the queen of prog?

I don't think her control up high is great anyway. Don't they have a song Stargazer? I have heard live performances where she sang the chorus in a wobbly way. Annie hits her B5s very confidently and with astounding power.

Dean wrote: Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Dean wrote: I should point out that when I referred to high-octave singers I was meaning mezzo-soprano where there is naturally overlap between male and female vocal range (Tori Amos, Sharon den Adel, Simone Simons, Matt Bellamy, Robert Plant etc.) not soprano's like Sally Oldfield, Liv Kristine or Tarja Turunen - Kate Bush and Annie Haslam can hit the notes but they don't live there, male singers only enter the soprano range in falsetto. I agree with rogerthat on Annie for sure - she hits some astoundingly high notes, she just has a very long range at her disposal.  I'm confused about Tarja, though. She never hits anything even approaching something that would be a high note for me to sing, whereas Annie hits things that I can't without sounding like a dying cat.  Am I missing something in Tarja's repertoire? Each vocal-range classification spans two-octaves and is shifted by roughly half an octave from the preceding one, such that a soprano can sing six semitones higher than a mezzo and a mezzo can sing five semitones lower than a soprano. So when a singer has a wider vocal range of say three octaves then it means that they can span two or more vocal-range classifications (it is possible for a 3-octave singer to sing soprano, mezzo and alto). Not every soprano can hit a G6 To clarify: Annie Haslam's five-octave vocal range spans from bass to soprano - she can sing soprano but she is not solely a soprano singer with much of her singing in the mezzo range (ie> "she can hit the notes but she doesn't live there") According to wikipedia Tarja Turunen is termed a "lyric soprano" (ie warm tones), with a three to four octave range can also span from alto to soprano, but again most of her singing is in the mezzo range, unless singing live where she hits the really high notes.

Yes, thank you though for the specifics. :)  I've just never heard Tarja sing high at all.  It's most likely that I'm just not interested in her solo stuff so I haven't heard when she's done it.  In the live Nightwish performances I've heard, she's taken the bottom part.  But that may have more to do with what the band as a whole wanted than where her range ends.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Dean wrote: I should point out that when I referred to high-octave singers I was meaning mezzo-soprano where there is naturally overlap between male and female vocal range (Tori Amos, Sharon den Adel, Simone Simons, Matt Bellamy, Robert Plant etc.) not soprano's like Sally Oldfield, Liv Kristine or Tarja Turunen - Kate Bush and Annie Haslam can hit the notes but they don't live there, male singers only enter the soprano range in falsetto. I agree with rogerthat on Annie for sure - she hits some astoundingly high notes, she just has a very long range at her disposal.  I'm confused about Tarja, though. She never hits anything even approaching something that would be a high note for me to sing, whereas Annie hits things that I can't without sounding like a dying cat.  Am I missing something in Tarja's repertoire?

Dellinger wrote: This drum machine thing is perhaps the main reason I like many of the 80's Genesis songs better live. They sound less plastic, more alive, and the drumming is perhaps the main reason for that (actually I also often like 70's live Genesis better than studio, but that's not because of the drum machine, certainly).

Agreed, on both counts!  I feel the same way about Yes' studio albums vs. live performances particularly in the '70s, there's just no contest (though no drum machine issue there).  The studio albums are so slow and methodical compared to the energetic and passionate live shows.

Dean wrote: I should point out that when I referred to high-octave singers I was meaning mezzo-soprano where there is naturally overlap between male and female vocal range (Tori Amos, Sharon den Adel, Simone Simons, Matt Bellamy, Robert Plant etc.) not soprano's like Sally Oldfield, Liv Kristine or Tarja Turunen - Kate Bush and Annie Haslam can hit the notes but they don't live there, male singers only enter the soprano range in falsetto.

I agree with rogerthat on Annie for sure - she hits some astoundingly high notes, she just has a very long range at her disposal.  I'm confused about Tarja, though. She never hits anything even approaching something that would be a high note for me to sing, whereas Annie hits things that I can't without sounding like a dying cat.  Am I missing something in Tarja's repertoire?

rogerthat wrote: I think for sometime, the emphasis has been on keeping out mistakes and this seems to include even minor imperfections that were left on record earlier... But something has changed about just the way vocals are treated in the studio with a result that is not particularly agreeable to my taste.  Often times, the vocals sound better in the live performance of the same track so I wonder if it's just over compression, cutting out the subtle dynamic variations that make a performance lively and human.

Very true.  The industry-wide obsession with eliminating any irregularities removes so much of the personality... we're not even really talking about mistakes in many cases, just variations.  Over-compression is very often a problem on recordings I hear.  Not every part of a song should be at the same volume level (well, for most songs, sometimes that might be the intent - a wall of sound).

I might get slammed for this, but this is one of the reasons why I enjoy Korn.  Jonathan Davis' voice is *weird*.  Beautiful?  No.  But memorable, yes.  And contrary to the high-voice preference discussion, my favorite male singer in any sort of rock genre was definitely Peter Steele from Type O Negative.  RIP

The talk about the overly-polished, uniformly-accented singing in music got me thinking about a review or perhaps article I read a long time ago... I remember just about nothing of it except that it made my blood boil because it called Annie Haslam an "over-enunciating" amateur or hack or something like that.  She does enunciate with extraordinary clarity but never seems robotic to me like a lot of other vocalists do.  Also, Dean is absolutely right about classical training removing accents from singers, at least in western music.  You are taught to move your mouth quite differently compared to how you normally would when you speak - so that's not something new or restricted to pop music.

Dean wrote: rogerthat wrote: Yes, it seems as if they have to weed out the mavericks so that the remaining contestants can be easily assimilated by a mainstream audience. Ah, I have a different take on that - it is not what can be easily assimilated by a mainstream audience, but what the producers believe a mainstream audience can assimilate.

Just like the radio.   I agree with Dean.  The fact that songs by "oddball" artists can and do hit the billboard top 10 shows that a mainstream audience is capable of appreciating unique things... and perhaps even that they eventually get bored with hearing the same thing over and over again.  Though I suspect most people wouldn't appreciate many of our favorites no matter how hard we tried.

That's what I wanted to say, really.  Second guessing the audience's tastes so that it conforms to a norm that the industry is comfortable with.  

Yes, it seems as if they have to weed out the mavericks so that the remaining contestants can be easily assimilated by a mainstream audience.

Absolutely, production cannot change an accent.  I was referring more to over-compression and removing even slight mistakes from a recording, which, when combined with homogenised accents, can create a very polished but unnatural effect.  

Interesting point about disowning cultural roots.  That is very much the case in India too.  Our current most celebrated composer A R Rahman is completely sold on the concept of 'one global music'.  And if that involves streamlining sounds to the point where the only Indian element left in the music is the language, so be it, apparently.  Even the pronunciation of Indian words is done in an anglicized, 'modern' way to fit these global hues.  Colour me cynical but to me, this just amounts to a boring uniformity and homogeneity in mainstream music.

Wow, sounds very different there though the track is not really my cuppa.