Ah so this is what ive been doing. I have been doing strohbass for months without knowing it, I called it chest fry, but I knew it wasnt the same thing. Most days my strohbass can go down to around a g1 or f#1 before it just turns into chest fry, which usually ends at d1 and then fry. The more you know.
I think there are many descriptives everywhere on the internet and in vocal pedagogy books. The way I look at it is that it is the lowest part of your full range. It is narrower and brighter, and there isn't much space for you to maneuver or modify in terms of sound palette. It definitely cuts through in a choir. The chest fry mix or other incarnations of the like refer to the state of the vocal fold and the color that is produced. Many possibilities are available and not all sounds are the same. It's like a gradient of sounds but not connected like full voice or inconclusive and irregular like fry (which is also pitchless). Thanks!
Love hearing about from a bass about the different resonance. It makes more sense to hear the demonstration than a tenor telling my what the feeling is.
Thanks! It's slightly different depending on the person but the basic mechanics are similar. Some basses have an easier time and others shouldn't use it because it might cause excessive tension. As long as they are aware of their mechanism, they can apply what is needed for them to get the desired, healthy sound they want.
So THAT'S what it is! I've been using it for some time because my lowest audible normal chest note is F2 and the lower I would go it would be almost inaudible (but down to about D2), but when I once accidentally did this technique I was able to have a good strong A1, but I never knew if that was a real named technique or something I just discovered but thanks to you now I know!
Thanks! It's not so much as a specific technique, per se. It's more of a "Hey, I need to make sure I don't lose any of my upper harmonics in my voice so I need to modify and focus." It's smart and efficient and is essentially still a part of the modal register. Like with any other note, it can have more of a fry-based sound or a modal-based sound. Narrowing, vowel, and free larynx are key to being successful in this area. Once you get the hang of how resonant it is, you can then reintroduce space and warmth (which depends on the rep). Most of the time, though, I find myself in situations where it really is about projection and nothing else. As a performer, you have to be sensitive to the rep and the demands of the conductor. Rachmaninoff or Chesnokov? Go for it - all the bass you can get. Motet or Whitacre piece? Maybe just balance and blend instead of skull-crushing bass notes. haha. Thanks for commenting!
You should feel it a few notes above, typically F2 is where it is. Some people don't feel this "lift" and sing right through it, others do it naturally. The idea is that the vowel becomes brighter with more focus and there is less weight. Listen to Siepi's Low C (I think a Google search will pull it up). Contrary to popular belief, strohbass is full voice, essentially, just not as warm or round. Strohbass is typically confused with vocal fry as well.
Never realized there was a name for it. I have been using this technique to reach E1 off-mic for many years... not even knowing what it was. My full resonance in chest is done at Ab1. With a good mic and compression, I have reached B0 using Strohbass (definitely not something that will work in any un-mic'd setting, however).
Thanks! I will say that this approach is still a part of your full vocal range, it's just that the tone is different and the choices of timbre are limited. People have varying degrees of interpretation in this area and others group everything together, which is not a problem, actually. Impressive range, nonetheless! 👍
Interesting. The German bass singer and singing teacher Thomas Dobmeier distinguishes this register (straw bass) from the full voice mixed with the snare register in his singing technique, Singen aus der Mitte. With the snare register (Schnarrregister) you can still sing good classical tones that don't decouple.
Thank you! Yes since this video, I have noticed the difference as well. I have also noticed that some people overlap certain definitions even the way Dobmeier describes and demonstrates is quite different and more musical. I have since distinguished the two - strohbass being more fry based and schnarre register being more full voice based.
Hopefully I can simplify - strohbass (German for "strawbass") is simply an extension of your full voice for the lower end by narrowing. It is thinner and brighter and cuts through. Use of vocal fry helps you find this narrowing. Subharmonic is a phenomenon that occurs when a note, played or sung, interacts with another source (which may or may not be producing a sound). This interaction distorts the wave into imitating frequencies that are typically below itself. In the case of vocal subharmonics, singing a Bb2 and then adding a layer of fry at the same pitch will cause the appropriate interaction that results in a Bb1. Hope this helps! My research so far: Strohbass - extension of lower voice through narrowing and brightening. Subharmonics - extension of lower voice by creating a mechanism that allows for your full voiced fundamental pitch to interact with vocal fry which results in the lower octave or more based on the ratio of interaction.
Though that may be the conclusion that some people will come to, it is actually a thinner, brighter vowel. You can hum or sing on an "ng". The vowel will most likely sound bright and unpleasant - going too far in this direction will result in over-tightening as you have said. To avoid this, warm up with some falsetto sounds to reset the voice. Your goal is to fine tune proper vocal fold closure and air speed as well as a neutral larynx. Strohbass is limited in its use but can help basses find connection in their voice rather than fully going into vocal fry which has its own uses and does not project well in a live setting.
This technique is very interesting, i am a tenor but I think I have done something similar to cover the A2-F2 area that I occasionally had to sing when our choir did SAB instead of SATB. However I found the sound really bad for blending because of the brightness, and it strained my voice to use, so I just left that range to the baritones and basses. It amazes me the resonance that you can have a full octave below my range haha
I'm a tenor, and I've always been super impressed and jealous of baritones and basses and their power. I just accepted that mids and highs for us dudes are where I tend to excel.
Should you expect strohbass voice to be used to help you reach lower notes with full voice? I feel like that happened to me in the last few months. Some of the notes that used to be strohbass are becoming chest voice it seems.
1. How did you solve tone problem which occurs when transitioning chest to strohbass? I can do strohbass but when I transition to strohbass, tone changes quite a lot. It feels like more resonant and brighter than my lowest parts of chest voice. I want smooth transition but don't know how to develop it. 2. Is there any method that can extend chest voice down below?
So naturally, strohbass is very narrow and bright. To combat this (once you have established a good connection in the lower part of your voice), use vowels that are fuller and warmer such as ah, oh, or ooh. Strohbass still operates in your full voice so opening up with vowels will take care of the extension you need. You can hear how I balance strohbass and return some roundness and warmth to my sound at the end of the video going down to the Bb1 the last time. Vowels are your friends. Use bright vowels first and then shape the sound and experiment with it. You may find that the brighter vowel is actually more useful and that tone will develop with time, experience, and age. Thanks!
My lowest note I can reach everyday wouod be a C#2 or a C2...I feel like my lift starts at about the C#2 or D2...i feel like I could hit an easy C2 if I did this... Will this even help reach even lower notes out of the chest register?
I recommend using the straw technique when you first start. Do some breathing exercises by breathing in and out through a straw. Get used to the space and then try singing through a straw. The space of the straw forces you to give up unrelated tension and also forces you to focus your breath energy when breathing out or singing. Breathing in with the straw allows you to experience what a good "fill your body with your breath" air supply feels like for singing. Try this many times with the straw and when you remember the sensation, do it all without it. From there, I recommend using consonants as warm-ups and warming up with staccato (detached and energetic) and legato (connected and and vibrant) sounds. Best of luck!
@@bass2yang please I'd be very happy to see you do a video on the following you mentioned as for me to have perfect guide. * the straw breathe technique * the legato technique * the staccato technique I know perfection isn't attained overnight but with gradual process I'd become better in it. @Bass2Yang thank you!
Hey, first of all, thanks for this. I have been practicing supported vocal fry for around 10 months now, and I have been calling it "subharmonic" or "strohbass" interchangeably, but this is something new for me. I have no idea what's happening here, it sounds like a subharmonic fry, but we can clearly hear that you're not jumping up an octave to continue your scale downwards. You're demonstrating how to transition in a scale, I think it would have been helpful to show the transition on one note (say D2 or C2 for you), from chest resonance to strohbass, because right now I don't know what changes you are applying in your throat in order to get that, I'm really confused. From what I understand, it seems like a third passagio, but I don't know what's happening during it. When you talk about "compressing" and "narrowing", it does sound like the Tuvan khoomei throat technique, where the upper part of the throat compresses the larynx down in order to silence some overtones, thus amplifying the fundamental. Both have that "metallic" texture to their timbre, but khoomei usually doesn't have the crackling and is more clear. Is that similar or not at all ? Regarding fry, it is supposed to help, but each time I try to use it, I slip into subharmonics... obviously I am missing something, but I cannot seem to point out what, do you have any idea what it might be ? Is there a way to mix fry without slipping into subharmonics and without losing my pitched tone ?
You are welcome! I'll try to answer your questions. So the transition note is actually Eb2 for me which is shown in the video - it would be the same for the other notes; Eb2 was the most efficient transition point for me. (edit: I see what you mean - you want a gradual transition from strohbass to full voice with the same note. It's the same thing technically so far since strohbass is using your full voice and what you should hear is simply a vowel change. I'll demonstrate in a different video.) The changes applied are simply vowel brightness and breath energy which is what I mean by compressing and narrowing (brighter and thinner vowel sounds). Khoomei sounds cleaner because you are singing the note in full voice and you are typically much higher in the range where the pharyngeal resonance is easier to obtain. Also note that the vowel is typically darker with khoomei so that one could focus on overtone shaping rather than singer's formant. Subharmonic occurs when you are up the octave applying a layer of vocal fry to achieve the necessary interaction for a perceived lower octave. If you think of it as a layer on top of your voice as opposed to an overlapping register, the concept becomes clearer. In other words, stay with fry and see if you can move toward your full voice without shifting up or down - stay on the same pitch. This will give you a mixed fry sound once you reach a happy medium between full and fry (mixed fry technically is a lower larynx, approximated full voice sound where the folds are fully together, just no core of sound fully developed yet or focused but with more noticeable pharyngeal resonance - also known as open throat sound). You slip into subharmonics because you are making the vocal fry interact with your full voice as a layer over your sound. Another example I can give is think of a speaker with a sheet of paper over it. The speaker is your voice. The sheet of paper is your fry and it will vibrate in sympathy with the speaker when sound goes through it - this is a concept of subharmonics. Mixed fry would be playing a note through the speaker and then crumpling the paper to match the same pitch coming out of the speaker - both the speaker and paper are producing the same note. Vocal Fry by itself would be just you crumpling the piece of paper to produce a note (let's assume that you can actually obtain a sustained pitch with this method). I hope this helps - if it is still confusing, I'll clarify with another video. Thanks - great questions!
@@bass2yang Thanks a lot for your detailed answer ! I am not sure I am understanding everything, but I will spend some time researching what you mention, try this when it's not night time and will come back with results (or lack thereof =p). My transition would probably be a couple of tones higher (or more) since we have vastly different voices (I'm somewhere in the baritone tessitura, with extended highs - possibly baritenor), where in my range would you advise me to start practicing this ? I know for subharmonic fry, I grossly counted 5 tones up my lowest produced note, in order to just practice finding the register, is there a sweet spot like that for strohbass ? Thanks again for your time, this is greatly appreciated !
Cool - so strohbass has been thrown around for many decades and it has lost what Miller (vocal pedagogue) interpreted it to be. So your "lowest" note may be right where the strohbass can start, give or take a few notes. Rather than thinking of it as a different technique, you can just focus on thin and bright vowels. Thanks for dropping by!
@@bass2yang Hello, I come bearing news. So I have kept trying to find that turning point, and I never reached it… until a couple months ago when I got really sick. The sore throat kind of sick. That's something that hadn't happened since I've been an adult basically, so 15+ years, I haven't been sick like that with such a sore throat, and certainly not for such a long time (5-6 days). During those 5-6 days, my speaking voice dropped by a 4th-6th or something crazy like that. While I usually talk between a Ab2 and a B2, then I talked between a C#2 and a E2. I would wake up with an extremely creaky voice, that required an active effort to actually produce an intelligible tone. Then when I would try to sing I'd naturally, and easily drop to a resonant and powerful C2 or B1, and also struggle above C4. Honestly if it wasn't for the pain, I would have loved keeping that range. I would trade my normal voice for this in a heartbeat. Anyway. I also, during those few days, found the strohbass register. For me it's around D#2, note I usually don't have access to in the first place in my modal voice, or barely (and even then it's not resonant). But then, I would normally sing down in my modal voice, and I would try to stay in my modal voice. And the sound just shifts. I wasn't changing anything, I just kept singing in modal voice, and my modal sound would just shift to that fry-like sound, by itself. It's absolutely crazy. I had to make an active effort in order to smoothe out my sound. It even allowed me to go lower than B1, but that was creakiness more than tone, so probably not that interesting anyway. I obviously couldn't experiment extensively as my throat was in pain the whole time regardless, and I probably shouldn't have experimented and should have rested instead, but I did enough to understand the reality of what you meant. Understanding on paper is one thing, but going through the experience, for this, is really something else. When I got better and the pain was gone, my voice reverted back to normal, I lost the range, I lost the register. It turns out, my normal healthy voice doesn't have that, at all, and that's fine. Now I have the information, it just doesn't exist in my voice. I finally understood what you meant, I just needed to experience it first hand. I honestly feel like it's unexplainable properly to someone who doesn't have it in their voice, and the explanation is not to blame. It's not really a trick. It's a thing that either happens or doesn't when one sings downwards in their modal voice. If someone has it in their voice, they will have noticed it before coming here, in some way or another. Maybe they don't know what it is, maybe they don't know how to control it, maybe they only have that and don't know how to smoothe it out, but guys who have that will have experience of some sort with it, even if it's out of control. Thank you again, have a good one.
hi bass2yang, I've got a question, I'm 16 and can reach a pretty resonant D2, not too powerful yet but it is very warm, but when I wake up I can chest my way down to g1 sometimes, and I can kind of do this Strohbass technique to A1, is there anyway to help "turn" this into chest voice as my voice lowers and I get older? any exercises? (i can do subharmonics and kargyraa too but I wanted to ask specifically about chest) thank you in advance!
I would continue to work on balance, breath energy, and basic singing techniques that are healthy. Subharmonics are to be an extension of the awesome sound you are developing in your voice. Age definitely helps, moreso than that is experience and efficient use of air as well as balancing the vocal folds. Stretch them up with falsetto, bridge your entire range and find that "stream" that navigates throughout your range without issue or worrying about vocal color. SOVT exercises (such as singing with a straw) really helps you focus and find efficiency in vocalizing properly. Remember that "chest" is a secondary feeling and not always an indicator of a healthy sound. It should feel effortless, and all your effort is to maintain the proper settings of air, vocal fold setting, and space for your sound. Hope this helps!
I have the deepest voice of anyone i know except tim storms, and i'm 15 years old, but now... i feel like a tenor. Not the pitch that's so impressive (though it is) but the fullness in your speech. I can sing all the way down to D#-2, A1 in chest but my speech is nowhere near as full as this
@Aaron Anderson chest a1 is possible (i've kind of lost it recently but i'm getting there) the -2 octave is obviously not in chest. It's (the dirtiest ever) fry or inward phonation
@Aaron Anderson i realise it might have been misleading from your pount of view (of course i know what i meant but you didn't) it doesn't sound all too musical indeed but i guess i have to brag about stuff i can't prove on the internet some way... haha thanks and have a good one
It depends on what your concept of "strohbass" is. I recommend always approaching the voice with an open, connected sound. "Strohbass" as I have interpreted it, relies on maximizing overtones through thickening the vocal folds. A consequence is that it becomes brighter than usual, though it is still connected. An approach of this should feel as though you are moving into a vocal fry state, but never actually entering it. Some people approach "strohbass" already in a vocal fry state. This means that you must maintain resistance through lengthening the vocal folds so that you can produce a stable pitch. So, all this to say, rather than thinking of where and when strohbass occurs, continue the integrity of the vowel and maintain a vibrant color in your voice (with as much space as possible). You may be able to go lower, or, improve the notes you already have. I hope this helps! Ah yes, one more point. Record yourself singing a scale (normally) and listen to when the overtones in your voice all the sudden just drop (as if your voice just lost a lot of "bling" in its sound). A half-step or so above that would be a good transition. Think of shapes and colors of the voice (dark, bright, vibrant, round, tall, etc.) instead of when a transition begins when first approaching your voice and see where the transition shows itself through that process (because it will change slightly based on what your voice will do). Thanks!
Thanks..I have just Found the mecca of bass singing !!! And yes i know others... This technique i worked out my self studying vocals... To me it's obvious, lower sound means tighter vibration in voice box....🤔 Though i wasn't Shore how to do it...NOW I DO..THANK YOU.. AND IT'S CALLED STROHBASS. OK
So my lowest chest note is like an F#2 or F2 on good days. I just turned 16 a couple months ago and I really wanna hit lower notes. Is there any way I will be able to lower my voice? Or it just waiting till I get older. Btw, I've practiced my low voice a ton, so I sound good, but the problem is I dont have much of a low voice. And my god your voice is powerful.
Keep singing and find a good vocal teacher that can work with you. Make a lot of healthy sounds and take care of your voice - don't skimp on the higher notes, either. The voice has different rates of maturity and gaining great experience is helpful. Age helps, yes. Try focusing on having a great, connected voice. You'll be surprised at how singing high and healthy also helps when singing low. Your body is still developing so get rest, eat healthy, exercise your body, mind, and voice. Focus on a goal that improves your entire voice. You may or may not have a low voice, but going in a direction where you can have longevity, health, and amazing tone will give you that fullness quality you are looking for - what you eant to make sure of is not allow limitations to stop you from being musical. Also, your top range can develop and sound magnificent. Thanks for dropping by! - Thou
Hello! I'm sorry, but I don't understand how ti sing the strohbass. Every time I try to use it Becomes a subarmonic I probably don't understand the mechanism. could you explain it again please? :( I m a baritone, i can sing from F4 to E2 but wihout a lot of Power, but I have not a great technique because i started singing during quarantine, so I'm "new". Thank you!! Greetings from Italy!
Greetings! The way I see it, strohbass is just the lower limit of your full voice. So, when you get to G2, start moving toward a brighter, focused sound and slowly descend. If you must, try singing on the letter "V" to help with checking your airflow; if anything, your air speed should slow down and the amount of air will feel like it is decreasing. Try to maintain the same amount of air and adjust as you descend. Lower notes naturally require less air speed, but pretty much same amount of air. There are some people who say that it is a mix of things. Think brighter sound and more focus for the lower notes. If anything, try focusing on getting a really good sound and healthy vocal production throughout your range. You may find that it is easier to do when you solidify the rest of your range. Thanks!
how is your speaking voice so low? as a Contralto the note where l can get this dark, thick, rich resonant note is my G4 chest note. lol and perhaps my E3 to C3 lol. I can sing phrases down to A2. it would be wild if l can hit G2 and F2 🤗🤗🤗🤗 l want to sound nice, not ugly though
Very cool - if you can sing phrases down to A2, you may be able to vocalize a bit further. Think of your voice as a thread of sound rather than a pipe. Humming and singing on the "ng" sound will help. If you run into vocal fry, all it to be a continuation of your pitch rather than just an approximation. Thin vowels and bright sounds helps. If you sing down to an A2 and start to fry on a G#2. Try starting with fry on a comfortable C3 and gliss down to the G#2. I find that singing with the consonant sound "V" helps regulate the proper air requirements when you are singing with fry. It doesn't have to be loud, just accurate. Thanks for dropping by!
Bass2Yang ok thanks for the tips. The ng tip really works Holy! I'm shocked! as a Contralto I'm supposed to keep singing in the ng position anyhow. 😃 I just sound like a weird cat purring, but I'll take it I wanna channel my inner Lisa Gerrard and Jessica Reedy. Toni Braxton can perform G2 or G#2 sexy bedroom croaks in a tribute to Stevie Wonder: th-cam.com/video/5i4Sgtb17e8/w-d-xo.html (I am conceptualizing a book about the Contralto voice, 😅)
oooh you need to check out the Contralto who holds the world record for singing the lowest note for a female. a D2 l think. it's on YT. insane. If she can do that, maybe she can go even lower?? She sounds very close to a male, like Current era Boy George. if l could guess the size of her vocal folds, it's probably over 17. 17.5mm is the median size for the tenor voice. her highest note in her singable range is D5. th-cam.com/video/Zxfga8naHso/w-d-xo.html
So interestingly enough, the Octavism group I am a part of has a video that shows an older woman singing a major scale down to a Bb1. Pretty awesome. Not Guiness verified, but definitely Oktavism-respected.
Bass2Yang Whoa a lady bass. a Contralto profundo. your group will get a lot of attention if she smashes the world record. that would be sooooo awesome! you'd get a lot of publicity. who is this woman? can you upload it? pls share (for my research)
how do you achieve a good level of projection with this? i seem stuck on this quiet mix of vocal fry and chest, and it is pretty round, but not loud at all. great video though, very informative!
It takes a bit of time, though, for thr most part, I find success when I am relaxed and not pressing down on the voice so much. There are times, of course, where a bit of extra compression does help bring the vocal folds together. Usually for me, I just make sure I don't lose any presence in my voice when singing because that is what is going to carry my sound out to the audience. Thanks!
@@bass2yang thank you very much for the reply in such a short amount of time, especially since this was one of your older videos. Ive noticed a great deal of personal improvement from your channels exercises and appreciate that you delve into great depth on topics that are not the easiest to find information about.
I am a baritone, but my range is C2-E4. I have more lower notes than high notes. Am I able to learn vocal fry to go lower? I already know subharmonic technique, but it's to hard to reach A1 with subharmonic. I just reach G1-E1. Would chest-fry help me with this?
Hi Daniel! That is a great range for a baritone. I will say that it depends on the vocal fry you are trying to learn as many teachers have their own take on vocal fry. Some will say it is therapeutic, but only claim that because it is what everyone else is saying without understanding what is happening with tension, airflow, and vocal fold state. With that said, as long it is not being pressed or over-pressured (too heavy of folds with too much air speed and pressure), you should be fine. I'd need to hear you to see what is going on but usually if A1 is hard and G1 to E1 is easy, it means that you are just more comfortable at the moment to do those notes. A1 will take some time and remember that movement of air is needed to allow the note to work its magic. Try singing with a straw to help you focus and build a more efficient use of tension and airflow. Chest fry is a state of which you are trying to maintain balance in your vocal folds' stretch and slack states, but are still approximating the pulses needed to activate proper airflow (basically, frying while trying to get some consistent pitch and resonance). That could help but may not assist much in subharmonic singing or development. Hope this helps! Work on stretching your vocal folds as well in the middle and the highs - when done properly, you will see better efficiency with your lows. 👍
@@bass2yang Hi, Bass2Yang, I came here just to say that I just discovered my chest fry, and yes, that's helping me with notes below C2, and I am enjoying this technique a lot. Haha Thanks!
You probably have been asked this many times, but Do you consider yourself as a true bass , or a dramatic bass baritone? Also, this has been a topic of great debate, but out of the popular Acapella bass trio of Geoff, Avi and Tim who has the lowest and highest voice? It would be great to hear your thoughts on this.
Because of the rep I have sung and relating my timbre with the professionals in the field, I would fall under bass-baritone (or the basso-cantabile/cantante). Lyric roles/rep feel better on the voice. There are implications for every role, rep, and size of stature as well as voice and for the most part, a basso profondo doesn't work for me. That said, you probably want me in the Bass 2/Bass 3 section. :D Simply put, I am a bass. Hopefully a good enough one to be hired. Appreciate the thoughts!
@@bass2yang wait, have you just said that you are a bass-baritone? Well... What the heck?) Do, you have an F4 for everyday? I'm so confused, because I am classified as a bass-baritone, but my speaking voice is a 5th higher than yours... You sound like a tipical basso profondo, or at least a low end central bass, but, so far as I know no way you are a cantate or even bass-baritone. Like, if you are a bass-baritone, than who the hell is bass?) Glenn Miller then also would be a bass-baritone or, maximum light bass/basso cantate. I'm not getting this *bass* thing anymore if you aren't a low bass, anyway you know your voice better, so maybe you are, but... WT heck is happening with all this bass thing Edit: here is Glenn Miller, a famous basso profondo talking and singing about where you are talking and singing) th-cam.com/video/ZmxC34GmqHM/w-d-xo.html
@Dmytro Tsvyntarnyi I do appreciate your input. I have an F4 everyday though my C2 and Bb1 tends to become very quiet once I am warmed up. Perhaps if I may clarify, the roles that worked for me when I sang in college were mostly bass-baritone roles and that is usually the bill that people pay when I am hired to sing. Maybe it is time to change that? Last time I focused on bass-baritone rep was around 5 years ago? So you could say that I am sure that I am a bass, not sure if I am a true profundo since I've never been casted for those roles or equivalent (seriöser bass), and able to sing rep that the bass-baritone does (Jerome Hines, Ezio Pinza, Sam Ramey, etc.). Oktavist (choral, Russian specifically) is what I am usually hired to do around the area. I do not find my speaking voice to be deeper than basses like Glenn Miller or Vladimir Miller and bass-baritone is a fairly wide band to cover. There is that "sub-category" of basso cantabile (ipasource uses it I think?) that is in between the basso profondo and the bass-baritone. Sometimes people refer to it as the middle ground of bass and baritone. Other times it is just a role that they (or their agent) choose so that opera houses can hire them for specific parts (in some cases, they get a lot of jobs because they can do both bass and baritone). I tend to just stick with bass for all rep. Bass-baritone (or basso cantante) for specific rep. Oktavist or bass 2/bass 3 for choral. Honestly, what ever pays the bills haha. I appreciate your input - I turned 35 this year and you know basses... Our voices change right around this time and it may do it again in 5 years. Edit: interesting, IPASource doesn't include basso profondo. Serioser bass is considered darker than the basso cantabile, at least there it is. There are just too many descriptives to choose from - I'l just stick with bass from now on. Lol. Sorry for all this - I try to just leave it to the rep and others to decide what I am. Thanks for your input!
@@dmytrotsvyntarnyi799 Speaking voice is not a good indicator of low bass voices. People's speaking voices tend to sit differently. Some people like to speak at their lower register, some speak a bit higher. For example , someone like Eric Alatorre , would seem to have a higher voice than Thou. See this video for hearing Eric's voiceth-cam.com/video/AArX-bGkLTM/w-d-xo.html. Would you believe Eric is a profondo and has a solid F#1, that he is lower than Thou? Seems hard to believe but it's true..
Hey, thanks for the video! I've been watching your stuff and really appreciate it (: I would love to see more videos of explanations of singing - fry register, subharmonic etc. Also, what did you exactly do in strohbass?
No problem! I'll see what I can come up with for you all. For strohbass, I used less weight, less space, full vocal fold closure, and a bright vowel. Similar to singing through a straw, except for this it is through a vowel. Thanks!
@@190averagebowler9 I am a fach or 2 higher. Quite exactly similar to Samuel Ramey. For me, to project voice below the staff, I have to use a strohbass mix, which is exactly how Ramey's voice worked. Really a lyric bass baritone, but very careful development resulted in a voice of exceptional beauty, as one critic I heard say, Ramey has successfully developed a coloratura bass. I think that is correct, though Ramey always recorded at a lazy pace, so for a bass, coluratura doesn't mean fast. I am getting close. You can browse comments and find people that aren't singers remarking that Ramey was a basso profundo! One thing I would like to mention is the speed of your scales is VERY important. Sing too fast, you will never developer full expressiveness down low. Don't develope that, your voice will not be its best. If you are training as a bass, I highly recommend Sieber opus 97. Dial in your accomp app at as slow a speed as possible to sing phrases using the alternate breath marks and observe dynamics. Your voice will improve amazingly quickly. Fry for me happened spontaneously on large descending intervals at the end of a phrase. Suddenly the extra volume pops out when you are trying to project. It's a bit disconcerting at first being a harsh bright sound. All male voices should have it, I think. Learn to integrate it and don't push the harsh sound. It will "fry" your voice quickly if you do. Sometimes I sing an entire phrase in it, but always the eye to just using a little and trying to maintain a smooth full quality, with just the edge. It will do wonders in time. The edge is where any great voice lies.
Hi Thou, Between August and September this year I tested my vocal range five times for free under Master Class, and it came to be 4.7 octaves from C1-G5. I'm still struggling to fully master the subharmonic technique even though the lowest subharmonic note I reached was an F1 and my highest an Eb2. My chest notes range from C2-Gb4 and my soft falsetto notes range from Gb4-G5. My lowest vocal fry before was an Eb1. How I reached C1-D1 was attempting the growl technique, so my vocal fry notes range from C1-F2 but with little volume. What I want to do is go lower in subharmonic to reach for the C1 note and add volume. Any suggestions? Total Range: C1-F1-C2-Gb4-G5 Growl: C1-D1 Vocal Fry: C1-F2 Subharmonic: F1-Eb2 Chest: C2-Gb4 Soft Falsetto: Gb4-G5
My suggestion is to remember that subharmonic is more of a "layer" than it is a technique. Meaning, you are simply allowing the vocal fry to interact with your full voice at the same note (talking about 1st level subharmonics). It takes time - I'm almost at my 10 year mark since researching and applying it in performance and study and I am still working on it. Remember that the subharmonic touches and interacts within your voice instead of being controlled or forced. Use closed vowels or sing using an "ng" sound. Start higher at around a C3 and let that drop down the octave with subharmonic or start on an F2 and see if the F1 cooperates better. Hope this helps a bit!
@@bass2yang, thanks. I just sustained C3 note and applied the octave drop to C2 while singing the "oh" sound closed. Then I sustained the C2 for nearly twenty seconds subharmonically, and it worked. I'll use that again to go lower.
hey, if you have a spare moment, can I ask you a quick question on this? I'm brand new to singing. the other day I was exploring my low end and went looking for and found a G1. does it sound like chest or fry to you? before and after I waver around a lot on pitch searching and failing to hold onto it, also I wasn't focusing on tone quality at all meanwhile. I'm just curious to better understand what's happening down here. :) it could be fry but it also sounded rather steady to my untrained ear. (it's uploaded on my channel).
Very interesting! The world of singing is very complex. So just to be clear, your lowest non-fry note currently is a Bb1? You have a lower than average speaking voice, so I'm assuming your modal range is capable of reaching Bb1 without any fry mixing in, right? I'm wondering what the lowest non-fry note possible for a human is given all this complexity. Also, what's the difference between "modal" and "full voice"? Is there even a difference?
Bb1 seems to be where it settles and it moves around throughout the day and depending on the rep I sing. You bring up an interesting subject. Purists believe that there is only "one voice" - meaning we do not have separate registers or anything. What they do say is that we have different approaches to our voice and we either open or close resonant spaces that give us the tone, vowel, and shape of sound. Other pedagogues believe in three separate voices - fry voice, chest voice, and head voice. They say that pulse-like sounds enter the voice after D2 and the vocal folds begin to become slack. You will see a lot of people place "fry" with these notes. Regardless of the sound, once the vocal folds have a "change" in form, that means that there is a register change (some speculate that no matter how good you are, your voice enters the pulse register after C2). The mix of pulse register and modal register (which is essentially the chest voice or full voice as some people say) can occur as high as F2 and go as low as F1. From modal you move up to the head register. A lot of popular singers focus on a mix of these two to get past the passagio above C4 (basses). You and mix lower or higher with head voice. From there, you can hang on to the modal register until about A4 and it diminishes, leaving mostly head register as you ascend. These are just estimates and do change from each singer. They are not absolutes - sometimes I feel like they are all made up because it is such a fluid concept. I will say for me, I feel a definite loss in chest resonance after Bb1. My voice gets too heavy and I overload chest resonance, having no other resonant areas (sounds sort of like a sine wave almost in my head). I can "mix" and go lower from there. Personally, I think people who use fry are at the first stage of developing their voice and vocal freedom. Those who misuse it and force it run into a lot of issues as it can introduce too much tension to the voice. Those who don't have to use it and can sing low most likely have thicker and longer vocal folds and/or reached the next level of its benefits and vocal freedom. Listen to babies - sing some low notes to them and look and listen to how they mimic you. They will mimic your pitch, but within the context of their voice. It is fryish. But... It is also connected and healthy. Every vocal ound a baby makes is pretty much from a healthy onset of sound. We can learn a lot from them. I think of full voice as using all your resonant spaces while being full engaged in your voice, aligned and with proper adduction. Modal register is the state that my vocal folds are in as well as where the I feel the resonance is located (chest area or pharynx). They mean the same thing when talking in general but do have specific uses. I may have gone on a tangent. My apologies. I probably made things even more confusing haha. A lot of my references come from Richard Miller, William Vennard, and Maestro Jones (thevoiceteacher.com I think is the website) as well as from my own observations and studies. Others as well but I cannot cite them from memory at the moment. Thanks!
@@bass2yang Dang, that was a wealth of info, and it's not confusing at all, don't worry! I've had a lot of other work to focus on the past few days so I haven't gotten back to you yet, but I've got a little time now. So being that you can reach Bb1 without fry or strohbass but the transition begins around Eb2, does that mean everything below Eb2 isn't comfortable when you're doing it in pure modal voice? I've never heard of the "one voice" idea before, and I always equated full voice with being anything that doesn't include (or consist purely of) falsetto or fry (or whistle register in some people's cases). I have, however, heard ideas now and then that somewhat lineup with the mentality of "if it's lower than such and such a note it's automatically fry no matter what." Granted, I'm not formally educated in voice, but at the same time that mindset honestly just reeks of cynicism to me. I can understand skepticism with someone who claims to be able to sing off the piano without fry, but there are some people whose voices, even when they're just speaking, are just so darn low that they should at least be able to reach the upper contra octave while singing without any mixture of fry (let alone relying solely on fry). How did they reach the conclusion, though, that the vocal chords ALWAYS become slack below that point? Did they actually stick an endoscope down the throat of a basso profundo (or many of them) and see that, no matter how low their natural speaking ranges are, that their vocal chords went slack below C2-D2? I know you said that those pitch limits are more a rule of thumb than something that pertains to every last person, but I'm still interested in how the people who postulate this theory came to the conclusion they did. Maybe I sound cynical now that I've presented those questions (haha), but a lot of the reason why low bass voices are so alluring to me is because I had the impression that they were genuinely able to sing notes that most others can only reach through fry or some other "trick". The idea of "it's always fry below C2-D2" honestly puts a huge dent in my enjoyment of low bass singing because if every single person is frying when they get below that (including really low basses), there's really not much special about it to me. Yeah, the sound is inherently cool and does provide a lot of extra weight to places in music that would otherwise be lacking in presence, but a major part of why I love it so much is the feat of reaching those notes. I'm not saying that I now disbelieve in upper contra octave notes being reachable without fry, but some theories do cause me to doubt. Something that certainly would be interesting would be to stick a small camera down someone's throat (which I've seen at least one video of here on youtube that shows what goes on with kargyraa and strohbass) who has a genuinely low voice (or, again, multiple people with that trait) and watch what happens. It's also worth pointing out that, in some cases, people have timbres to their voices, even when speaking normally, with a lot of high overtones in them. Think of the renowned gospel bass, Tim Riley. His timbre is a lot like a mix between a piano and a low brass instrument. When he speaks down low, he gets a little bit of that "grit" on top of all the low end. It's almost like it's borderline impossible to tell the difference between mixed and chest with some people at those lower pitches because of this. As a last question...if I push my voice down lower and lower, past the point of where it's comfortable and the sound begins to thin out and get that buzz on top of it, is that strohbass or is it some other form of mixed chest/fry? I lower my actual voice and continue to sing the "regular way" (i.e. not just frying on its own), but it thins out and a lot of it gets stuck in my throat. Just wondering if I've been doing strohbass all this time without knowing it, lol. By the way, I'm not a singer, and if I was, I'd be a baritone rather than a bass. This is all just academic interest behind these comments and questions! Thanks for all the info and great vids!
I'll try to answer as much as I can. No worries, we are all on this journey and the science can only go as far as the data and tests provide, so any question pertaining to it is a valid question (and can also become a thesis one day!). In pure modal voice, I get to Bb1 fine. There is a loss of resonance in the other areas and on mic, it sounds like a sine wave. This is if I try my best to not let go of my full voice sound - I begin to overload the chest resonance and it is no longer balanced. Some days I can get there fine by just speaking, other days I need to really focus. Geoff from Voice Play talks about this in one of his videos where he says that he loses resonance after D2/C#2 (which people are saying that there's no way, he sounds fine, but if you read between the lines, he is saying that there is not much projection value and the chest resonance diminishes greatly. He is referring to the color of his voice is not round or full and in a choral setting, will probably sound buzzy or fryish.) He does what all great singers do - focus on connection, breath energy, and vocal alignment. Your answer regarding full voice is the first step of the "one voice" deal. To make it simpler, your voice is not different whether it becomes fry or falsetto - it's just your voice developing. As you go from developing to progressing and then achieving. From there, it becomes mastery. Look at the Five Stages of Mastery Learning and you can relate it to the voice. (from www.jonbergmann.com/the-five-stages-of-mastery-learning/) Stage 1: Unconsciously Incompetent - The Non-Singer (Dude with the low voice) Stage 2: Consciously Incompetent - The Beginner (I sing sometimes, but I don't do it professionally and I don't know what voice type I am) Stage 3: Consciously Competent - Able to Sing on Pitch and on Time (I am in a group and I can sing or I sing on my own - I am a bass that can sing low) Stage 4: Unconsciously Competent - Able to Sing on Command and without worrying (same as Stage 3 but professionally, if not, daily - I am a professional musician) Stage 5: Master Teacher - I can sing professionally, I understand the concepts and can teach/personalize it to others, and even though I may not be in someone's voice range, I can still competently teach (Reflective Competence is what it is called. The master teacher is stage 4 but understands how to get other people there and continues the journey of learning). I am certain they've used a control group and a group of singers to verify this change in register (state of vocal fold). I am also certain that they probably did not have a Glenn Miller or equivalent. With that said, they are taking theories and results from these tests and coming up with conclusions. It is up to us as musicians to get past Stage 4 and move on over to Stage 5 to verify and/or challenge all this. I feel like the negative cloud over the idea of vocal fry is what is truly damaging. Rather than seeing it as a developing part of our voice, there is a lot of negativity that shrouds its importance in allowing us to understand more about our voice. I think of it just as a state in which my vocal folds are at. Because it sounds so different and its use is not naturally inherent to most, it becomes sort of a distant cousin thrice-removed from the vocal family. Should it be a means to properly phonate? No. It is a great starting point. What the data is showing is that most people's voices enter a pulse like state after a certain frequency (data gathered from research shows that vocal fry typically occurs around 70Hz, which is in fact right where C#2/D2 is). Keep in mind, this is only what they have observed. Kind of like "How much venom from this animal will kill a person" concept - some people have been bitten by rattle snakes and lived and others were not so lucky. Maybe that one person is a special case, or maybe there is a group of people that were not tested. There's no way to test everyone so we make theories and apply what we can to the rest of the population and say that a rattlesnake bite will kill you. Avoid them. If you look at pharyngeal resonance, different authors have their own set of frequencies, but the total range of it was from 330Hz to 750Hz which is E4 to a bit above F#5. Interestingly enough, this is also right were people begin to "mix". When singing low, notes below D2 enter this pulse-like state (thus, the rattling sound). It does not mean that the person has entered a vocal fry state, no, it is simply physics. The sound wave begins to slow down enough to where we are starting to hear and feel individual pulses. Depending on how we resonate that note, it can be fuller or thinner. Also keep in mind that we do not have a 16-foot pipe in our throats to even be able to sing a C2 like an organ, yet people are able to do it. Why? It's because our vocal folds are awesome - the antagonism and synergy going on with the musculature in our voice is amazing. Low notes? I'll relax and shorten and allow air to flow through at a lower rate, thus creating the pitch. Not projecting? I'll resonate these important pitches above the fundamental that give life to the fundamental. Not warm enough? Don't worry, the fullness of the pharynx will help. Too breathy? Let's see, reset and find the proper amount of tension in your folds so the folds can actually come together and the larynx, when aligned, will also resonate in the 2-3k area to give you that ping or "singers formant." I think the pedagogues are looking at science - the length of a C2 is about 16 ft. We cannot fully produce the fundamental unless we allow the mechanism to create that amount of space or recreate it by manipulating the space. How is it that a trumpet can produce a C2? Slow down the rate of the lips and tension. What about a Tuba? Look at the amount of tubing. ... We are all just air benders. haha... Sorry, bad joke break. Anyways, I will say that if you try to push the chest resonance all the way down, you end up with an old habit of mine that reoccurs from time to time. You will cut off all other resonant areas of your voice and the mechanism will be very heavy, but you will not be heard (not much projection value). The idea is to allow the voice to be in alignment and use all resonances when possible to allow the note to project and the airflow/breath pressure to be efficient. It is hard to tell who is mixing or not usually because they focus on quality singing and vocal alignment. If there isn't a "change" in the alignment, we don't make so much of a big deal. This is the reason why subharmonics were like "WTF" at first because there wasn't so much of a change in the vocal alignment, simply just an added feature that manipulated the waveform to mimic the same overtones and fundamental frequency as the octave below it. The strohbass is more of a quality of sound that implies improved stability and brightness; unfortunately, there is not much dynamic range or even timbre choices. It is the limit of the full voice down low - sort of like channeling all your energy into stability of note and projection at the cost of everything else (Infinity Wars?... hmm.). It is also the result of not giving up the "full voice" mechanism while trying to keep it resonant. This concept of strohbass is still in the modal register and is just really narrow. One can argue that it is not full voice, and I can agree (and also disagree, because of how the alignment is in the voice.) To answer your question about Tim Riley's voice, it is exceptionally low. Even listening to his demonstration however, the "nasal passages" technique (or whatever you want to call it) is what all singers do to keep the upper resonances open and allow for proper projection. Yes, it is his full voice. And not surprisingly, this is also "strohbass"-related in terms of concept. When he sings down to the F1, however, you will notice a significant loss in warmth (pharyngeal resonance). The folds have the proper "full voice resistance" and at the same time, it is pulse-like in nature due to how our ears perceive sound and how the folds are generating the pitch. It is easy to label it as projected fry because that's the resonating frequency that some untrained ears hear first. Think of how we perceive music. If I played an F3 for an untrained singer to match pitch and they sing a C4 instead, are they unfit as a singer? Or... is it because their ears picked out one of the overtones instead and tried to match that down the octave as well as the fact that since their voice hasn't changed (boy soprano), an F3 is near impossible? Do you see where I am going with this? With all the processing that goes on, it is easy to recreate the resonances of full voice. It is not possible to remove certain things, just cover it up or divert one's attention to something else. People who say "this is fry" hear the fry-type sounds and frequency overtones. Try not to take everyone's word as truth but a concept that can reveal the truth at hand. Research is always coming up and I'm trying to keep up as well. I'm all for research and yes, there needs to be a different set of singers to research on regarding these matters (actual basses - unfortunately, not all singers know how to participate or choose to do it... or even know about it.) I look at it this way - is it healthy, is it possible, can it be musical or functional, and does it have longevity? This allows me to be stress-free from all the battles going on around the internet and also gives me a better perspective; most of all, it allows me to just enjoy music. I can talk about this all day, but I should probably make a video about it instead. Just keep in mind - our instrument is our instrument. We can be awesome with it and come up with things no one else could have imagined; we can even just stick to the status quo and be awesome at that. Either way, it is the discovery of music and the enjoyment of the arts that matters.
@@bass2yang Thanks, your answer helped a lot! So with Tim Riley being in full voice, does that mean he's using strohbass? I know he pushes the resonance up into his head (the "mask" technique) as a lot of singers tend to do, but I remember when I met him he told me he "can't stand" (to literally quote him) vocal fry. It's worth noting, though, that when I demonstrated what I meant to him by "vocal fry", I used fry on its own rather than having it just be what mixes in with my chest voice. I tend to count mixed voice as part of someone's true range...as long as someone genuinely lowers their voice (rather than just speeding up or slowing down airflow a la pure fry or bring out undertones like in subharmonics), they're still technically using their singing voice and not just faking a note (not to discredit well-trained pure fry and subharmonics, though). There are also some basses that don't have a lot of those high overtones in their voices, even down into the contra octave...take Vladimir Pasjukov for example...he's probably the most pleasant-sounding bass in that pitch range I've ever heard (yes, I think he even sounds better tone wise than Zlatopolsky). I've also noticed that in voices that DO have a lot of high overtones (like Tim Riley), that goes away quite a bit when they sing more quietly and comes back when they're trying to project (which you see both of in the video of Tim Riley giving tips on bass singing)...similar to how when you play a contra octave note on a piano really softly and then play it really hard...the former showcases more of the fundamental whereas the latter has a rougher sound due to all the high overtones coming out. And I totally agree...sometimes people mistake those higher overtones for fry or even someone just faking the note when that phenomenon occurs in a singing context. If you did end up doing another video on this stuff like you mentioned as a possibility, I think it'd be cool if you took videos like Tim's tips video and some other basses (I'd be interested in seeing commentary on Pasjukov, Chandrowsky, and Eric Alatorre, among others) and just did a commentary like you did with the two Millers and Myakotin on an older video. That way people could know what's going on with their voices and if there's any fry mixing in at any points. Thanks again!
I would say for Tim Riley it is strohbass (according to my definition of it, which is full voice, bright/forward sound and a lot more rattle, not as warm) and others with different definitions may agree or disagree. Thanks - it was great talking through this with you and I think a video about this should be done. The old video was my first attempt on TH-cam and just trying to understand all this bass-ness. Better informed now, haha. Thanks for the direction!
![Bass singers subharmonic compilation [Bb1-B0]](/img/n.gif)
This man's speaking voice is in my strohbass and it is intense.
as a baritone that can go down to a clear and resonant g1 with chest fry and strohbass i feel proud of myself
This is the way 🔥
Awesome!
That's a bass baritone
@@zoldux9980 It's not impossible for a baritone to do it, just not easy.
Ah so this is what ive been doing. I have been doing strohbass for months without knowing it, I called it chest fry, but I knew it wasnt the same thing. Most days my strohbass can go down to around a g1 or f#1 before it just turns into chest fry, which usually ends at d1 and then fry. The more you know.
I think there are many descriptives everywhere on the internet and in vocal pedagogy books. The way I look at it is that it is the lowest part of your full range. It is narrower and brighter, and there isn't much space for you to maneuver or modify in terms of sound palette. It definitely cuts through in a choir.
The chest fry mix or other incarnations of the like refer to the state of the vocal fold and the color that is produced. Many possibilities are available and not all sounds are the same. It's like a gradient of sounds but not connected like full voice or inconclusive and irregular like fry (which is also pitchless).
Thanks!
Omg same!!
This is fascinating - I think it's actually giving me some insight into what I'm doing with my own low range an octave up from yours. Thanks so much!
Love hearing about from a bass about the different resonance. It makes more sense to hear the demonstration than a tenor telling my what the feeling is.
Thanks! It's slightly different depending on the person but the basic mechanics are similar.
Some basses have an easier time and others shouldn't use it because it might cause excessive tension. As long as they are aware of their mechanism, they can apply what is needed for them to get the desired, healthy sound they want.
So THAT'S what it is! I've been using it for some time because my lowest audible normal chest note is F2 and the lower I would go it would be almost inaudible (but down to about D2), but when I once accidentally did this technique I was able to have a good strong A1, but I never knew if that was a real named technique or something I just discovered but thanks to you now I know!
Thanks! It's not so much as a specific technique, per se. It's more of a "Hey, I need to make sure I don't lose any of my upper harmonics in my voice so I need to modify and focus." It's smart and efficient and is essentially still a part of the modal register. Like with any other note, it can have more of a fry-based sound or a modal-based sound.
Narrowing, vowel, and free larynx are key to being successful in this area. Once you get the hang of how resonant it is, you can then reintroduce space and warmth (which depends on the rep). Most of the time, though, I find myself in situations where it really is about projection and nothing else. As a performer, you have to be sensitive to the rep and the demands of the conductor.
Rachmaninoff or Chesnokov? Go for it - all the bass you can get.
Motet or Whitacre piece? Maybe just balance and blend instead of skull-crushing bass notes. haha.
Thanks for commenting!
I didn't know ur voice I I was blown away by ur speaking voice at the beginning
My lowest chest or full voice note is D2 where would start to access strohbass
You should feel it a few notes above, typically F2 is where it is. Some people don't feel this "lift" and sing right through it, others do it naturally. The idea is that the vowel becomes brighter with more focus and there is less weight. Listen to Siepi's Low C (I think a Google search will pull it up). Contrary to popular belief, strohbass is full voice, essentially, just not as warm or round. Strohbass is typically confused with vocal fry as well.
Never realized there was a name for it. I have been using this technique to reach E1 off-mic for many years... not even knowing what it was. My full resonance in chest is done at Ab1. With a good mic and compression, I have reached B0 using Strohbass (definitely not something that will work in any un-mic'd setting, however).
Thanks! I will say that this approach is still a part of your full vocal range, it's just that the tone is different and the choices of timbre are limited. People have varying degrees of interpretation in this area and others group everything together, which is not a problem, actually.
Impressive range, nonetheless! 👍
Interesting. The German bass singer and singing teacher Thomas Dobmeier distinguishes this register (straw bass) from the full voice mixed with the snare register in his singing technique, Singen aus der Mitte. With the snare register (Schnarrregister) you can still sing good classical tones that don't decouple.
Thank you! Yes since this video, I have noticed the difference as well. I have also noticed that some people overlap certain definitions even the way Dobmeier describes and demonstrates is quite different and more musical. I have since distinguished the two - strohbass being more fry based and schnarre register being more full voice based.
Your speaking voice is fucking insane
Okay I didn't know this existed and I thought it was just fry that I was doing. You've expanded my mind
you are a great teacher !
Thank you! 😃
Is strohbass another name for the subharmonic technique or is it something else?
Hopefully I can simplify - strohbass (German for "strawbass") is simply an extension of your full voice for the lower end by narrowing. It is thinner and brighter and cuts through. Use of vocal fry helps you find this narrowing.
Subharmonic is a phenomenon that occurs when a note, played or sung, interacts with another source (which may or may not be producing a sound). This interaction distorts the wave into imitating frequencies that are typically below itself.
In the case of vocal subharmonics, singing a Bb2 and then adding a layer of fry at the same pitch will cause the appropriate interaction that results in a Bb1.
Hope this helps!
My research so far:
Strohbass - extension of lower voice through narrowing and brightening.
Subharmonics - extension of lower voice by creating a mechanism that allows for your full voiced fundamental pitch to interact with vocal fry which results in the lower octave or more based on the ratio of interaction.
@@bass2yang so when you say narrowing, does that mean a slight tightening of the throat muscles?
Though that may be the conclusion that some people will come to, it is actually a thinner, brighter vowel. You can hum or sing on an "ng". The vowel will most likely sound bright and unpleasant - going too far in this direction will result in over-tightening as you have said.
To avoid this, warm up with some falsetto sounds to reset the voice. Your goal is to fine tune proper vocal fold closure and air speed as well as a neutral larynx.
Strohbass is limited in its use but can help basses find connection in their voice rather than fully going into vocal fry which has its own uses and does not project well in a live setting.
This is great and well demonstrated! Man, you sound awesome.
Good demonstrations!
This technique is very interesting, i am a tenor but I think I have done something similar to cover the A2-F2 area that I occasionally had to sing when our choir did SAB instead of SATB. However I found the sound really bad for blending because of the brightness, and it strained my voice to use, so I just left that range to the baritones and basses. It amazes me the resonance that you can have a full octave below my range haha
I'm a tenor, and I've always been super impressed and jealous of baritones and basses and their power. I just accepted that mids and highs for us dudes are where I tend to excel.
im a tenor and i have decent D2's and sometimes even decent B1s. nowhere near this level but still
@@Celatra That's what I really meant. Like, I can REACH them, but true basses seem to have a richness I've always been jealous of, lol.
@@TheCrimsonIdol987 yeah def. It is possible to add richness to them tho
Should you expect strohbass voice to be used to help you reach lower notes with full voice? I feel like that happened to me in the last few months. Some of the notes that used to be strohbass are becoming chest voice it seems.
Can you do like a beginners guide like you did with the subharmonics.....that one helps me practice
I'll see what I can do. I may start from the basics and go from there again. Hey, it's a new year soon, right? Thanks for your input!
Hi Mr. YANG. I want to thank the great help that your result orientation for my traditional practices.
1. How did you solve tone problem which occurs when transitioning chest to strohbass? I can do strohbass but when I transition to strohbass, tone changes quite a lot. It feels like more resonant and brighter than my lowest parts of chest voice. I want smooth transition but don't know how to develop it.
2. Is there any method that can extend chest voice down below?
So naturally, strohbass is very narrow and bright. To combat this (once you have established a good connection in the lower part of your voice), use vowels that are fuller and warmer such as ah, oh, or ooh. Strohbass still operates in your full voice so opening up with vowels will take care of the extension you need.
You can hear how I balance strohbass and return some roundness and warmth to my sound at the end of the video going down to the Bb1 the last time. Vowels are your friends. Use bright vowels first and then shape the sound and experiment with it. You may find that the brighter vowel is actually more useful and that tone will develop with time, experience, and age.
Thanks!
My lowest note I can reach everyday wouod be a C#2 or a C2...I feel like my lift starts at about the C#2 or D2...i feel like I could hit an easy C2 if I did this...
Will this even help reach even lower notes out of the chest register?
Please what type of breathing technique should I use or apply as a young bass vocalist?
So I'll be singing from a point of rest!
I recommend using the straw technique when you first start. Do some breathing exercises by breathing in and out through a straw. Get used to the space and then try singing through a straw. The space of the straw forces you to give up unrelated tension and also forces you to focus your breath energy when breathing out or singing.
Breathing in with the straw allows you to experience what a good "fill your body with your breath" air supply feels like for singing. Try this many times with the straw and when you remember the sensation, do it all without it.
From there, I recommend using consonants as warm-ups and warming up with staccato (detached and energetic) and legato (connected and and vibrant) sounds.
Best of luck!
@@bass2yang please I'd be very happy to see you do a video on the following you mentioned as for me to have perfect guide.
* the straw breathe technique
* the legato technique
* the staccato technique
I know perfection isn't attained overnight but with gradual process I'd become better in it.
@Bass2Yang thank you!
Nice video!!What's your advice for taking the other subharmonics?
Not sure if I am understanding correctly - are you talking about ingressive, kargyraa, and throat bass (beatbox)?
Hey, first of all, thanks for this.
I have been practicing supported vocal fry for around 10 months now, and I have been calling it "subharmonic" or "strohbass" interchangeably, but this is something new for me. I have no idea what's happening here, it sounds like a subharmonic fry, but we can clearly hear that you're not jumping up an octave to continue your scale downwards.
You're demonstrating how to transition in a scale, I think it would have been helpful to show the transition on one note (say D2 or C2 for you), from chest resonance to strohbass, because right now I don't know what changes you are applying in your throat in order to get that, I'm really confused. From what I understand, it seems like a third passagio, but I don't know what's happening during it. When you talk about "compressing" and "narrowing", it does sound like the Tuvan khoomei throat technique, where the upper part of the throat compresses the larynx down in order to silence some overtones, thus amplifying the fundamental. Both have that "metallic" texture to their timbre, but khoomei usually doesn't have the crackling and is more clear. Is that similar or not at all ?
Regarding fry, it is supposed to help, but each time I try to use it, I slip into subharmonics... obviously I am missing something, but I cannot seem to point out what, do you have any idea what it might be ? Is there a way to mix fry without slipping into subharmonics and without losing my pitched tone ?
You are welcome! I'll try to answer your questions.
So the transition note is actually Eb2 for me which is shown in the video - it would be the same for the other notes; Eb2 was the most efficient transition point for me. (edit: I see what you mean - you want a gradual transition from strohbass to full voice with the same note. It's the same thing technically so far since strohbass is using your full voice and what you should hear is simply a vowel change. I'll demonstrate in a different video.)
The changes applied are simply vowel brightness and breath energy which is what I mean by compressing and narrowing (brighter and thinner vowel sounds). Khoomei sounds cleaner because you are singing the note in full voice and you are typically much higher in the range where the pharyngeal resonance is easier to obtain. Also note that the vowel is typically darker with khoomei so that one could focus on overtone shaping rather than singer's formant.
Subharmonic occurs when you are up the octave applying a layer of vocal fry to achieve the necessary interaction for a perceived lower octave. If you think of it as a layer on top of your voice as opposed to an overlapping register, the concept becomes clearer.
In other words, stay with fry and see if you can move toward your full voice without shifting up or down - stay on the same pitch. This will give you a mixed fry sound once you reach a happy medium between full and fry (mixed fry technically is a lower larynx, approximated full voice sound where the folds are fully together, just no core of sound fully developed yet or focused but with more noticeable pharyngeal resonance - also known as open throat sound).
You slip into subharmonics because you are making the vocal fry interact with your full voice as a layer over your sound.
Another example I can give is think of a speaker with a sheet of paper over it. The speaker is your voice. The sheet of paper is your fry and it will vibrate in sympathy with the speaker when sound goes through it - this is a concept of subharmonics.
Mixed fry would be playing a note through the speaker and then crumpling the paper to match the same pitch coming out of the speaker - both the speaker and paper are producing the same note. Vocal Fry by itself would be just you crumpling the piece of paper to produce a note (let's assume that you can actually obtain a sustained pitch with this method).
I hope this helps - if it is still confusing, I'll clarify with another video.
Thanks - great questions!
@@bass2yang Thanks a lot for your detailed answer !
I am not sure I am understanding everything, but I will spend some time researching what you mention, try this when it's not night time and will come back with results (or lack thereof =p).
My transition would probably be a couple of tones higher (or more) since we have vastly different voices (I'm somewhere in the baritone tessitura, with extended highs - possibly baritenor), where in my range would you advise me to start practicing this ? I know for subharmonic fry, I grossly counted 5 tones up my lowest produced note, in order to just practice finding the register, is there a sweet spot like that for strohbass ?
Thanks again for your time, this is greatly appreciated !
Cool - so strohbass has been thrown around for many decades and it has lost what Miller (vocal pedagogue) interpreted it to be. So your "lowest" note may be right where the strohbass can start, give or take a few notes.
Rather than thinking of it as a different technique, you can just focus on thin and bright vowels.
Thanks for dropping by!
@@bass2yang Hello, I come bearing news.
So I have kept trying to find that turning point, and I never reached it… until a couple months ago when I got really sick. The sore throat kind of sick. That's something that hadn't happened since I've been an adult basically, so 15+ years, I haven't been sick like that with such a sore throat, and certainly not for such a long time (5-6 days).
During those 5-6 days, my speaking voice dropped by a 4th-6th or something crazy like that. While I usually talk between a Ab2 and a B2, then I talked between a C#2 and a E2. I would wake up with an extremely creaky voice, that required an active effort to actually produce an intelligible tone. Then when I would try to sing I'd naturally, and easily drop to a resonant and powerful C2 or B1, and also struggle above C4. Honestly if it wasn't for the pain, I would have loved keeping that range. I would trade my normal voice for this in a heartbeat. Anyway.
I also, during those few days, found the strohbass register. For me it's around D#2, note I usually don't have access to in the first place in my modal voice, or barely (and even then it's not resonant). But then, I would normally sing down in my modal voice, and I would try to stay in my modal voice. And the sound just shifts. I wasn't changing anything, I just kept singing in modal voice, and my modal sound would just shift to that fry-like sound, by itself. It's absolutely crazy. I had to make an active effort in order to smoothe out my sound. It even allowed me to go lower than B1, but that was creakiness more than tone, so probably not that interesting anyway. I obviously couldn't experiment extensively as my throat was in pain the whole time regardless, and I probably shouldn't have experimented and should have rested instead, but I did enough to understand the reality of what you meant. Understanding on paper is one thing, but going through the experience, for this, is really something else.
When I got better and the pain was gone, my voice reverted back to normal, I lost the range, I lost the register. It turns out, my normal healthy voice doesn't have that, at all, and that's fine. Now I have the information, it just doesn't exist in my voice. I finally understood what you meant, I just needed to experience it first hand.
I honestly feel like it's unexplainable properly to someone who doesn't have it in their voice, and the explanation is not to blame. It's not really a trick. It's a thing that either happens or doesn't when one sings downwards in their modal voice. If someone has it in their voice, they will have noticed it before coming here, in some way or another. Maybe they don't know what it is, maybe they don't know how to control it, maybe they only have that and don't know how to smoothe it out, but guys who have that will have experience of some sort with it, even if it's out of control.
Thank you again, have a good one.
hi bass2yang, I've got a question,
I'm 16 and can reach a pretty resonant D2, not too powerful yet but it is very warm, but when I wake up I can chest my way down to g1 sometimes, and I can kind of do this Strohbass technique to A1, is there anyway to help "turn" this into chest voice as my voice lowers and I get older? any exercises? (i can do subharmonics and kargyraa too but I wanted to ask specifically about chest)
thank you in advance!
I would continue to work on balance, breath energy, and basic singing techniques that are healthy. Subharmonics are to be an extension of the awesome sound you are developing in your voice. Age definitely helps, moreso than that is experience and efficient use of air as well as balancing the vocal folds. Stretch them up with falsetto, bridge your entire range and find that "stream" that navigates throughout your range without issue or worrying about vocal color.
SOVT exercises (such as singing with a straw) really helps you focus and find efficiency in vocalizing properly.
Remember that "chest" is a secondary feeling and not always an indicator of a healthy sound. It should feel effortless, and all your effort is to maintain the proper settings of air, vocal fold setting, and space for your sound.
Hope this helps!
I have the deepest voice of anyone i know except tim storms, and i'm 15 years old, but now... i feel like a tenor. Not the pitch that's so impressive (though it is) but the fullness in your speech. I can sing all the way down to D#-2, A1 in chest but my speech is nowhere near as full as this
@Aaron Anderson chest a1 is possible (i've kind of lost it recently but i'm getting there) the -2 octave is obviously not in chest. It's (the dirtiest ever) fry or inward phonation
@Aaron Anderson i realise it might have been misleading from your pount of view (of course i know what i meant but you didn't) it doesn't sound all too musical indeed but i guess i have to brag about stuff i can't prove on the internet some way... haha thanks and have a good one
4:59 Ab1 when he says one ,one.
Now do it on a major chord :D
My lowest note on a good day in chest is D2 normally maybe F2 or E2 at 14 good or not
my lowest chest is A1, where should i start putting strohbass in?
It depends on what your concept of "strohbass" is. I recommend always approaching the voice with an open, connected sound. "Strohbass" as I have interpreted it, relies on maximizing overtones through thickening the vocal folds. A consequence is that it becomes brighter than usual, though it is still connected. An approach of this should feel as though you are moving into a vocal fry state, but never actually entering it.
Some people approach "strohbass" already in a vocal fry state. This means that you must maintain resistance through lengthening the vocal folds so that you can produce a stable pitch.
So, all this to say, rather than thinking of where and when strohbass occurs, continue the integrity of the vowel and maintain a vibrant color in your voice (with as much space as possible). You may be able to go lower, or, improve the notes you already have.
I hope this helps!
Ah yes, one more point. Record yourself singing a scale (normally) and listen to when the overtones in your voice all the sudden just drop (as if your voice just lost a lot of "bling" in its sound). A half-step or so above that would be a good transition. Think of shapes and colors of the voice (dark, bright, vibrant, round, tall, etc.) instead of when a transition begins when first approaching your voice and see where the transition shows itself through that process (because it will change slightly based on what your voice will do).
Thanks!
Thanks..I have just Found the mecca of bass singing !!!
And yes i know others...
This technique i worked out my self studying vocals...
To me it's obvious, lower sound means tighter vibration in voice box....🤔
Though i wasn't Shore how to do it...NOW I DO..THANK YOU..
AND IT'S CALLED STROHBASS.
OK
im a tenor and can strohbass a C1.
So my lowest chest note is like an F#2 or F2 on good days. I just turned 16 a couple months ago and I really wanna hit lower notes. Is there any way I will be able to lower my voice? Or it just waiting till I get older. Btw, I've practiced my low voice a ton, so I sound good, but the problem is I dont have much of a low voice. And my god your voice is powerful.
Keep singing and find a good vocal teacher that can work with you. Make a lot of healthy sounds and take care of your voice - don't skimp on the higher notes, either. The voice has different rates of maturity and gaining great experience is helpful.
Age helps, yes. Try focusing on having a great, connected voice. You'll be surprised at how singing high and healthy also helps when singing low.
Your body is still developing so get rest, eat healthy, exercise your body, mind, and voice. Focus on a goal that improves your entire voice.
You may or may not have a low voice, but going in a direction where you can have longevity, health, and amazing tone will give you that fullness quality you are looking for - what you eant to make sure of is not allow limitations to stop you from being musical. Also, your top range can develop and sound magnificent.
Thanks for dropping by!
- Thou
@@bass2yang I ha e definitely practiced my top range. I can whistle an A6 and my falsetto has a really good range. Thanks for the tips
Hello!
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how ti sing the strohbass. Every time I try to use it Becomes a subarmonic
I probably don't understand the mechanism.
could you explain it again please? :(
I m a baritone, i can sing from F4 to E2 but wihout a lot of Power, but I have not a great technique because i started singing during quarantine, so I'm "new".
Thank you!!
Greetings from Italy!
Greetings! The way I see it, strohbass is just the lower limit of your full voice. So, when you get to G2, start moving toward a brighter, focused sound and slowly descend. If you must, try singing on the letter "V" to help with checking your airflow; if anything, your air speed should slow down and the amount of air will feel like it is decreasing. Try to maintain the same amount of air and adjust as you descend.
Lower notes naturally require less air speed, but pretty much same amount of air.
There are some people who say that it is a mix of things. Think brighter sound and more focus for the lower notes. If anything, try focusing on getting a really good sound and healthy vocal production throughout your range. You may find that it is easier to do when you solidify the rest of your range.
Thanks!
Great video, really helpful, thanks Thou!
how is your speaking voice so low? as a Contralto the note where l can get this dark, thick, rich resonant note is my G4 chest note. lol and perhaps my E3 to C3 lol. I can sing phrases down to A2. it would be wild if l can hit G2 and F2 🤗🤗🤗🤗 l want to sound nice, not ugly though
Very cool - if you can sing phrases down to A2, you may be able to vocalize a bit further. Think of your voice as a thread of sound rather than a pipe. Humming and singing on the "ng" sound will help. If you run into vocal fry, all it to be a continuation of your pitch rather than just an approximation. Thin vowels and bright sounds helps.
If you sing down to an A2 and start to fry on a G#2. Try starting with fry on a comfortable C3 and gliss down to the G#2. I find that singing with the consonant sound "V" helps regulate the proper air requirements when you are singing with fry. It doesn't have to be loud, just accurate.
Thanks for dropping by!
Bass2Yang ok thanks for the tips. The ng tip really works Holy! I'm shocked! as a Contralto I'm supposed to keep singing in the ng position anyhow. 😃 I just sound like a weird cat purring, but I'll take it
I wanna channel my inner Lisa Gerrard and Jessica Reedy. Toni Braxton can perform G2 or G#2 sexy bedroom croaks in a tribute to Stevie Wonder: th-cam.com/video/5i4Sgtb17e8/w-d-xo.html
(I am conceptualizing a book about the Contralto voice, 😅)
oooh you need to check out the Contralto who holds the world record for singing the lowest note for a female. a D2 l think. it's on YT. insane. If she can do that, maybe she can go even lower?? She sounds very close to a male, like Current era Boy George. if l could guess the size of her vocal folds, it's probably over 17. 17.5mm is the median size for the tenor voice. her highest note in her singable range is D5.
th-cam.com/video/Zxfga8naHso/w-d-xo.html
So interestingly enough, the Octavism group I am a part of has a video that shows an older woman singing a major scale down to a Bb1. Pretty awesome. Not Guiness verified, but definitely Oktavism-respected.
Bass2Yang Whoa a lady bass. a Contralto profundo. your group will get a lot of attention if she smashes the world record. that would be sooooo awesome! you'd get a lot of publicity. who is this woman? can you upload it? pls share (for my research)
how do you achieve a good level of projection with this? i seem stuck on this quiet mix of vocal fry and chest, and it is pretty round, but not loud at all. great video though, very informative!
It takes a bit of time, though, for thr most part, I find success when I am relaxed and not pressing down on the voice so much. There are times, of course, where a bit of extra compression does help bring the vocal folds together. Usually for me, I just make sure I don't lose any presence in my voice when singing because that is what is going to carry my sound out to the audience.
Thanks!
@@bass2yang thank you very much for the reply in such a short amount of time, especially since this was one of your older videos. Ive noticed a great deal of personal improvement from your channels exercises and appreciate that you delve into great depth on topics that are not the easiest to find information about.
I am a baritone, but my range is C2-E4. I have more lower notes than high notes. Am I able to learn vocal fry to go lower? I already know subharmonic technique, but it's to hard to reach A1 with subharmonic. I just reach G1-E1. Would chest-fry help me with this?
Hi Daniel! That is a great range for a baritone. I will say that it depends on the vocal fry you are trying to learn as many teachers have their own take on vocal fry. Some will say it is therapeutic, but only claim that because it is what everyone else is saying without understanding what is happening with tension, airflow, and vocal fold state. With that said, as long it is not being pressed or over-pressured (too heavy of folds with too much air speed and pressure), you should be fine.
I'd need to hear you to see what is going on but usually if A1 is hard and G1 to E1 is easy, it means that you are just more comfortable at the moment to do those notes. A1 will take some time and remember that movement of air is needed to allow the note to work its magic. Try singing with a straw to help you focus and build a more efficient use of tension and airflow.
Chest fry is a state of which you are trying to maintain balance in your vocal folds' stretch and slack states, but are still approximating the pulses needed to activate proper airflow (basically, frying while trying to get some consistent pitch and resonance). That could help but may not assist much in subharmonic singing or development.
Hope this helps! Work on stretching your vocal folds as well in the middle and the highs - when done properly, you will see better efficiency with your lows. 👍
@@bass2yang That helped me a lot, thanks! I'll try to do that. God bless you! 🙏👏🌟
@@bass2yang Hi, Bass2Yang, I came here just to say that I just discovered my chest fry, and yes, that's helping me with notes below C2, and I am enjoying this technique a lot. Haha
Thanks!
I'd also like to know how we develop the forward placement to increase the volume of chest fry.
@@Daniel_Muniz aren't you a bass? I'm a baritone with a Bb2-B4 range
Someone tell me, is there a difference between strohbass and vocal fry? If so, what?
You probably have been asked this many times, but Do you consider yourself as a true bass , or a dramatic bass baritone? Also, this has been a topic of great debate, but out of the popular Acapella bass trio of Geoff, Avi and Tim who has the lowest and highest voice? It would be great to hear your thoughts on this.
Because of the rep I have sung and relating my timbre with the professionals in the field, I would fall under bass-baritone (or the basso-cantabile/cantante). Lyric roles/rep feel better on the voice. There are implications for every role, rep, and size of stature as well as voice and for the most part, a basso profondo doesn't work for me.
That said, you probably want me in the Bass 2/Bass 3 section. :D
Simply put, I am a bass. Hopefully a good enough one to be hired.
Appreciate the thoughts!
@@bass2yang Thank You!!
@@bass2yang wait, have you just said that you are a bass-baritone? Well... What the heck?) Do, you have an F4 for everyday? I'm so confused, because I am classified as a bass-baritone, but my speaking voice is a 5th higher than yours... You sound like a tipical basso profondo, or at least a low end central bass, but, so far as I know no way you are a cantate or even bass-baritone. Like, if you are a bass-baritone, than who the hell is bass?) Glenn Miller then also would be a bass-baritone or, maximum light bass/basso cantate.
I'm not getting this *bass* thing anymore if you aren't a low bass, anyway you know your voice better, so maybe you are, but... WT heck is happening with all this bass thing
Edit: here is Glenn Miller, a famous basso profondo talking and singing about where you are talking and singing)
th-cam.com/video/ZmxC34GmqHM/w-d-xo.html
@Dmytro Tsvyntarnyi I do appreciate your input. I have an F4 everyday though my C2 and Bb1 tends to become very quiet once I am warmed up. Perhaps if I may clarify, the roles that worked for me when I sang in college were mostly bass-baritone roles and that is usually the bill that people pay when I am hired to sing. Maybe it is time to change that? Last time I focused on bass-baritone rep was around 5 years ago? So you could say that I am sure that I am a bass, not sure if I am a true profundo since I've never been casted for those roles or equivalent (seriöser bass), and able to sing rep that the bass-baritone does (Jerome Hines, Ezio Pinza, Sam Ramey, etc.).
Oktavist (choral, Russian specifically) is what I am usually hired to do around the area.
I do not find my speaking voice to be deeper than basses like Glenn Miller or Vladimir Miller and bass-baritone is a fairly wide band to cover. There is that "sub-category" of basso cantabile (ipasource uses it I think?) that is in between the basso profondo and the bass-baritone.
Sometimes people refer to it as the middle ground of bass and baritone. Other times it is just a role that they (or their agent) choose so that opera houses can hire them for specific parts (in some cases, they get a lot of jobs because they can do both bass and baritone).
I tend to just stick with bass for all rep. Bass-baritone (or basso cantante) for specific rep. Oktavist or bass 2/bass 3 for choral. Honestly, what ever pays the bills haha.
I appreciate your input - I turned 35 this year and you know basses... Our voices change right around this time and it may do it again in 5 years.
Edit: interesting, IPASource doesn't include basso profondo. Serioser bass is considered darker than the basso cantabile, at least there it is. There are just too many descriptives to choose from - I'l just stick with bass from now on.
Lol. Sorry for all this - I try to just leave it to the rep and others to decide what I am.
Thanks for your input!
@@dmytrotsvyntarnyi799 Speaking voice is not a good indicator of low bass voices. People's speaking voices tend to sit differently. Some people like to speak at their lower register, some speak a bit higher. For example , someone like Eric Alatorre , would seem to have a higher voice than Thou. See this video for hearing Eric's voiceth-cam.com/video/AArX-bGkLTM/w-d-xo.html. Would you believe Eric is a profondo and has a solid F#1, that he is lower than Thou? Seems hard to believe but it's true..
Hey, thanks for the video! I've been watching your stuff and really appreciate it (:
I would love to see more videos of explanations of singing - fry register, subharmonic etc.
Also, what did you exactly do in strohbass?
No problem! I'll see what I can come up with for you all.
For strohbass, I used less weight, less space, full vocal fold closure, and a bright vowel. Similar to singing through a straw, except for this it is through a vowel.
Thanks!
@@bass2yang what do mean by less weight
@@190averagebowler9 I am a fach or 2 higher. Quite exactly similar to Samuel Ramey. For me, to project voice below the staff, I have to use a strohbass mix, which is exactly how Ramey's voice worked. Really a lyric bass baritone, but very careful development resulted in a voice of exceptional beauty, as one critic I heard say, Ramey has successfully developed a coloratura bass. I think that is correct, though Ramey always recorded at a lazy pace, so for a bass, coluratura doesn't mean fast. I am getting close. You can browse comments and find people that aren't singers remarking that Ramey was a basso profundo! One thing I would like to mention is the speed of your scales is VERY important. Sing too fast, you will never developer full expressiveness down low. Don't develope that, your voice will not be its best. If you are training as a bass, I highly recommend Sieber opus 97. Dial in your accomp app at as slow a speed as possible to sing phrases using the alternate breath marks and observe dynamics. Your voice will improve amazingly quickly. Fry for me happened spontaneously on large descending intervals at the end of a phrase. Suddenly the extra volume pops out when you are trying to project. It's a bit disconcerting at first being a harsh bright sound. All male voices should have it, I think. Learn to integrate it and don't push the harsh sound. It will "fry" your voice quickly if you do. Sometimes I sing an entire phrase in it, but always the eye to just using a little and trying to maintain a smooth full quality, with just the edge. It will do wonders in time. The edge is where any great voice lies.
Hi Thou,
Between August and September this year I tested my vocal range five times for free under Master Class, and it came to be 4.7 octaves from C1-G5. I'm still struggling to fully master the subharmonic technique even though the lowest subharmonic note I reached was an F1 and my highest an Eb2. My chest notes range from C2-Gb4 and my soft falsetto notes range from Gb4-G5. My lowest vocal fry before was an Eb1. How I reached C1-D1 was attempting the growl technique, so my vocal fry notes range from C1-F2 but with little volume. What I want to do is go lower in subharmonic to reach for the C1 note and add volume. Any suggestions?
Total Range: C1-F1-C2-Gb4-G5
Growl: C1-D1
Vocal Fry: C1-F2
Subharmonic: F1-Eb2
Chest: C2-Gb4
Soft Falsetto: Gb4-G5
My suggestion is to remember that subharmonic is more of a "layer" than it is a technique. Meaning, you are simply allowing the vocal fry to interact with your full voice at the same note (talking about 1st level subharmonics).
It takes time - I'm almost at my 10 year mark since researching and applying it in performance and study and I am still working on it. Remember that the subharmonic touches and interacts within your voice instead of being controlled or forced. Use closed vowels or sing using an "ng" sound. Start higher at around a C3 and let that drop down the octave with subharmonic or start on an F2 and see if the F1 cooperates better.
Hope this helps a bit!
@@bass2yang, thanks. I just sustained C3 note and applied the octave drop to C2 while singing the "oh" sound closed. Then I sustained the C2 for nearly twenty seconds subharmonically, and it worked. I'll use that again to go lower.
I have been trying out subharmonics for a while now but i can't seem to get into it. Whenever i attempt it, i end up singing in overtone instead.
hey, if you have a spare moment, can I ask you a quick question on this? I'm brand new to singing. the other day I was exploring my low end and went looking for and found a G1. does it sound like chest or fry to you? before and after I waver around a lot on pitch searching and failing to hold onto it, also I wasn't focusing on tone quality at all meanwhile. I'm just curious to better understand what's happening down here. :) it could be fry but it also sounded rather steady to my untrained ear. (it's uploaded on my channel).
Very interesting! The world of singing is very complex.
So just to be clear, your lowest non-fry note currently is a Bb1? You have a lower than average speaking voice, so I'm assuming your modal range is capable of reaching Bb1 without any fry mixing in, right? I'm wondering what the lowest non-fry note possible for a human is given all this complexity. Also, what's the difference between "modal" and "full voice"? Is there even a difference?
Bb1 seems to be where it settles and it moves around throughout the day and depending on the rep I sing.
You bring up an interesting subject. Purists believe that there is only "one voice" - meaning we do not have separate registers or anything. What they do say is that we have different approaches to our voice and we either open or close resonant spaces that give us the tone, vowel, and shape of sound.
Other pedagogues believe in three separate voices - fry voice, chest voice, and head voice. They say that pulse-like sounds enter the voice after D2 and the vocal folds begin to become slack. You will see a lot of people place "fry" with these notes. Regardless of the sound, once the vocal folds have a "change" in form, that means that there is a register change (some speculate that no matter how good you are, your voice enters the pulse register after C2). The mix of pulse register and modal register (which is essentially the chest voice or full voice as some people say) can occur as high as F2 and go as low as F1.
From modal you move up to the head register. A lot of popular singers focus on a mix of these two to get past the passagio above C4 (basses). You and mix lower or higher with head voice. From there, you can hang on to the modal register until about A4 and it diminishes, leaving mostly head register as you ascend.
These are just estimates and do change from each singer. They are not absolutes - sometimes I feel like they are all made up because it is such a fluid concept.
I will say for me, I feel a definite loss in chest resonance after Bb1. My voice gets too heavy and I overload chest resonance, having no other resonant areas (sounds sort of like a sine wave almost in my head). I can "mix" and go lower from there. Personally, I think people who use fry are at the first stage of developing their voice and vocal freedom. Those who misuse it and force it run into a lot of issues as it can introduce too much tension to the voice. Those who don't have to use it and can sing low most likely have thicker and longer vocal folds and/or reached the next level of its benefits and vocal freedom.
Listen to babies - sing some low notes to them and look and listen to how they mimic you. They will mimic your pitch, but within the context of their voice. It is fryish. But... It is also connected and healthy. Every vocal ound a baby makes is pretty much from a healthy onset of sound. We can learn a lot from them.
I think of full voice as using all your resonant spaces while being full engaged in your voice, aligned and with proper adduction.
Modal register is the state that my vocal folds are in as well as where the I feel the resonance is located (chest area or pharynx). They mean the same thing when talking in general but do have specific uses.
I may have gone on a tangent. My apologies. I probably made things even more confusing haha. A lot of my references come from Richard Miller, William Vennard, and Maestro Jones (thevoiceteacher.com I think is the website) as well as from my own observations and studies. Others as well but I cannot cite them from memory at the moment.
Thanks!
@@bass2yang Dang, that was a wealth of info, and it's not confusing at all, don't worry! I've had a lot of other work to focus on the past few days so I haven't gotten back to you yet, but I've got a little time now. So being that you can reach Bb1 without fry or strohbass but the transition begins around Eb2, does that mean everything below Eb2 isn't comfortable when you're doing it in pure modal voice?
I've never heard of the "one voice" idea before, and I always equated full voice with being anything that doesn't include (or consist purely of) falsetto or fry (or whistle register in some people's cases). I have, however, heard ideas now and then that somewhat lineup with the mentality of "if it's lower than such and such a note it's automatically fry no matter what."
Granted, I'm not formally educated in voice, but at the same time that mindset honestly just reeks of cynicism to me. I can understand skepticism with someone who claims to be able to sing off the piano without fry, but there are some people whose voices, even when they're just speaking, are just so darn low that they should at least be able to reach the upper contra octave while singing without any mixture of fry (let alone relying solely on fry).
How did they reach the conclusion, though, that the vocal chords ALWAYS become slack below that point? Did they actually stick an endoscope down the throat of a basso profundo (or many of them) and see that, no matter how low their natural speaking ranges are, that their vocal chords went slack below C2-D2? I know you said that those pitch limits are more a rule of thumb than something that pertains to every last person, but I'm still interested in how the people who postulate this theory came to the conclusion they did.
Maybe I sound cynical now that I've presented those questions (haha), but a lot of the reason why low bass voices are so alluring to me is because I had the impression that they were genuinely able to sing notes that most others can only reach through fry or some other "trick". The idea of "it's always fry below C2-D2" honestly puts a huge dent in my enjoyment of low bass singing because if every single person is frying when they get below that (including really low basses), there's really not much special about it to me. Yeah, the sound is inherently cool and does provide a lot of extra weight to places in music that would otherwise be lacking in presence, but a major part of why I love it so much is the feat of reaching those notes. I'm not saying that I now disbelieve in upper contra octave notes being reachable without fry, but some theories do cause me to doubt.
Something that certainly would be interesting would be to stick a small camera down someone's throat (which I've seen at least one video of here on youtube that shows what goes on with kargyraa and strohbass) who has a genuinely low voice (or, again, multiple people with that trait) and watch what happens.
It's also worth pointing out that, in some cases, people have timbres to their voices, even when speaking normally, with a lot of high overtones in them. Think of the renowned gospel bass, Tim Riley. His timbre is a lot like a mix between a piano and a low brass instrument. When he speaks down low, he gets a little bit of that "grit" on top of all the low end. It's almost like it's borderline impossible to tell the difference between mixed and chest with some people at those lower pitches because of this.
As a last question...if I push my voice down lower and lower, past the point of where it's comfortable and the sound begins to thin out and get that buzz on top of it, is that strohbass or is it some other form of mixed chest/fry? I lower my actual voice and continue to sing the "regular way" (i.e. not just frying on its own), but it thins out and a lot of it gets stuck in my throat. Just wondering if I've been doing strohbass all this time without knowing it, lol.
By the way, I'm not a singer, and if I was, I'd be a baritone rather than a bass. This is all just academic interest behind these comments and questions!
Thanks for all the info and great vids!
I'll try to answer as much as I can. No worries, we are all on this journey and the science can only go as far as the data and tests provide, so any question pertaining to it is a valid question (and can also become a thesis one day!).
In pure modal voice, I get to Bb1 fine. There is a loss of resonance in the other areas and on mic, it sounds like a sine wave. This is if I try my best to not let go of my full voice sound - I begin to overload the chest resonance and it is no longer balanced. Some days I can get there fine by just speaking, other days I need to really focus. Geoff from Voice Play talks about this in one of his videos where he says that he loses resonance after D2/C#2 (which people are saying that there's no way, he sounds fine, but if you read between the lines, he is saying that there is not much projection value and the chest resonance diminishes greatly. He is referring to the color of his voice is not round or full and in a choral setting, will probably sound buzzy or fryish.) He does what all great singers do - focus on connection, breath energy, and vocal alignment.
Your answer regarding full voice is the first step of the "one voice" deal. To make it simpler, your voice is not different whether it becomes fry or falsetto - it's just your voice developing. As you go from developing to progressing and then achieving. From there, it becomes mastery.
Look at the Five Stages of Mastery Learning and you can relate it to the voice. (from www.jonbergmann.com/the-five-stages-of-mastery-learning/)
Stage 1: Unconsciously Incompetent - The Non-Singer (Dude with the low voice)
Stage 2: Consciously Incompetent - The Beginner (I sing sometimes, but I don't do it professionally and I don't know what voice type I am)
Stage 3: Consciously Competent - Able to Sing on Pitch and on Time (I am in a group and I can sing or I sing on my own - I am a bass that can sing low)
Stage 4: Unconsciously Competent - Able to Sing on Command and without worrying (same as Stage 3 but professionally, if not, daily - I am a professional musician)
Stage 5: Master Teacher - I can sing professionally, I understand the concepts and can teach/personalize it to others, and even though I may not be in someone's voice range, I can still competently teach (Reflective Competence is what it is called. The master teacher is stage 4 but understands how to get other people there and continues the journey of learning).
I am certain they've used a control group and a group of singers to verify this change in register (state of vocal fold). I am also certain that they probably did not have a Glenn Miller or equivalent. With that said, they are taking theories and results from these tests and coming up with conclusions. It is up to us as musicians to get past Stage 4 and move on over to Stage 5 to verify and/or challenge all this.
I feel like the negative cloud over the idea of vocal fry is what is truly damaging. Rather than seeing it as a developing part of our voice, there is a lot of negativity that shrouds its importance in allowing us to understand more about our voice. I think of it just as a state in which my vocal folds are at. Because it sounds so different and its use is not naturally inherent to most, it becomes sort of a distant cousin thrice-removed from the vocal family.
Should it be a means to properly phonate? No. It is a great starting point.
What the data is showing is that most people's voices enter a pulse like state after a certain frequency (data gathered from research shows that vocal fry typically occurs around 70Hz, which is in fact right where C#2/D2 is). Keep in mind, this is only what they have observed. Kind of like "How much venom from this animal will kill a person" concept - some people have been bitten by rattle snakes and lived and others were not so lucky. Maybe that one person is a special case, or maybe there is a group of people that were not tested. There's no way to test everyone so we make theories and apply what we can to the rest of the population and say that a rattlesnake bite will kill you. Avoid them.
If you look at pharyngeal resonance, different authors have their own set of frequencies, but the total range of it was from 330Hz to 750Hz which is E4 to a bit above F#5. Interestingly enough, this is also right were people begin to "mix". When singing low, notes below D2 enter this pulse-like state (thus, the rattling sound). It does not mean that the person has entered a vocal fry state, no, it is simply physics. The sound wave begins to slow down enough to where we are starting to hear and feel individual pulses. Depending on how we resonate that note, it can be fuller or thinner.
Also keep in mind that we do not have a 16-foot pipe in our throats to even be able to sing a C2 like an organ, yet people are able to do it. Why? It's because our vocal folds are awesome - the antagonism and synergy going on with the musculature in our voice is amazing. Low notes? I'll relax and shorten and allow air to flow through at a lower rate, thus creating the pitch. Not projecting? I'll resonate these important pitches above the fundamental that give life to the fundamental. Not warm enough? Don't worry, the fullness of the pharynx will help. Too breathy? Let's see, reset and find the proper amount of tension in your folds so the folds can actually come together and the larynx, when aligned, will also resonate in the 2-3k area to give you that ping or "singers formant."
I think the pedagogues are looking at science - the length of a C2 is about 16 ft. We cannot fully produce the fundamental unless we allow the mechanism to create that amount of space or recreate it by manipulating the space. How is it that a trumpet can produce a C2? Slow down the rate of the lips and tension. What about a Tuba? Look at the amount of tubing.
... We are all just air benders. haha...
Sorry, bad joke break.
Anyways, I will say that if you try to push the chest resonance all the way down, you end up with an old habit of mine that reoccurs from time to time. You will cut off all other resonant areas of your voice and the mechanism will be very heavy, but you will not be heard (not much projection value). The idea is to allow the voice to be in alignment and use all resonances when possible to allow the note to project and the airflow/breath pressure to be efficient.
It is hard to tell who is mixing or not usually because they focus on quality singing and vocal alignment. If there isn't a "change" in the alignment, we don't make so much of a big deal. This is the reason why subharmonics were like "WTF" at first because there wasn't so much of a change in the vocal alignment, simply just an added feature that manipulated the waveform to mimic the same overtones and fundamental frequency as the octave below it.
The strohbass is more of a quality of sound that implies improved stability and brightness; unfortunately, there is not much dynamic range or even timbre choices. It is the limit of the full voice down low - sort of like channeling all your energy into stability of note and projection at the cost of everything else (Infinity Wars?... hmm.). It is also the result of not giving up the "full voice" mechanism while trying to keep it resonant. This concept of strohbass is still in the modal register and is just really narrow. One can argue that it is not full voice, and I can agree (and also disagree, because of how the alignment is in the voice.)
To answer your question about Tim Riley's voice, it is exceptionally low. Even listening to his demonstration however, the "nasal passages" technique (or whatever you want to call it) is what all singers do to keep the upper resonances open and allow for proper projection. Yes, it is his full voice. And not surprisingly, this is also "strohbass"-related in terms of concept. When he sings down to the F1, however, you will notice a significant loss in warmth (pharyngeal resonance). The folds have the proper "full voice resistance" and at the same time, it is pulse-like in nature due to how our ears perceive sound and how the folds are generating the pitch. It is easy to label it as projected fry because that's the resonating frequency that some untrained ears hear first.
Think of how we perceive music. If I played an F3 for an untrained singer to match pitch and they sing a C4 instead, are they unfit as a singer? Or... is it because their ears picked out one of the overtones instead and tried to match that down the octave as well as the fact that since their voice hasn't changed (boy soprano), an F3 is near impossible? Do you see where I am going with this?
With all the processing that goes on, it is easy to recreate the resonances of full voice. It is not possible to remove certain things, just cover it up or divert one's attention to something else. People who say "this is fry" hear the fry-type sounds and frequency overtones.
Try not to take everyone's word as truth but a concept that can reveal the truth at hand. Research is always coming up and I'm trying to keep up as well. I'm all for research and yes, there needs to be a different set of singers to research on regarding these matters (actual basses - unfortunately, not all singers know how to participate or choose to do it... or even know about it.)
I look at it this way - is it healthy, is it possible, can it be musical or functional, and does it have longevity? This allows me to be stress-free from all the battles going on around the internet and also gives me a better perspective; most of all, it allows me to just enjoy music.
I can talk about this all day, but I should probably make a video about it instead.
Just keep in mind - our instrument is our instrument. We can be awesome with it and come up with things no one else could have imagined; we can even just stick to the status quo and be awesome at that. Either way, it is the discovery of music and the enjoyment of the arts that matters.
@@bass2yang Thanks, your answer helped a lot! So with Tim Riley being in full voice, does that mean he's using strohbass? I know he pushes the resonance up into his head (the "mask" technique) as a lot of singers tend to do, but I remember when I met him he told me he "can't stand" (to literally quote him) vocal fry. It's worth noting, though, that when I demonstrated what I meant to him by "vocal fry", I used fry on its own rather than having it just be what mixes in with my chest voice. I tend to count mixed voice as part of someone's true range...as long as someone genuinely lowers their voice (rather than just speeding up or slowing down airflow a la pure fry or bring out undertones like in subharmonics), they're still technically using their singing voice and not just faking a note (not to discredit well-trained pure fry and subharmonics, though).
There are also some basses that don't have a lot of those high overtones in their voices, even down into the contra octave...take Vladimir Pasjukov for example...he's probably the most pleasant-sounding bass in that pitch range I've ever heard (yes, I think he even sounds better tone wise than Zlatopolsky). I've also noticed that in voices that DO have a lot of high overtones (like Tim Riley), that goes away quite a bit when they sing more quietly and comes back when they're trying to project (which you see both of in the video of Tim Riley giving tips on bass singing)...similar to how when you play a contra octave note on a piano really softly and then play it really hard...the former showcases more of the fundamental whereas the latter has a rougher sound due to all the high overtones coming out. And I totally agree...sometimes people mistake those higher overtones for fry or even someone just faking the note when that phenomenon occurs in a singing context.
If you did end up doing another video on this stuff like you mentioned as a possibility, I think it'd be cool if you took videos like Tim's tips video and some other basses (I'd be interested in seeing commentary on Pasjukov, Chandrowsky, and Eric Alatorre, among others) and just did a commentary like you did with the two Millers and Myakotin on an older video. That way people could know what's going on with their voices and if there's any fry mixing in at any points.
Thanks again!
I would say for Tim Riley it is strohbass (according to my definition of it, which is full voice, bright/forward sound and a lot more rattle, not as warm) and others with different definitions may agree or disagree.
Thanks - it was great talking through this with you and I think a video about this should be done. The old video was my first attempt on TH-cam and just trying to understand all this bass-ness. Better informed now, haha.
Thanks for the direction!
Thank you for share!
I came from bass singing nation.
I'm lé_bob for anyone else from there.
how crazy... ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
his voice.. i think im gay