel less stress singing a first formant dominant F4# than a heavier voice will. Regardless, the larynx will rise for an F4# sung in first formant dominance. The leggiero who keeps f1 (first formant) dominance up until A4b, like some do, will experience a more difficult shift when he finally does go to f2 tuning.

Don't know if that's correct, but it basically says that most males switch to f2 tuning around F#4. What women do in the high area is actually more of an F1 de-tuning than F2 tuning. Their bigger concern is that the fundamental stays below F1 to keep vowel definition.

I can't see how you can keep up the F1 -> H2 tuning above G4 either, because H2 of G4 is almost 800 Hz and hardly any vowel has a 1st formant that high. On a pure /UH/ you can eventually go up to something like A#4, but then you will have a hard break after that because you didn't prepare the switch in tuning, just like the quote from singwise says. I agree though that you have to tune to H4/H3 first before you can tune to H2, but it is still a switch from F1 tuning to F2 tuning or in other words, F2 is now your primary "resonator".

As for "mimicking a tenor". It is a deciding property for me that you can produce their sound over their range, which of course includes the high notes. Within the shared part of the classical range (C3-F4) fachs can mimick each other with decent success.

[Owen Korzec]

I am positive that any male with a normal vocal tract can keep up F1/H2 tuning all the way up to C5. The question is should you. Well, probably not because you'd have to make very drastic vowel modifications. By the C5 everything would have to be a bright ah vowel. That might work for some rock and metal styles. But what singwise suggests is best practice for most singing.

[MDEW]

Thanks Owen for the link to NCVS. I had not seen that site before.

[Jens]

Also wanna add, sopranos in classical singing vocalise in head/falsetto it's the same as men's toprange there's no diffrence really.

Cvt has no problem with falsetto in the middle part of the range either, it's the thinned out frail falsettosounds in the middle they advocate against. Hooty supported falsetto is ok

Cheers guys keep up the good work

[VideoHere]

mdew, i'm just as in the dark, but less so now..thanks owen for that link.

benny, i had a lesson last year with karyn.....she's great.

jens , i'm finding a lot can come from working out those hooty lower head tones.

[Felipe Carvalho]

Regarding fachs based on formant/harmonic possible ranges, its basicly the same idea of voice classification based on dimessions of the vocal tract. Its not possible because the whole system can behave on much different ways and there are choices that can be made as well as the natural disposition of a person for a given kind of task.

Not only that, you will find that within the same fach people use different kinds of "formant comformity" to produce the same musical content, there are tenors that pass lower, others that pass higher, some will tune H4, others H3 on the same vowel, etc...

Fachs will matter on classical passaggio and training, and its done by ear.

[Jens]

mdew

jens , i'm finding a lot can come from working out those hooty lower head tones.

Yepp My point aswell however we dont want thinning occur on those lower head/falsetto wich was my point :)

[MDEW]

A little twist to the problem. :/

Is it possible to detune formants/harmonics to the extent of reducing volume?

When I am trying to use full voice with head resonance the sound sometimes becomes extremely faint. If I use just head voice/edge or falsetto the volume is there. This is around G4 and above.

[Owen Korzec]

A little twist to the problem. :/

Is it possible to detune formants/harmonics to the extent of reducing volume?

When I am trying to use full voice with head resonance the sound sometimes becomes extremely faint. If I use just head voice/edge or falsetto the volume is there. This is around G4 and above.

Yes and that is probably your issue. Which vowels sound most faint? try modifying toward uh it tends to tune better in that range

[eggplantbren]

About voice types: Raising your larynx will not make a baritone sound like a tenor imo. That may be true for very soft phonations (CVT Neutral, maybe even Curbing) but not for the fully metallic ones.

What leads you to believe this? As far as the general acoustic spectrum goes you are basically reconfiguring your vocal tract to be the size of a tenor's that is not raised. You obviously can't change the size of your folds but it is possible to mimic a tenor's overall acoustic properties, you just won't be able to carry those properties high as a tenor can. IMO

I'm with Owen on this. Raising the larynx isn't the only thing you could do. There are so many possibilities and by mixing them up in the right ways I'm sure a person who usually makes sounds that would be described as 'baritone' could make sounds that would be called 'tenor'.

[benny82]

I'm with Owen on this. Raising the larynx isn't the only thing you could do. There are so many possibilities and by mixing them up in the right ways I'm sure a person who usually makes sounds that would be described as 'baritone' could make sounds that would be called 'tenor'.

This is a little bit a matter of perspective. Baritones (especially the higher ones which are more common) are pretty close to tenors (because the lower ones are more common). For me as a bass, this is in a completely different ballpark. If I try to sound like a tenor I have to make my vocal tract so small that it just feels awful, especially when singing 'connected' on low head notes.

I stated it a few times: the passaggio in terms of formants is around half an octave apart if you compare the most common bass to the most common tenor. If you compare the most common baritone (which is the higher type of baritone) to the most common type of tenor (which is the lower version), the difference is more like one or two notes. However, it is still hard even for a baritone to mimick the timbre of a tenor in a head voice + M1 configuration on notes like B4/C5, especially if you want classical sound color.

It is also not about making some sounds that sound like they come from a tenor. Even I can do that in the middle range. It is about passaggio and about the notes that are considered most difficult, which is usually the G4-C5 area. Im also in general not a big fan of manipulating larynx position too much. If you put it too low, you lose definition and twang (and in the end fold closure). If you put it too high you build up tension pretty fast and lose the natural free vibrato.

BTW: This is also really a good read on formants and stuff:

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthemodernvocalistworld.com%2F2010%2F05%2F31%2Fmale-voice-passagio-101-where-is-it-and-why%2F&ei=zJrKUc3qD9S0hAeS9oH4AQ&usg=AFQjCNFszJzXMZNO2yleiqsBb-i4spyhiQ&sig2=Lzpr9KD8iqOICg5M0GebVQ&bvm=bv.48340889,d.d2k

[VideoHere]

excellent video here about the larynx:

[ronws]

This is a little bit a matter of perspective. Baritones (especially the higher ones which are more common) are pretty close to tenors (because the lower ones are more common). For me as a bass, this is in a completely different ballpark. If I try to sound like a tenor I have to make my vocal tract so small that it just feels awful, especially when singing 'connected' on low head notes.

I stated it a few times: the passaggio in terms of formants is around half an octave apart if you compare the most common bass to the most common tenor. If you compare the most common baritone (which is the higher type of baritone) to the most common type of tenor (which is the lower version), the difference is more like one or two notes. However, it is still hard even for a baritone to mimick the timbre of a tenor in a head voice + M1 configuration on notes like B4/C5, especially if you want classical sound color.

It is also not about making some sounds that sound like they come from a tenor. Even I can do that in the middle range. It is about passaggio and about the notes that are considered most difficult, which is usually the G4-C5 area. Im also in general not a big fan of manipulating larynx position too much. If you put it too low, you lose definition and twang (and in the end fold closure). If you put it too high you build up tension pretty fast and lose the natural free vibrato.

BTW: This is also really a good read on formants and stuff:

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthemodernvocalistworld.com%2F2010%2F05%2F31%2Fmale-voice-passagio-101-where-is-it-and-why%2F&ei=zJrKUc3qD9S0hAeS9oH4AQ&usg=AFQjCNFszJzXMZNO2yleiqsBb-i4spyhiQ&sig2=Lzpr9KD8iqOICg5M0GebVQ&bvm=bv.48340889,d.d2k

That almost sounded like "do what your voice can do." What are you, some kind of pro?

:)

[eggplantbren]

Ok Ron, we all know voices aren't infinitely flexible. I will never sound like a classical soprano or Barry White. But there is a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to designing the sound you want.