I just want to be clear on one point. I'm not advocating imitating someone's voice, I'm suggesting that one's style should be appropriate to the music one is singing (actually, "style," for all it's vagueness, is almost too precise a word). The way to do this is, as Mark says above, "immersing oneself in the target idiom until all its nuances and feeling and possibilities have been explored and, dare I say, grokked." If you do that—immerse yourself—you won't really have to do anything consciously about your style, it should just follow automatically. Good vocal technique gives you the tools to allow your voice to do this.

Pavarotti is immersed in opera. That's the way he thinks, so that's the way he sings. Unlikely as it may seem, if he'd spent all that time immersed in Anglo-American folk music, he'd still be a tenor with a big voice, but I'll bet his style would be much different.

Don Firth