TBS's Vocals

Drawing this from the Survivor thread. There is much discussion about Timothy singing falsetto on Ella Jean and Compassion.

Tone deaf TBF and I just don't hear it, we only hear what sounds to us like Timothy's voice. He just has that natural high pitch. I was listening to this in the background tonight and wonder what you all thought of this? To me, it's just TBS in his normal high range voice. Maybe it's too high for others, thus considering it a falsetto? :headscratch:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAZUW0C0cw0&feature=related[/ame]

I'll take a shot a what falsetto means to me since I may not have fully explained myself in the other thread. First of all, I agree that Tim's voice has a naturally higher pitch than the ordinary, average guy (sorry, couldn't help myself). However, I don't think that means he can't sing falsetto. To me, it is falsetto whenever a male singer sings in a pitch that is significantly higher than his own normal register. When Tim sings those lines in Ella Jean and Compassion that we were discussing, he has a much higher pitch than his normal singing voice, So, IMO, that is falsetto.

Now, having said that, there are men that have become labeled as "falsetto" singers such as Barry Gibb, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Aaron Neville because they generally sing in a higher register than the normal male. So I would also classify Tim as a falsetto singer. Here's what Wiki has to say ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsetto

In I Can See Everything Timothy slips in and out of his falsetto like comfortable slippers! He is constantly moving in and out of it. But to show what falsetto is, just listen to the first line:

'If it seems" is sung in falsetto, but by the time he gets to the word "to" he is back in his normal range.

I totally understand what you guys are saying and I even hear what you are talking about. Falsetto is what Frankie Valli does and what Michael Jackson does as he grabbed his crotch, etc...but for me, it's always just been Timothy singing a little higher than usual.

I agree to see it both ways. :)

I understand what you guys are saying too, but as I said in the other thread, that's not technically falsetto - at least in my admittedly non-expert opinion.

But any excuse to listen to Tim's voice repeatedly works for me. ;)

Now, not that Wikipedia is always a totally reliable source, but in the case of the article I linked to earlier, their information seems to be fairly well researched. The article even explains the physiological process of singing in falsetto. The definition they have is ...

"The term falsetto (Italian diminutive of falso, "false") refers to the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave."

That is pretty much a technical way of saying what I was trying to say.

If you say that Tim isn't technically singing falsetto because he's just singing a little higher than usual, then couldn't you also say the same thing about Barry Gibb, Michael Jackson, or any other singer that we call falsettos?

They key here is determining how high his "modal voice register" is. Timothy naturally sings high; his register is higher; therefore, the high notes that would be an octave above the modal voice register of someone like Barry Gibb or Michael Jackson wouldn't be an octave above the top end of Tim's natural register.

That's how I look at it, anyway.

ETA: I guess to me, if the voice sounds natural, it's a clue to me that it's within the natural "modal voice register." The breathy, unnatural high voice sounds false - "falsetto" - to me. Again, I compare it to "Fast Company" or Glenn's "Let's Go Home", "Living in Darkness," etc.

I think everyone has a falsetto. The range of my singing voice is so limited that when I try to sing some songs I have to go into my falsetto just to sing them. Of course this depends on how low I start.

And sometimes we can choose whether to go into our falsetto, or just blast it out in our normal range. However, if we don't have a voice like Nancy Wilson of Heart, blasting it out doesn't sound very appealing. A professional singer often chooses whether or not to use their falsetto on certain words based on what effect they're trying to create in the song.

I agree - we can all do falsetto to a degree, and sometimes we have to because we can't reach the notes any other way.

One of the most obvious examples: the original recorded version of You Belong to the City vs. the live Farewell 1 version. The original is sung totally in Glenn's normal register. Now, 20 years later, for segments like "When you said goodbye, you were on the run" he sometimes brings out the falsetto to hit the notes. That's about 2:30 for the original version, 3:25 for the F1 version. I think he can still do it in his normal register - just not 100% of the time - so he plays it safe and uses falsetto.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTCDSmZINyY[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pMhHCP3qA[/ame]


The same is true for the "Don't worry girl" part of Sunset Grill. Don used to sing it in his natural range. Now he sings it falsetto because he can't reach it consistently otherwise. It's a bit after 2:20 in both versions.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BocpBEfp448[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiZbRBEmo2k[/ame]

(BTW, please ignore the URL on the last video there. I tried to find a version on YouTube without the URL on it but THOSE versions had been taken down along with the non-commercially available fanvids like the one for a Shiloh song, while this blatant violation has been up for over a year and left unmolested. Makes perfect sense, eh? :rolleyes: )

Those are two perfect examples Soda. So now I really don't understand why you don't think Timothy is using his falsetto in the chorus of Ella Jean and the parts of Compassion that have been mentioned previously! :hilarious:

Well, I actually do hear it in one part of Compassion - that last time he sings the world "compassion" (4:23). But I think it's arguable for both songs.