A couple of weeks ago my wife and I went on a movie date. We watched Bohemian Rhapsody which was pretty good by the way. Anyway Freddie Mercury’s singing got me thinking about falsetto. As I have written before in this column, falsetto singing has a rich tradition in native american music and it has a rich tradition in bluegrass music as well.
Bluegrass music as we all know is a lot more than great picking. The true soul of the music is great singing and harmony. The bluegrass sound is very unique and that sound was created just about the same time that rock and roll was created. Bluegrass singing has long been referred to as a “high lonesome” sound. Bill Monroe was a big man but he had a strong natural high voice. He always sang lead at the very top of his vocal range and on songs like Put My Little Shoes Away for example he added half yodel flourishes into falsetto territory.
I think a great rule of thumb for any male singer when singing lead in bluegrass is to choose the highest key they can possibly do the song in. Sometimes in a jam that rule of thumb can backfire on you when you come to realize that the chorus is even higher! At that point you have no other alternative than to break into your “girlie voice” and sing falsetto.
But falsetto can sound good too! Rock and roll fans are used to Goin’ Up the Country by Canned Heat sung in falsetto and they wouldn’t have it any other way (by the way that tune can be morphed from Blue Yodel #4, the California Blues, quite easily for lots of surprise fun at your next jam).
Falsetto voice is a trick made possible by learning how to use muscles in the larynx to go even higher than the natural modal range and produce a different vibration from the edges of the vocal chords. Anybody experimenting with forcing their voice above their natural modal range knows how to do this almost intuitively. The transition produces a voice not in the natural register and it sounds quite different, but usually not quite as pleasing to the ear.
One thing a lot of people don’t realize about falsetto is that your natural range actually overlaps with your falsetto range by as much as an octave. I can sing falsetto in G for example but why would I want to do that when I can get a better sound with my natural voice?
One of my favorite bluegrass singers of all time is Joe Val. Killer mandolin picker no doubt but in my opinion his singing was even better. He was gifted with a great natural high lonesome voice and used it with great expression. But he often went up into the falsetto range and the incredible thing about his singing was that you couldn’t tell where the transition happened.
All you male singers out there who want to range three octaves or so, study Joe Val. As for all you female singers out there, you are already in a high lonesome register to start with! Lucky you. But likely there are possibilities which have yet to be explored. Falsetto was once thought to be strictly a male voice phenomenon but that bias ignored all the great female yodelers out there already. Yodeling is singing art made possible by shifting in and out of the falsetto range with total control.
Singing is what really make bluegrass. Pick solid and then use your chest voice. Use your head voice. Break into falsetto when it suits the music. And may bluegrass music always have that high lonesome sound!
