I think Chris was very good at listening to and understanding how his voice feels in his body. This is one of the most important notes I think a singing student can take on, listening to your body and how your voice feels. You can hear the difference in his voice as he practised between 19. Word of warning for those who want that voice, although it does sound cool, the downside to vocal damage is that he would have had less control over his voice and registers and had a loss of range, and not all of us can adapt well as Chris could.Īlthough Chris never had a singing lesson, he was incredibly intuitive in listening to what his voice needed and was able to teach himself. When his voice did change, he adapted fantastically, making the most of the limitations of his voice and personally, I love his work from his later years.
But considering his struggle with addiction, he maintained his tone for a very long time, and it wasn't until the 2010s that his voice started to get this texture this is a credit to his natural technique and breath support. The vocal damage would have almost certainly been caused by both his lifestyle and a gruelling schedule. To me, this does point to some vocal damage, as a long term husky voice is often the result of chronically swollen vocal cords. This is my favourite performance of Chris’, ‘When I’m Down live at the Troubadour in London’. Although the energy, power and range of his early days are awe-inspiring, I love the warmth and emotion that he grew into. "As time has moved on, I have less range and less ability to easily go in and out of different registers, but I feel like I have a much better ability to emotionally connect with any song.” However, this did not stop him from making some of the best music he ever did. A loss of range is normal as you age, but he did push his voice and body to their limits. There are rumours about vocal surgery, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true due to his lifestyle and extreme singing style, especially in the early days. And yes, it is a mixed voice!Ĭhris' range did change throughout the years. To be quite frank, I would struggle with that as a soprano, and he is a baritone. You can hear Chris' A5s from early on in his career. What's more, he can sing this both in a head voice and a mighty mixed voice. Chris’s range was C sharp 2 to a reliable full-voiced A5. A trained baritone has an average range of 1.7 to 2.4 octaves, so around an F2 to G4 or an extreme of an A4. The average baritone has a range of 1.4 to 2 octaves, so let's say around an F2 to a D4. To understand how incredible his range is, let's look at an average baritone male voice. Although Chris is technically a baritone because of his lower range and warmth of tone, he has an outstanding high mix that is well-produced and manages to maintain that warmth. How did he achieve this? What makes Chris Cornell great? TechniqueĬhris Cornell had an incredible 4-octave range. His work was interesting, bold, technically brilliant, but heartfelt. Although he is widely regarded as a founding member of the Seattle grunge movement, he was a force of nature that couldn’t be neatly placed into any genre and had a wide range of influences. So, in terms of voice types it's indeed true, but I don't think that's the case most of the times.Chris Cornell was, in my opinion, one of the most naturally gifted rock singers ever to live. It could only sound OK if you have a very low (or very high) voice, but these are extreme cases, not the average. I bet it will sound too high (or too low). I don't have references for this, but try to talk one octave higher than you do and think of a woman who talks at this pitch (or do the opposite if you are a woman). In terms of speech I don't believe it is true either. At the same time, you can find women (not only contraltos) singing around F3 and G3, but I can't think of any popular song these days where a male singer reaches one octave lower than this. You hardly see women singing above F5 or G5, while tenors, like Bruno Mars for example, easily reach A4 or C5. In popular music I don't believe it's true. So the soprano voice can be really one octave higher than the tenor voice, for example. In classical music this might be a good generalization, because composers often try to explore the singer's range. This means that the highest female voice is in general one octave higher than the highest male voice, and the same for the lowest. Well, if you compare the ranges of male and female voice types you will see that the female types are one octave higher than the male types.
0 kommentar(er)
