PoppaGator, that thread title is turning out to be my friend -- I now suspect it was as much lack of nerve as lack of practice that kept me from doing a believeable yodel!

After I wrote my last post I had the urge to give yodeling a try and really belt it out. I sang Jimmie Rodgers' "Desert Blues" which we had on a 78 rpm recording so that I heard it a lot as a kid. The first couple of tries were really not a yodel, they hit the notes but were really singing; but finally -- FINALLY! -- I managed to turn it into a something close to a yodel.

Two small things made a difference. This may be useful to another frustrated yodeler someday so I'll try to describe them. The yodel is of the form

"Yo-del-lay -ee -oh /del lay-ee-oh/ del -lay-(h)eee."

Turned out it sounds much better if I change the "eee" sound to be more like "ih" and also sort of roll into the "oh" coming down, i.e. change it to "Yo." That is,

"Yo-del-lay-iiy-yoh/del-lay-iiy-yoh/del-lay-(h)iiiyyyy."

The "iiy" sound gives a thinner "high voice" timbre to the high notes and of course the "yo-del" syllables are, like, "DUH," now that I realize how they should sound. I still can't get my voice to break and really sound falsetto, but another three or four hundred tries should do it.

Well I'm not sure this explains anything! Pretty hopeless to try to describe a shift in vowel sounds by writing about them. I am excited about it, all the same, because now I don't feel so hopeless about learning to do a bit of yodeling so I can sing some songs I have always liked but didn't like to do with a "fake" yodel.

RF