Learn what "falsetto" means, morons! (lame)

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, I’ve had about enough of this: music reviewers and others who want to refer to any high male singing voice as “falsetto”. Here’s the most recent example I’ve seen, from a review of the recent Rush concert near Seattle:

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Look, you knuckleheads, the term “falsetto” refers to a certain singing technique, not a specific range of notes. Even though this particular reviewer says “near-falsetto”, he’s still using the term incorrectly. A singer is either singing falsetto, or he’s not. Here’s a definition:

From WordNet ® 2.0:

falsetto
adj : artificially high; above the normal voice range; “a falsetto
voice”
n : a male singing voice with artificially high tones in an
upper register

Notice the word “artificially”. And notice that the root of “falsetto” is “false”. The falsetto technique is used to sing notes that are above the normal voice range. Geddy Lee of Rush, and other singers like him, are not singing falsetto. They’re not even singing “near-falsetto”. Geddy is singing notes that are part of his “normal voice range”. Falsetto is used to reach notes that a singer can’t reach using is normal voice. To turn that definition around the other way, I could say that a singer’s “normal” range is marked by the highest note he can hit without resorting to falsetto.

Geddy Lee, and other high-singers like Rob Halford (Judas Priest), and Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) sing “full voice”. Their singing voices start in the diaphragm. They are able to hit those high notes because they’ve worked to develop strong voices with good upper ranges. Falsetto, on the other hand, is all in the throat. Falsetto sounds airy and light. Full voice sounds powerful.

So what does falsetto sound like? Tiny Tim sang falsetto. David Gates of Bread sang falsetto. The Bee Gees sang falsetto on much of their disco material. For a more current example, the lead singer of The Darkness sings falsetto for the high notes, but uses his normal voice for the lower notes.

So I’ll say it again: “Falsetto” has nothing to do with a particular range of high notes. There is no certain note where you can say, “that guy’s singing falsetto”. “Falsetto” is a technique used to sing notes which are higher than a man can sing using his “normal” voice. And for the most part, falsetto usually sounds out of place in hard rock and heavy metal, because it doesn’t sound powerful. Falsetto is more suited to softer music. Falsetto is also useful when singing along with the radio when you don’t want to sing loudly and annoy the neighbors, because falsetto allows you to sing more quietly.

Oh, and Geddy Lee stopped being “shrill” a couple decades ago. I have to agree with the review on this, though: I was at that same show, and Geddy’s voice did indeed hold up very well. And kudos to Geddy - he’s 51 now, and can no longer hit all of the high notes he sang when he was in his 20s. So, when performing the band’s older material, Geddy has cleverly altered the melodies in certain places in order to avoid those notes. In my opinion, that is an excellent alternative to either a) straining to hit the notes and sounding like shit, or b) resorting to falsetto to hit the notes.

2

The only singer I can think of that records songs in falsetto currently is Jimmy Somerville(formerly of Bronski Beat and the Communards).

Some people talk out of their asses, especially critics.

3

Rush fan here.

I always think of Geddy’s voice as “unusual” rather than falsetto. I agree that falsetto can’t get the same volume or gut-punching strength of his natural voice range, and I have never heard any falsetto in Geddy’s recorded or live singing.

4

Call me ignorant on this particular subject but how do they “artificially” hit high notes or whatever?

This is a serious question I am not trying to prove anybody wrong or anything I am generally interested in what the difference is.

5

pool, natural singing range comes from the diaphragm. It’s basically a controlled scream.

Falsetto is controlled by the throat. It doesn’t have nearly the range or volume of someone’s natural singing voice.

6

Wasn’t one of Princes songs done almost entirely in falsetto? I forget the name of it. It’s the one I really hate!

7

Go ahead and mentally add an apostrophe up there somewhere. There was only one Prince I was talking about :wink:

8

Great rant; I’ve been telling people this for quite some time, and rarely made any progress with it. People seem determined to believe that anything sung in high note by a male is falsetto by definition. Granted, most men need to go into falsetto to sing in that range, but some don’t. For an example, see Curt Smith of Tears For Fears. He manages to sing Everybody Wants to Rule the World without going into falsetto once (and if you don’t believe that, you should hear the songs in which he does use his falsetto; they’re up in the soprano range).

9

I think that Prince song was Kiss.

10

Martyn Jacques of the Tiger Lillies does some wicked falsetto, (as well as bunch of other wicked stuff.)

11

pool, a man singing falsetto sounds sort of “girly” (for lack of a better term). It’s not unusual to hear a female-impersonator comedian speak in a falsetto voice. A good example is Mike Myers when he impersonates, say, the Queen of England.

For another example, the tone of a falsetto voice is comparable to the tone produced by a flute, or when blowing across the top of a bottle. It has a breathy sound. “Full voice”, on the other hand, is comparable to a trumpet - strong and powerful.

Interesting side note: some of the heavy metal singers with the highest, most powerful singing voices actually have bass or baritone speaking voices. David Coverdale (Whitesnake) is a good example of this. Geddy Lee, though, has a higher speaking voice that sounds much like his singing voice. Then there’s Michael Jackson, who sounds like a girl whether he’s singing andspeaking, despite the fact that he also sings full voice most of the time.

Strangely enough, while falsetto is typically used to sing high notes which the singer is unable to sing full voice, I can actually sing higher with my full voice than with my falsetto. But that’s probably because I’ve practiced my full voice much more.

12

Another example is the Five for Fighting guy. He switches into falsetto fairly often.

13

LOL - I was playing bass guitar with a church worship team, and the female singers kept complaining that a lot of the songs were “too high” for them to sing. So I proceeded to start singing their parts, full voice, and hitting all of the notes they kept saying were too high for them.

If you want to hear some really nice use of falsetto, but where it’s not used to hit higher notes, check out the metal band Manowar. The singer, Eric Adams, has flat-out the most powerful voice I’ve ever heard in my life. He has an insane range, both high and low. In one song, he did a glissando, starting low, and going up almost four octaves! Manowar’s music is very powerful but melodic, and is heavily influenced by opera and classical music, Wagner in particular. (In fact, their original guitarist was also a classically-trained violinist). So, while most of their songs hit you like a freight train, there are passages where the music becomes very soft and beautiful. In those places, Adams will switch from his full voice screaming to a rich falsetto. His style is very effective at making the music more dramatic - he can scream with fury, and abruptly switch to a gentle falsetto.

14

King Diamond!

15

If you want to hear a true falsetto (there’s a contadiction in terms), feast your ears on this bad boy!

I give you Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

This shit annoys me to this day!

16

Spooje! Master of the bleedin’ obvious!

17

Well, you could have learned how the technique works before explaining it to us. Falsetto is NOT “all in the throat”, it does indeed come from the diaphram, and there’s no way a falsetto singer could put any volume behind the technique without breath support from the diaphram.

The difference is simple. In full voice, all the vocal cords are vibrating. In falsetto, only portions of the vocal cords are allowed to vibrate, producing higher notes that don’t have the same power as notes in full voice.

-lv

18

The Bee Gees sing in falsetto a lot. At least, I hope that’s not their real singing voices.

19

That’s not his real voice, though. That child-like whispery soft voice is a put-on. Lisa Marie said his real voice is naturally deep, like a normal man’s voice.

Also, Liza Minelli picked up her phone one day to make a call and heard a man with a deep voice talking to her wierdo ex-husband David Gest. After a moment of surprise she asked if it was Michael, and he went right back to the little boy voice, “Hi, Liza…” She began breaking off her friendship with him after that.

So he’s likely falsetto, since he’s naturally deep voiced. That creepy bastard.

20

The only Tiger Lillies song I’m familiar with is “Hell,” from the soundtrack to Plunkett & Macleane, and I thought it was sung by a woman until about a month ago.