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If a bass were to sing Bruno Mars...

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He would be in a headier place than Bruno Mars for any given note, but would this be audible?

Say the bass did a perfect cover in the original key, would it portray the same feeling?

I guess what I am asking is, what makes a note sound high, is it the pitch or the harmonic peaks?

F.ex. if you ascend from D3-D4 as a baritone, you will hear amplification of the second harmonic, which may not be as strongly present if say a very high tenor did the same siren. Revelation as I'm typing this; I assume this is why different voices sound deeper/higher?

Would it stylistically create a more accurate cover if the Bass were to lower the Bruno Mars song so that it sits in the same "place" as it does for Bruno?

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All depends on how well and how skillful the basso is able to mimic.

Singing is a skill.

There are very large voices that can sing just as high and higher than bruno mars and vice versa.

There are no universal answer to this all depends on the individual singer

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It's not so much regarding range, but more like this.

Imagine two singers, singer A's voice is exactly 2 semi-tones lower than singer B's given the same everything.

If they did identical covers of a song but singer A did it 2 semi-tones lower than singer B and you listened to them both at separate times so you don't have any relative pitch, would one be fooled into thinking that both songs were the same pitch because their voices are tuned the same way, even though the pitches are different?

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If you change the Key or pitch of a song it will change the general feel of the song. Strike an F# on the piano or a guitar. There is an urgency to the sound. Now strike an Eb. It is almost somber and melancholy.

If you change the Key of a song and use a Key that is closer in characteristics to the original then you can get a similar feeling from the song.

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Well it depends on the degree of the tonal change.

Up to 2 semitones, probably nobody will notice, unless they are looking for it. I've sent a recording of Music of the Night a while ago, when the whole "formating tuning" thing was on because of the so called money note in there. There was a difference of a half step and nobody mentioned it, neither did anyone else that listenned to it outside the forum.

Now, one thing is taking things a half step up or down to value your voice best. What you propose would be someone with a voice like mine, taking a Kate Bush song and lowering it something like 5 semitones.

Could be interesting, and could even sound quite good depending on how it is done, but well, the song would become something else, the feel would change and it would be easy to notice. You know, girl singing does not equal guy singing. Large difference of voice qualities. That would be something similar to a fach transposition.

Maybe I could use my resources, including falsetto, to try to bring more of the feel of the original and do it on the same key, or as I mentioned before, with a small difference of one or 2 semitones, thats a different story. And to some extent you can preserve the feel of the original and even remind of her using details and the same interpretative line, but resonance will change, passage points will be very different, etc. Then its a matter of how your technique holds, if your passage is good, it should not matter much, you will still sound like a different person, but you will capture the feel. Fach will matter for your training, but will not be a limiting factor, its actually the opposite.

And yet another approach is trying to BE Kate Bush and sounding just like her, this is beyond the scope of technical study you will be on your own in the mimic department (or maybe there is mimic techniques/methods, I do not know of it), and therefore fachs will not matter much anymore. Of course people still do it, and training with technique probably will help, but you wont find a great ready recipe to do such thing, and if the nature of the change is too big, you will surely compromise other aspects of your singing.

Most Pop singing fits situation 2 quite well.

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If you change the Key or pitch of a song it will change the general feel of the song. Strike an F# on the piano or a guitar. There is an urgency to the sound. Now strike an Eb. It is almost somber and melancholy.

If you change the Key of a song and use a Key that is closer in characteristics to the original then you can get a similar feeling from the song.

mdew when you do what you proposes, the feel comes from the interval jump, not the notes itself.

If you play A and then the F#, you do the same interval jump and the same feel will happen.

But your idea is correct because most people will recall the original being higher in key if the change is too big.

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I have found that for most songs, you can lower the key a lot, rearrange the song accordingly (<<<that is the part everyone leaves out) and it will sound nearly as good as the original or maybe even better, although very different.

I recently came up with an arrangement of Clarity by Zedd with the melody down a full octave and to my ears it sounds great. But I had to turn it into this chill half time shuffle hip hop thing in order to make it good enough to compete with the original in terms of overall quality of the arrangement. If all you do is lower the key, it will probably sound inferior to the original if the margin of difference is more than what Felipe mentioned.

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I have found that for most songs, you can lower the key a lot, rearrange the song accordingly (<<<that is the part everyone leaves out) and it will sound nearly as good as the original or maybe even better, although very different.

I recently came up with an arrangement of Clarity by Zedd with the melody down a full octave and to my ears it sounds great. But I had to turn it into this chill half time shuffle hip hop thing in order to make it good enough to compete with the original in terms of overall quality of the arrangement. If all you do is lower the key, it will probably sound inferior to the original if the margin of difference is more than what Felipe mentioned.

True, and if you change the arrangement and melody, you brake away from the perception of interval jump that the memory of the original song would cause.

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True, and if you change the arrangement and melody, you brake away from the perception of interval jump that the memory of the original song would cause.

And the need to change arrangement to get the feel back is because the different key centers have a different inherent feel to them.

Like it or not "Smoke on the Water" does not have the same impact when played in F as it does G. Try it.

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If you change the Key or pitch of a song it will change the general feel of the song. Strike an F# on the piano or a guitar. There is an urgency to the sound. Now strike an Eb. It is almost somber and melancholy.

If you change the Key of a song and use a Key that is closer in characteristics to the original then you can get a similar feeling from the song.

Actually I think MDEW is right. Some composers write a piece in a certain key because of the feeling/color of that particular key.

That said I believe that if you are a bass and want to cover a Bruno Mars song (and get the same effect) you should lower the key a bit so that it sits in the same spot for your voice. But you can also be creative with it and do your own version in any key you like.

For instance: Mariah Carey sings "Open Arms" in Eb, Journey does it in D. Obviously Mariah's voice sits more than a semitone higher than Steve's but it's a different version.

Nick

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What Jens said. If you really train for it, you should be able to mimic Bruno Mars really well. The style he is using can be learned be any voice type imo. It is just a matter of how "odd" it feels for you, because at some point it really starts to feel as if you are mimicing someone instead of singing "like yourself". Opera singing is A LOT harder to mimic because of the sheer volume that has to come with it.

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What Jens said. If you really train for it, you should be able to mimic Bruno Mars really well. The style he is using can be learned be any voice type imo. It is just a matter of how "odd" it feels for you, because at some point it really starts to feel as if you are mimicing someone instead of singing "like yourself". Opera singing is A LOT harder to mimic because of the sheer volume that has to come with it.

Yeah, now Bruno Mars was just a random example. Felipe gave a better example, like if a dude were to cover a high female song. A C5 for the soprano may not sound as high as the C5 does for the dude.

I guess the lower singer could get away with lowering slightly, but the actual instruments are going to give a different feel since their timbre is consistent, even if you switch singer...

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Yeah, now Bruno Mars was just a random example. Felipe gave a better example, like if a dude were to cover a high female song. A C5 for the soprano may not sound as high as the C5 does for the dude.

I guess the lower singer could get away with lowering slightly, but the actual instruments are going to give a different feel since their timbre is consistent, even if you switch singer...

The same holds true in that case. If you take out the mass it can be done. There are actually those guys called countertenors who do exactly that, sing in the female high range and do it on the same kind of intensity and mood. They have to use the lightest mechanism available to men though (falsetto).

However, things change dramatically if you rephrase your question:

"If a bass were to sing Bruno Mars and still sounds like a bass..."

... then he would certainly have to lower the key of the song. Otherwise the mood will change, because a bass that uses the mass that is available to him on notes in the Bruno Mars range, will sound a lot more intense on those notes. But as said above, lowering the key of the song can change the mood of the song because different keys are associated with a different mood.

Personally, being a bass, here is what works well for me:

- If it is a soprano range song (mostly F3-F5 if we talk about rock/pop) I just sing it a whole octave down, which lets me sing it with my typical bass timbre but still keeps the mood and intensity of the song

- If it is a tenor range song (mostly C3-C5 in rock/pop) I do one of two things, depending on what works better

1. I transpose it half an octave down, which puts it in my tessitura (F2-F4), keeps the mood of the song and lets me sing it "like a bass", but the transposition will most of the time change the sound of the instruments (for good or bad)

2. I keep it in the original key and sing it on a very light mechanism. It will sound close to the original then but it will probably not be consistent with the sound color you would expect from a bass.

Sometimes there are songs where both 1 and 2 don't really work because transposing it down changes the song too much towards the worse end, and singing in the light mechanism happens to sound too gimmicky on that specific song. My solution for that: Just don't sing the song. Not every song is written for every voice!

Female songs actually work really well with my voice (one octave down). I think for tenors singing female songs is much more of an issue. Here is an example (it's not me, but that guy's voice is VERY similar to mine in terms of timbre and pitch):

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dkn5apbxVF_U&ei=gA9xUoacD6WV0AXkloH4CQ&usg=AFQjCNGb76jPKadb-3-yMrfyggGikxN7Jg&sig2=DqtgzpNZkrtOexOfAaQg6w&bvm=bv.55617003,d.d2k

(of course the lyrics sound weird coming from a guy :lol:)

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Ken Tamplin covered Bruno Mars on youtube. Maybe listening to him will shed a light on this subject.

Ken Tamplin is a light baritone, basically half way between a bass and a tenor. But of course the approach is the same. He is lightening up his voice quite a bit.

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ken tamplin is a guy who has sung heavy rock all his life. and his personal style is almost similar to coverdale... Honestly you really expect him to sound like bruno? there are alot of bigger voices who can sing similar to bruno, just look at all the "gospeltenors" some of those guys has voices so big it makes mine sound like a kitten

this guy sounds like a mezzo... he uses the same sounds... youve gotta remember society shapes alot how "males" and "females" should sound.

That does not however take away the fact that we can sound extremly similar if we put in the practice time.

Singing is a skill, voicetypes has nothing to do with "skill" it's just an idea of a basic setup or a singer who has practiced to fit a certain role.

Our voices are extremly diverse, so diverse i belive it's rather a question of "how long and how much practice is it going to take to get to that sound"

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I have a friend that went to a performing arts high school. In the school choir and singing class the teacher put him in the basses and told him he was a bass. His favorite singers were Darryl coley, James Moore and the pace sisters. He was so devastated so when he wasn't in school he would go home and lock himself in the bathroom and sing along to his favorites losing his voice everyday. Until finally one day it clicked and he found a position in his voice that worked so he worked and worked and by the time he was 19 he figured out on his own. Now he plays Stevie Wonder on broadway in Barry Gordys Motown the musical..

Also watch the movie RAY where one of the girl backups says to the other girl "ill sing alto, soprano, bass etc. whatever you need me to this is how we learned in my church"

This is not unheard of.. If you are not singing classical or choir maybe broadway (where the musical director will choose)then don't put yourself in a corner..

Sing the songs/ style you want to with the sound you want to" you choose.":)

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I agree with the above statement; even within classical music there's quite a bit of controversy about who's a "true" tenor or a "true" bass, etc. It's based on very specific (and often very subjective) sound ideals that have little to do with contemporary music. Enrico Caruso, the famous tenor, was considered to have a "baritonal" timbre for his time.

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It seems that thinning out your vocal cords and singing higher is alot easier than extending your range lower and getting a true Baritone or Bass sound.

Has anyone here developed a Baritone tembre through exercises?

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Mdew, i would actualy say no, very few invest any time into their low ends... also add the fact that a man has to be of a certain age to sing basso. It's extremly rare to find very young singers who handle the deeper parts of the human voice

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Mdew, i would actualy say no, very few invest any time into their low ends... also add the fact that a man has to be of a certain age to sing basso. It's extremly rare to find very young singers who handle the deeper parts of the human voice

Jens, is there a physical explanation for why people can sing lower notes at a more advanced age?

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The voice both female and male gets deeper with age, probably due tothe folds becoming more lax, but dont qoute me on it. Perhaps martin knows a thing or two.

Most people spend a giant amount of time in the highrange and training to get higher, just take me for example im 10 years going strong.

What if my main focus would have been the lowerpart? Im 100% positive i would have figured that out aswell

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