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Clawhammer tunings for female range
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Subject: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Leah Date: 04 Oct 03 - 04:20 PM Help! I'm having trouble finding good banjo tunings in Keys of C and D (yes, GIRL keys!) that match the mood of standard G varient tunings like gDGCD (Mt. Minor) and gDGAD (Willie Moore). Specificly, I'm trying to play "The Cuckoo" and "Pretty Saro", both from Clarence Ashley's playing. Any female singers out there that accompany themselves on clawhammer that have figured out this dilemma? Thanks, Leah |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 04 Oct 03 - 05:23 PM Keys of C and D (yes, GIRL keys!) The idea that some keys are more suited to female voices and some to male voices is a new one on me, and I can't see how it could be meaningful. Surely it all depends on the actually melody involved? |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:14 PM Yes I play banjo as accompaniment for my voice, but I agree with McGrath that I've never thought of GIRL keys. And I'm a soprano - as girlie as it gets. The trick is the same as for males - find a key that sounds good, that you can sing the song your working on in, and go for it. Find a list of tunings and do the rest by ear. For me I often find myself in song sessions, lining up with the bases to sing harmony bits - that's where I fit best. Bit wierd but no one minds. When you are singing and playing solo your options are limitless. Banjos are great with women's voices - and with male's - or dog's - or bird's. Banjos were made for songs. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Leah Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:25 PM What key a person sings in definetly depends on the melody and the vocal range required in a tune. If a melody doesn't span much range it can be placed in the upper end of a persons vocal register (read higher key) and still be doable. But, many traditional folk songs don't demand huge range that require vocal training. Many men tend to sing in a similar range of keys like F,G,A,B. Men that tend to sing in the keys of C,D,E either have higher than normal tenor voices, or lower bass voices. Many women tend to sing in C,D,E,F. In Bluegrass music for example, Bill Monroe had a higher than usual male tenor voice and often sang in Bb and B. Thus, Bluegrass vocal styists and Bill Monroe devotees tend to sing in the upper range of their voice to match his "high tenor sound". |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Leah Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:36 PM Sorry for the double posting. I forgot to mention that keys that most men and women are comfortable in doesn't apply to harmony parts, because a harmony can be stacked all different ways around the melody. That means I can sing harmony with a guy singing in the key of G, because I can sing a tenor or high baritone line and still be comfortable in my range. Joybell, do you accompany yourself on banjo in the full range of keys? Do you have favorite banjo tunings? Thanks for the posts. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:48 PM There is the possibility of tuning your banjo up or down so long as the intervals are right for the key you're working in, and the strings will take it. Many early players had no idea, nor did they care, what tunings they used. re the above bluegrass devotees and their conterparts in blues, mountain music and the like -- I don't understand the idea of faithfully reproducing the exact same sound that a great singer/musician from the past gave us. I'd rather listen to him or her or them. But I'm waffling. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 04 Oct 03 - 08:09 PM Yes I had lessons from an American, here in Australia, (he became my soul-mate and husband so the lessons are free now) I also play guitar and a few other instruments but my voice is my main instrument. I find that I need to use different instruments for different stlyes of song. I am an impatient musician who wants to sing a song I've fallen in love with immediatly - so now I usually get my true-love to play accompaniment. If he's unavailable I can do basic styles myself. I find myself singing in - with banjo - G, D - (I love "graveyard tuning") and F usually, but the capo is a wonderous thing. If a song doesn't seem to work with banjo in a sensible key I switch to guitar giving me more scope with both range and style. Some songs seem best without accompaniment. It all depends on the song and how I hear it inside me. I did learn lots of tunings for banjo once but .... so many songs so little time.... |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 04 Oct 03 - 08:15 PM Maybe it's different with bluegrass - but I find I typically sing songs in just about any key, according to the song. Just picked up an Irish song book from the shelf next to my desk, and the first few songs are - let's see: E, C, A, G, C, D, A, C, F... |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 04 Oct 03 - 08:57 PM Stay away from Bluegrass,(today's bluegrass anyway) I reckon - speaking as a singer. The musicians will only be waiting for you to finish your verse so that they can do their break and you'll have to sing in G or else!! AND very, very fast!!! AND very, very loud. Possibly I shouldn't speak for American bluegrass and maybe I've just upset some very good friends here. Oh I'm getting to be such an old grump. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: smokeyjoe Date: 04 Oct 03 - 09:37 PM Leah: As others have stated, there really isn't such things as 'Girlie Keys.' My wife and I play all kinds of songs together, and our voices are comfortable in the same key. She an octave higher than me. Depending on the melody, we sing stuff in many different keys. I think what you need to do is learn how to transpose. The Coo-Coo Bird is in G mountain minor, as played by Clarence Ashley, and my advice would be to learn it in that key and then figure out whether that tuning is too high, or too low. You've probably already done this. Then, what you need to do is either capo up to your range, or else tune down to it. In extreme cases, you might want to transpose the tune into another key, hence another tuning. I've done this with several songs. Sure, the song is gonna have a different 'color' to it, but that might not be a bad thing. If you do find that you have to tune down to get to the place where you feel comfortable, you might want to try experimenting with heavier strings so your banjo won't sound so 'floppy' and dead. I do this on one of my banjos that I keep tuned to 'E'. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Leadfingers Date: 04 Oct 03 - 09:42 PM I only use open G for banjo (and Bandola) but I dont attempt to do fancy picking-- Just a sort of melodic thing round the melody line on the basic chord run. At sessions I tend to leave the capo on fret two as that makes G in F shapes and D in C shapes, which fits in with most tunes.A is of course open but Amin is a bit of a SOD.Unless you are playing a particular Aranged thing, work on C and F shapes as well as open tunings, then adjust with the capo.If you dont have a fifth string capo PM me for me FREE 5th string capo design. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Geoff the Duck Date: 05 Oct 03 - 11:33 AM I always start by finding a tuning which suits the melody and accompaniment of the song, then if my vocals are stretched too far I capo to where the banjo fits in with what I CAN sing. Certain styles of singing emphasize particular ranges of note when compared to your "normal" range. One traditional technique to sing in a higher key was to use the nasal cavities for resonance rather than singing from the chest and throat. The reason that Pete Seeger used a long neck five-string (three extra frets) was so that he could drop the accompaniment to a key which suited his vocals without using a different "tuning". Quack! Geoff the Duck. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 05 Oct 03 - 07:14 PM Very wise words Mr Duck. It took me until middle age to discover the use of my nasal cavities. In the past when singers like us grew up in certain folk communities it was the normal style wasn't it. At school they encouraged us to sing "open throat" and full-on regardless of what we were singing. All the same I sang my own way at home - I just didn't hit on the closed throat idea. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Don Firth Date: 05 Oct 03 - 09:49 PM "Many men tend to sing in a similar range of keys like F,G,A,B. Men that tend to sing in the keys of C,D,E either have higher than normal tenor voices, or lower bass voices. Many women tend to sing in C,D,E,F. In Bluegrass music for example, Bill Monroe had a higher than usual male tenor voice and often sang in Bb and B. Thus, Bluegrass vocal styists and Bill Monroe devotees tend to sing in the upper range of their voice to match his "high tenor sound." GUEST,Leah, I am sorry, but I've never heard anything like this. I've been singing for over fifty years, and I sing in all keys, the easy ones on the guitar (C, G, D, A, E, Am, Em, Dm), and for the rest, I use a capo. What keys I sing in (or any man--or woman, for that matter) has absolutely nothing to do with having Y chromosomes. It has to do with the relationship between the range of the voice and the range of the songs in question. Female voices generally tend to average about an octave above male voices of the same category (tenor=soprano, baritone=mezzo-soprano, bass=contralto), give or take a note or two. I am a bass. Chances are that a contralto and I will sing the same song in the same key, but she will sing an octave higher than me. That's the way it works. Keys don't have a gender. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 06 Oct 03 - 06:41 AM Spot on Don, I think we should we start a discussion about the possibility of gender differences in instruments? Clearly my guitar LOOKS like a curvy lady with a long neck and also my dulcimer - slimmer though and no neck. Fiddles - dainty female I'd say. Banjos well I don't know - tubby eunuchoid maybe. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Murray MacLeod Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:05 AM Sorry, but Leah is perfectly correct, there may not be "Girly Keys" per se, but generally speaking, males and females will NOT be happy singing a song in the same key, and I speak as one who has accompanied his fair share of female singers. I disagree with Don that there is an octave difference between the sexes. In my experience it is normally nearer a fifth, which means that a song which I would sing in D, I would expect a woman to sing in A. Murray |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:15 AM Murray I am a bit mystified by your point of view and I didn't read Don's comment as you do. Some men sing songs in the same keys as I do and some don't. If I was singing with Don, for example, I would be perfectly happy in the same key (and I'm not talking harmony notes)- I might be 2 octaves above him but I would be quite happy. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: s&r Date: 06 Oct 03 - 08:12 AM Harvard dictionary of music give vocal ranges as follows: Soprano C - A Mezzo soprano A - F Alto F - D Tenor B - G Baritone G - E Bass E - C This is a range of thirteen notes for each vocal compass. Some singers have more than this and some less. If the song has a range of notes exceeding thirteen, most non trained singers will have difficulty in any key. If the range of notes in the song is an octave, there are five notes "headroom" and a singer with a range of thirteen notes could sing it in about eight or nine keys. If the singers range is an octave, they will only be able to sing the song in one key. There is substantial overlap of range between the following so a common key would be easy to find: Soprano - Tenor Mezzo - Baritone Bass - Alto This assumes songs sung using the same tune ie without harmony. A singer does not have the same key for all songs. The key is changed for vocalists so that the top note of the melody is =< the singer's top note, and the bottom note of the melody => the singer's bottom note |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: wysiwyg Date: 06 Oct 03 - 09:15 AM Haven't read all of this yet.... a consideration is whether you are going to sing in your natural voice or in a flat-tone-colored oldtimey way, and where on the scale your voice breaks and has trouble holding steady in tone color. I wish I could remember what my voice did at Debby McClatchy's workshop on oldtime singing. Try singing along with some stuff in the style you will use, and then see what keys worked best? ~S~ |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Don Firth Date: 06 Oct 03 - 12:40 PM Exactly so, s&r. Approximately an octave difference per voice type between males and females. When I was writing all those four-part harmony exercises in freshman music theory, had there been female keys and male keys, I'm sure we would have heard about it. The guidelines had to do with the ranges of the S A T B voices, but not a word about gender. Should anybody want a more authoritative word on this, I can talk to a professional choir director I know. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Murray MacLeod Date: 06 Oct 03 - 12:51 PM Sory, I apologise, not for the first time I have jumped in without knowing what the thread was about. I thought it was about folk music and folk singers. Murray |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Jeri Date: 06 Oct 03 - 01:38 PM Murray, it's not YOU - no one is discussing what the thread's about. She asked for good banjo tunings in C and D that "match the mood of standard G varient tunings like gDGCD (Mt. Minor) and gDGAD (Willie Moore)." and so far, if there was any answer, I missed it. I was interested in what tunings people were using as well. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: s&r Date: 06 Oct 03 - 01:53 PM Quite right Jeri. If this blicky works it's got a lot of info re the original query http://zeppmusic.com/banjo/aktuning.htm , but if it doesn't the ref will probably show anyway. I think Leah introduced the thread creep from the outset by referring to "Girly" keys.... |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Desert Dancer Date: 06 Oct 03 - 01:54 PM Thanks, Jeri! That's what I wanted to say. However, I have noticed that many dedicated banjo-accompanied singers, like Sara Grey, capo a lot (and have 5th-string capos, not just railroad spikes). ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Don Firth Date: 06 Oct 03 - 01:54 PM Indeed it is, Murray. I don't know the extent of your musical background, but using terms such as "baritone" or "soprano" does not take the discussion out of the realm of folk music. Take anybody off the street who has never sung other than in the shower, have a good voice teacher or voice coach listen to them sing for awhile, and the teacher or coach can diagnose the person's bare-bones untrained voice. He or she will fall into one of the three catagories for his or her gender. It would take working with the person for awhile to determine some of the refinements, such as "Is she a lyric soprano or a dramatic soprano?" but discussions using these terms in relation to folk music--or any kind of singing for that matter--are relevant. Examples: Bing Crosby was a baritone. So was Frank Sinatra. Jane Froman was a contralto. Joan Baez is a soprano. Gordon Bok is a bass. Ralph Stanley is a tenor. Leadbelly was also a tenor. One can go through a whole stack of CDs and categorize the voices of the singers. These categories are determined by the tonal quality of the voice and the range that the voice normally feels comfortable singing in. This, in turn, is determined by the length and "gauge" of the vocal folds (just like the differences between strings), the structure of the larynx, and the size and shape of the resonating cavities such as the mouth, sinuses, throat, etc. (same as the differences between the size and shape of a mandolin and a guitar). Whether one is a tenor or not has nothing to do with whether you sing opera, pop, rock and roll, or folk music. But the fact remains that there is no relationship whatsoever between gender and the musical keys in which one normally sings. Range, yes. Keys, no. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: s&r Date: 06 Oct 03 - 01:55 PM It works! Well done Max or whoever is responsible. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Jeri Date: 06 Oct 03 - 02:50 PM Wow, s&r - banjo tuning heaven! Thanks. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Murray MacLeod Date: 06 Oct 03 - 04:46 PM Well, I am glad that Leah and Jeri have their banjo tuning questions answered, I guess Don and I just have to shoot out the "gender-keys" thing together now. I suspect that we are really not disagreeing fundamentally, ie I know there are no intrinsically "feminine" keys or "masculine" keys. But for any particular song the average male voice will be happy singing it in one key, and my experience (not from any academic research, just from a fairly wide-ranging experience as an accompanist) is that the average female voice is happier singing it a fifth higher. That's all I'm trying to say. I accept that formal voice training may extend the range of both male and female so that such preferences disappear, and that there are naturally gifted vocalists with huge ranges to whom it doesn't apply, but for the average Joe (and Jessie) I believe my statement holds true. btw, definition of average Joe is a man whose top comfortable note is D, and average Jessie's top comfortable note is A. Again, just personal conclusions from my experience over many years of hearing ordinary people singing folk songs. Murray |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Don Firth Date: 06 Oct 03 - 05:24 PM Murray, it must be a matter of individual experience. My problem in trying to work up duets with women singers generally goes the other way. We keep finding that we sing the same song in the same key, or keys that are very close (one in D, the other in C, for example). This means that if we are going to do harmony, one of us is going to have to sing in a range that is either lower or higher than is comfortable for us. Probably just happenstance and the luck of the draw. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Murray MacLeod Date: 06 Oct 03 - 05:44 PM I suspect, Don, that you are one of these fortunate people (like Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs) who are not only unfairly gifted in the guitar playing department, but who are also able to reach notes which most men can only dream about...*G* Murray |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 06 Oct 03 - 06:33 PM Ah the thread creep was what attracted a lot of us wasn't it. I'm quite sorry we didn't come up with Girlie keys, even if I was a bit playfully sarcastic about the idea. I was quite serious about the question of what I do with a "girl voice" and a banjo though and I think we've all come out the wiser for the discussion. Thank you Leah for starting it all. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Don Firth Date: 06 Oct 03 - 08:53 PM Ah, would that it were so! Actually my range is disgustingly limited. I've been officially declared a bass, but with me, this is more a matter of voice quality than the actual extent of my range. An operatic bass should be able to sing a reliable two octaves, from a low F (6th string, 1st fret) to an F (1st string, 1st fret), but I can't come close to those higher notes. I can count on the low E (open 6th string) although it sounds pretty growly, and even vocalize down to a D or C (off the fingerboard), but I wouldn't want to try to rely on those notes. On the top, even with the help of a couple of pretty good voice teachers, I was never able to develop a good upper register. Much of anything above middle C (2nd string, 1st fret) is getting pretty uncomfortable for me. On a good day and well warmed up, I can get up to a D, D#, or sometimes an E, but I would never want to count on them. A bass should be able to sing those notes with some ease. But--the compensation is that I can sing a lot of the songs Gordon Bok sings in the same keys he does them in. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Joybell Date: 06 Oct 03 - 09:29 PM I had a strange experience with voice quality - I think that's the best way to put it. I tried recording myself singing harmony with myself on the assumption that it should be an ideal blend - like the sibling groups that sound so great. And I know that singers do it all the time. But when I tried it souded like two people who had never met before and who shared absolutely no genetic material voice-wise. Weird and quite awful even though it was right on key. That's a diversion, I know, but we seem to be off on choir singing and such. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Leah Date: 07 Oct 03 - 01:01 AM Hello again. S&R, thanks so much for the banjo tunings link. My original question got a little obscured, but this has still been an intersting discussion. I realized I should have put a WYSIWYG made a really good point about tone color and I think said better than I what was in my mind. Not all kinds of vocalizations fit in all genres. There is a certain vocal box one lives in with boundaries of what is and isn't appropriate stylisticly. (That's my personal opinion obviously). In Appalachian oldtimey music one of those boundaries is very little vibrato. Doc Watson talks about it. (Listen to his introduction to "And Am I Born To Die" on "Watson Family Tradition"). Another is the vocal range a person uses to achieve that certain sound. Mostly a chest voice and often use of nasal resonance. Occasionaly some falsetto. Now I know I'm going to pay hell for this, but I don't think stylisitc boundaries are bad. I mean, aren't there certain things we want to hear from a good blues singer? We also expect certain things from a good opera diva. AND, sometimes rules are ripe to be broken. But, I think it sounds really silly to hear a singer unleash his/her full fury of formal training on say "White Dove", "Rank Stranger", or "Wild Bill Jones"... or say "Muleskinner Blues"!! When women started singing in bluegrass bands it required instrumentalists to expand their skills to play in less frequented keys and still reproduce some of those signature licks and chord voicings that had become standard in G, A , Bb, and B. Women started singing Flatt & Scruggs standards but just couldn't nail them in G. They sure could in C! Listen to Kathy Kallick, Lynn Morris, Laurie Lewis, or Dale Ann Bradley. Or Alison Krauss even! Well, that's been my problem learning clawhammer. I want to sing some oldtime standards that I've heard Clarence Ashley play in G, but I just can't nail them in G. I sing them in C, but I really want to get a similar voicing to my banjo tuning. I'm new to mudcat and have been so impressed with the wealth of knowledge here. I knew this was the place to get some assistance. Long winded post. I apologize. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: Desert Dancer Date: 07 Oct 03 - 01:50 PM Makes perfect sense to me, Leah. It's the banjo that makes it a hard question, because you can only get so far with a capo, and changing tunings makes such a difference in the feel of the accompaniment. That tunings site seems to be the best answer, and maybe the other (that has to be combined with the search for other tunings) is that we're forced to re-create the songs for ourselves, since transposition is not at all straightforward beyond a few frets. Either that or go in search of other songs entirely. (It's hard to abandon a good song, though. *snf*) ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Les B. Date: 07 Oct 03 - 04:42 PM Leah - I know old-timey players don't like to capo up much, but going up to the 5th fret (plus some railroad spikes in the neck) will change a G or G modal or minor tuning to a pretty good C and not sound too much like Chinese opera :) I just found an old tape of Doc Watson doing Clarence Ashely's version of "Little Sadie" on banjo, and I liked the sound so much that I sat down and figured it out. Doc was playing in what sounds like Mountain Minor (gDGCD) capoed at the 5th fret, and his picking is really crisp and clean. I can't decide if its fingerpicked or frailed. At that fret, the chords are Cm and Bb, but a guitar can capo to the third and play Am and G for good backup. |
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Subject: RE: Clawhammer tunings for female range From: GUEST,Leah Date: 07 Oct 03 - 06:16 PM Wow, thank you for the good advice!! I'll experiment with capoing way up. Right now actually! : > |
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