Am I the only one who noticed Plant’s voice getting distinctly higher after Zep II? Funny how that more or less coincided with his hair changing from a rounded afro to a parted-down-the-middle one. And yes I realise performers are known to tweak their look, now and then.
For instance, at absolutely no point do we hear RP’s voice - from Zep III, onwards - get as low as “wo-man…yooooooooouuuuuuuuuu neeeeeed me…Looooooooooooooooooove…” or “you know you shook me babe…”
And conversely, on the first two albums, you certainly don’t hear RP hitting any high notes such as “Used to sing about the mountains, but the mountains washed away”
Offhand I can think of only two other singers who distinctly changed their voice mid-career: when Van Morrison was with Them, (singing Gloria, for instance) his voice had that punkish rasp, basically becoming a template for vocalists in the garage rock genre, and then barely two years later he was crooning “Moondance”.
And more obscurely, there was Tommy James (of the Shondells), who, after dropping perhaps too much acid, decided that the r and b style of Mony Mony sucked donkey balls, and changed his voice to go for the more drugged-out Crimson and Clover.
There were bands like the Beatles who often tried different vocal styles, according to the mood of the song, but none of them underwent any kind of sustained vocal change like RP did after Zep II.
I would imagine after the touring for the first two albums, Plant’s voice-box was stronger than ever and he could reach the higher notes.
John Denver’s voice changed rather significantly after his first few albums (which is why his first greatest hits album was done from scratch), from kinda “chirpy” to more “throaty(?)”.
Much of the Beatles vocals were recorded at slower speed and when played back sound more “pure” (studio trickery :eek: ); don’t know if Zep tried that but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I think you could make this argument for almost any singer.
Performers sing in many different styles and ranges. From year to year, different albums, different producers, different material. Heard Elvis Costello with The Attractions vs with Burt Bacharach? Eddie Vedder with Pearl Jam vs with Neil Finn*? Heck, Robert Plant with Zep vs with Alison Krauss! Couldn’t believe this was Robert Plant…
*I just saw Neil Finn live. Sang high and chirpy when he was doing old Split Enz songs (“I Got You”: I don’t know/why sometimes I get friiiiiightened…), deeper and throatier on solo piano (“Message to my girl”), and then breathier and more ‘modern’ on his more techno stuff (“Dizzy Heights”).
He was hitting puberty and reverse puberty and back again a couple of times in two hours.
Actually, you can find a list of his high and lowest recorded notes here.
The highest, incidentally, is from a live version of “You Shook Me,” when he hits a C#6. His lowest on Zeppelin albums is “Going to California” (I was going to mention that one, too) and “The Ocean,” an A2. Apparently, the lowest he hits on Levee is F3. Still fairly low for him. Also, nice audio summary here, also mentioning the Ocean and Going to California as the lowest studio notes.
Sure, like when he goes “there’s no place to stay”. It’s not like I was expecting him to sing absolutely everything in high notes by then. I could come up with similar examples, too, but they would definitely be more the exception than the norm, in that regard.
Interesting first link - thanks! Quite nifty, actually - you seem to have a knack for finding cool links! It would have been a bit more illuminating for me if it had indicated exactly at what point in a song (eg, - a line of lyrics) where the featured low (or high) note was hit.
And while I’m aware of post-Zep II low notes (and the inverse - as indicated in that list), again I must reiterate that those examples are the much more rare moments, and they do not at all reflect, on the whole, that fundamental shift in RP’s vocal dynamics.
Unfortunately the second link got a server not found page.
IIRC “Tomorrow Never Knows”, as well as stuff off Sgt. Peppers had some speed stuff done to it.
“As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio’s technical manager, developed an alternative form of double-tracking called artificial double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the sync head of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine.[27] The two tape machines used were not driven by mains electricity, but from a separate generator which put out a particular frequency, the same for both, thereby keeping them locked together.[27] By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver”
bold par moi
“Another important effect was varispeeding.[71] Martin cites “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as having the most variations of tape speed on Sgt. Pepper.”
Elvis toggled between Hound Dog snarl and I Can’t Help Falling In Love crooning. Plant just focused on one, then did more of the other. I don’t see it as uncommon.
I guess, to the OP, is that I really don’t notice this change. For example Led Zeppelin IV seems, to me, to be sung in a pretty wide vocal range, and I don’t find it particularly falsetto-focused. Perhaps there’s more confidence in his voice and he’ll hit the higher ranges for longer periods of time, but I’m not even sure about that. Plenty of stuff off I shows that range, too. Take “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” for instance. The aforementioned “You Shook Me.” “How Many More Times” gets way up there in the vocal range, too. The best I can tell, it’s the production gets a little cleaner so perhaps his high pitch caterwauling is more noticeable, but, honestly, it’s not something I ever made note of between earlier and later Zep albums.
If you see it as uncommon, I’d like to see some examples, because I think Elvis’s temporary toggling does not equate with RP’s vocal paradigm shift.
I find it more falsetto-based, for the most part, than the first two albums. Let me know if you want examples.
True, definitely, as illustrated in that amazing link with all those wailin RP notes (kinda funny to listen to after a while) but those isolated high note parts do not, in the slightest, dissuade me that his voice, in general, was distinctly deeper, earlier on.
I guess I can see/hear that. He probably sits in a more middle register for a longer time in the older stuff, and I just think that’s the result of just learning his chops and developing his style. I don’t notice it as much as you do, but I can somewhat see where you’re coming from–I guess I just don’t find it that big a difference. In my band, we had our singer go exactly the opposite direction: the early stuff was full of falsetto and singing outside his natural range, settling down to a more middle range by the third album or so (which was much more suited to his voice.)
For a very obvious example of a singer’s voice and approach changing, check out the BeeGees. Barry Gibb doesn’t start using his trademark falsetto until about 1975. Main Course is the first album to show his falsetto and the next one, Children of the World, is where he starts to develop it and really bring it out. They had a ton of albums before these came out. See the BeeGee’s chart-topping version of “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” for instance.
TreacherousCretin, sorry, but it’s been a couple of decades since I’ve read up on Beatles’ recording techniques and I don’t remember where I picked up that piece of information. I’ll look around and see if I can come up with a cite; it may take a while, stay tuned. In the meantime, take some solace in Eddie’s posts (#s 10 & 11). And this may sound like a cop-out, but it’s true: I am usually the absolute last person on the planet to get wind of anything. So I figured if I heard about vari-speed on Beatles’ recordings, everybody else already knew it. Plus, I keep it in the back of my head so as to “poke the bear” when anyone gushes about how beautiful Paul’s vox were back in the day.
Eddie, thanks for coming to my rescue with the vari-speed info. IOU a brew.
