Sometimes a singer will sort of grunt and make a sound that resembles a trombone or something like that. This isn’t the best example because it’s short, but Bjork does this at 2:59 and 3:03. Is there a name for this?
Would this be the same thing Louis Armstrong did in all his recordings? Because I’ve only heard that called “growling,” or adding “gruffness” to your voice. It’s used a lot to add a bit of “soul.”
If you want how it’s technically done, it’s very similar to what you do when you clear your throat, and it caused by grating your vocal chords against one another. The difference is that a trained singer will use the so-called false vocal chords to simulate it, as the grating can inflame the vocal chords and hurt the voice.
Oh, but you may have been asking more about the pitch sliding. The technical name for a slide is a glissando. In particular, this is a portamento, which means sounding one pitch and sliding to another without articulating the notes in between.
In sheet music (whether for trombone or voice) it is written with the first note followed by a zigzag line going diagonally to the ending note. (Occasionally, the ending note is left out.)
The wikipedia article isn’t too bad, so check it out.
Lordy Lordy, do I hate that pretentious little cow Bjork.
Can’t hold a note in a bucket and such a self conscious image, me , me , me , me , me, forget the music look at me!
Adding that low grunt to the beginning of words and phrases is using the “fry register”, which is sort of a different mode of voice, like the falsetto register (though I think the distinctions are a bit weak and debatable). It’s common in country music. Is that it?
Ooh. I didn’t notice the fry. I’ll point out a bit of extra information. The official name for the register is “creaky voice,” however it is called vocal fry in singing. It involves pushing the edges of the chords together tightly enough that the back are loose enough to vibrate. It’s like the opposite of falsetto, where you keep the edges of the chords apart to tighten the back so only the edges will vibrate.
the lack of clear delineation is just that you don’t have to push them together too tightly, just like in blended falsetto where you don’t keep the fleshy part completely disconnected. Russian basses are famous for letting their modal register (i.e. normal voice) and their fry registers blend, but people do it is speech all the time when they let their voice trail off in both pitch and volume.
Well, dang, that kind of explains what was going on when my Russian class sang traditional folk music (badly) when a famous Russian bass singer visited the school and joined us on stage. His style was different from what I was used to and I gathered at the time it was supposed to be a big deal to hear him sing.
I had also thought there was such a thing as “false vocal cords” but I discovered a video that gives this topic a very thorough treatment, and explains the physiology of the different registers of the human voice. The vocal cords are controlled by two sets of muscles, one that lengthens and one that shortens. The balance between these opposing muscles is what makes the difference between the lowest register (vocal fry), low register (chest tone), upper register (head tone) and falsetto. One can sing the same pitch in more than one register based on how the muscles are controlled.
ETA: Sorry, there is indeed such a thing as false vocal cords and you may be totally correct. I have heard some people say that falsetto is done by using the false vocal cords which is incorrect.
I did indeed make a mistake, but that wasn’t one of them. There really are some flaps that people thought that people originally thought were “false vocal cords” but turned out not to be. I believe the official name is the “epiglottal folds.” They aren’t involved in falsetto at all, which is what I think you’re getting at.
But these folds can be made to vibrate and make sound–it’s just really airy and really low. The term I now know for it is a growl, and it’s used by some basses to hit really low notes (such as Tim Foust from Home Free, an a capella country group), below what their actual vocal flaps can hit (even with vocal fry). And it’s also sometimes used in rock instead of vocal fry for the, well, growling sound, which where it gets its (colloquial) name. I’m unaware of an official name.
Still, as I said, there is a factual inaccuracy in my post. I got the two mixed up. Untrained singers will often use the growl, but trained vocalists will try to simulate the sound of a growl with the vocal fry mechanism, which is letting the cords vibrate against each other–rather than in tandem, like is used for the modal (chest voice) and falsetto registers.
Additinal vocal register information for those who are interested, as I probably won't get to share it otherwise.
There are four physical registers of the voice I am aware of, based on the literature I’ve read on the subject. They are Vocal fry (aka gravelly voice), modal voice (your “normal voice”), falsetto, and whistle tone (see below). But there are other “registers” used in singing that involve mixing. You can mix vocal fry and modal voice to get something colloquially called “subharmonics” where you reinforce your vocal fry with a note in your modal voice that is an octave higher. This technique is used by Russian octavists and now many a capella bass singers. You get head voice with a bit of a mix of falsetto and modal voice. But you also can get so-called mixed voice by varrying the amount of falsetto and modal voice. There’s also a “register” called flageolet (pronounced flkaj-joh-lay) that I’m still unsure about, which is between falsetto and whistle tone. It may be a mixture, but it could also just be a lighter use of falsetto. The way vocalists describe it is as a “head voice on top of head voice” or a “falsetto on top of falsetto.” It is used by coloratura sopranos to go above the soprano high C, while keeping a fuller sound than “whistle tone” which is that used by, say, Mariah Carey or Ariana Grande for those insanely high notes that almost sound like, well, a whistle, and is produced with a very small opening, either vibrating a very small part of the vocal cords, or possibly just restricting the air like a whistle–I’ve heard both.
Yes, I realized that and edited my post, which I guess was after you responded to it. My apologies.
Yes, sorry. I normally actually try to wait until the edit time has elapsed, but didn’t notice your post was so recent.
BTW, I left out why trained rock vocalists tend to not use the epiglottal folds: it hurts with more than a little bit of use, and hurt means possible damage. Rockers need to use the sound too often for that, and basses who use it only use it sparingly, on the lowest notes, to avoid causing any vocal harm.
Though some rockers did just use the false cords–and those are the ones who tend to not have working voices as they get older.