Male and female singing voices

All singing voices are divided into women, men and children. The main female voices are soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto, and the most common male voices - tenor, baritone and bass.

All sounds that can be sung or played on a musical instrument are high, medium and low. Musicians, when they talk about the height of the sounds, use the term "register", implying whole groups of high, middle or low sounds.

In a global sense, women's voices sing the sounds of a high or "upper" register, children's voices sound of the register of an average, and men's voices sound of a low or "lower" register. But this is only partly true, in fact, everything is much more interesting. Within each of the groups of voices and even within the range of each individual voice, there is also a division into high, medium and low register.

For example, the high male voice is a tenor, the middle is a baritone, and the low is a bass. Or, another example, the singer has the highest voice, the soprano, the middle voice of the vocalists is the mezzo-soprano, and the low voice is the contralto. Finally understand the separation of male and female, well, at the same time and children's voices to high and low, this sign will help you:

If we talk about the registers of any one voice, then each of them has both low sounds and high sounds. For example, the tenor sings and low chest sounds, and sounds high falsetto, not available to bass or baritones.

Female singing voices

So, the main types of female singing voices are soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto. They differ, first of all, in the range as well as in the timbre. The number of timbre properties include, for example, such as transparency, lightness or, conversely, saturation, voice strength.

Soprano - the female highest singing voice, its usual range is two octaves (the entire first and second octaves). In opera performances, the parts of the main characters are often performed by singers with such a voice. If we talk about artistic images, the best high voice characterizes a young girl or some fantastic character (for example, a fairy).

Soprano sound character is divided into lyrical and dramatic - you yourself can easily imagine that the part of the girl is very gentle and the girl very passionate cannot be played by the same performer. If a voice easily copes with quick passages and graces in its high register, then such a soprano is called coloratura.

Mezzo-soprano - a female voice with a thicker and stronger sound. The range of this voice is two octaves (from la to a small octave to la to the second). Mezzo-sopranos are usually entrusted to a party of mature women, strong and strong-willed in character.

Contralto - it has already been said that this is the lowest of the female voices, moreover, very beautiful, velvety, and also very rare (in some opera houses there is not a single contralto). A singer with such a voice in operas is often entrusted with a party of teenage boys.

The following is a table that lists examples of operas that are often performed by certain female singing voices:

Let's listen to how female singing voices sound. For you - three video examples:

Soprano. Aria of the Queen of the Night from the opera "The Magic Flute" by Mozart performed by Bela Rudenko

Mezzo-soprano. Habanera from the opera "Carmen" by Bizet performed by the celebrated singer - Elena Obraztsova

Contralto. Aria Ratmir from the opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" by Glinka performed by Elizaveta Antonova.

Men's singing voices

There are only three main male voices - tenor, bass and baritone. Tenor of them the highest, its altitude range - notes of small and first octaves. By analogy with the timbre of the soprano, performers with this timbre are divided into dramatic tenors and lyric tenors. In addition, a kind of singer is sometimes mentioned as "characteristic" tenor. "Character" is given to him by some kind of phonic effect - for example, silver or rattle. The characteristic tenor is simply irreplaceable where you want to create an image of a gray-haired old man or some tricky rogue.

Baritone - this voice is distinguished by its softness, density and velvety sound. The range of sounds that a baritone can sing is within the range of a large octave for the first octave. Performers with such a timbre are often entrusted to the courageous parts of heroes of heroes or patriotic characters of operas, but the softness of the voice allows revealing love-lyrical images.

Bass - the voice is the lowest, can sing sounds from the fa of the big octave to the fa of the first. Bass are different: some rolling, "buzzing", "bell", the other hard and very "graphic". Accordingly, the batch of characters for bass differ in diversity: they are heroic, and "fatherly", and ascetic, and even comic images.

Perhaps you are interested to know which of the male singing voices is the lowest? it bass profundo, sometimes singers with such a voice are also called octavists, since they "take" low notes from the counter-coil. By the way, we have not mentioned the highest male voice yet - this is tenor altino or countertenorwho quietly sings almost in a female voice and easily reaches the high notes of the second octave.

As in the previous case, men's singing voices with examples of their operatic parts are displayed in the tablet:

Now listen to the sound of male singing voices. Here are three more video examples for you.

Tenor. The song of the Indian guest from the opera "Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov performed by David Poslukhin.

The working range of the voice of a professionally trained vocalist on average is usually two octaves, sometimes, however, singers and singers have far more abilities. In order for you to be well oriented in Tessitura when choosing notes for classes, I suggest you to get acquainted with a drawing that clearly demonstrates the acceptable ranges for each of the votes:

Before concluding, I want to please you with another tablet, with the help of which you can get acquainted with vocalists who have this or that timbre of voice. This is necessary so that you yourself can find and listen to even more audio examples of the sound of male and female singing voices:

That's all! We talked about the voices of the singers and singers, we dealt with the basics of their classification, the size of the ranges, the expressive capabilities of the timbres, and also listened to the examples of the sound of the voices of famous vocalists. If you like the material, share it on your page in contact or in your twitter feed. To do this, under the article there are special buttons. Successes!