Folklore: Crooning

Subject: RE: Folklore: Crooning
From: Darowyn
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 01:07 PM

I think it is more likely to be the dynamic range of early Microphones that caused the problem,and led to the crooning style, rather than the frequency range.
Even a Carbon Mic has a frequency range between 100Hz and 10kHz- and (almost) nobody can sing at 10K!
Similarly, if a valve (tube in USA english) can handle radio frequencies, it's not going to blow with even the highest audio notes.
On the other hand, early ribbon mics had a very narrow range of sound pressure levels. A Bel Canto singer sings very quietly, and very loud- and being used to unamplified performances, will never have heard of mic technique.
A crooner has a much more limited dynamic range- and microphone technique is evident at a very early stage in recordings.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Folklore: Crooning
From: PoppaGator
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:16 PM

Insofar as vocal technique has been influenced by the use of microphones and other electronic gear, contemporary folk music has been influenced as much as ANY genre.

Use of mikes allows the singer to adopt a style and persona that more-or-less replicates the way a person would sing in a very intimate setting ~ a small, quiet room. And even for those of us who never perform professionally, or at least not to large crowds, everything we ever listen to has been influenced by these factors, and thus we are all under the same influence.

Just as film acting is more "natural" and subtle than old-fashioned stage acting, so is singing/"crooning" in a world of amplification more personal and low-key ~ or, at least, potentially so ~ than performing to a loud crowd in the days before mics and speakers, etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Crooning
From: MMario
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:16 PM

thought the overall trend of popular songs had been shown to become SHORTER.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Crooning
From: GUEST,~~~() ()~~~
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:01 PM

Sounds like you know this stuff. The paragraph from Settel's book sounds believable though, because he's talking about the early 1920's. Didn't Edison have to go through hundreds of materials before he found a good filament for his light bulb? The others were too delicate. Maybe the same thing was going on with sound tubes in the early days, lots of experimentation, and maybe some of them did physically blow up when subjected to high frequencies.

Wikipedia says about "crooner":

Crooning is style that has its roots in the Bel Canto of Italian Opera, but with the emphasis on subtle vocal nuances and phrasing found in Jazz as opposed to elaborate ornamentation or sheer acoustic volume found in opera houses. Before the advent of the microphone, popular singers, like Al Jolson, had to project to the rear seats of a theater, which made for a very loud vocal style. The microphone made possible the more personal style. Crooning is not so much a style of music as it is a technique in which to sing.

The Wikipedia entry makes reference to the microphone as an influence on 'crooning.' I suppose the question of equipment failure could be answered definitively if anyone cared to do the research, but I just thought the statement contained in the original posting was interesting. Technology has always had a hand in the development of popular music. Look at how popular songs got longer and longer as recordings moved from 78 rpm to LPs.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Crooning
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 03:55 AM

The earliest recorded and transmitted singers did tend to be "lower voices" but it had little to do with the "delicate tubes" being "blown out" - in the sense of their being "broken" - by higher pitched voices and instruments. Because of the mechanical bits and pieces in the process, from recording machines thru microphones and ampiifiers, higher pitched sounds were very difficult to pass through the process, and as a result it was difficult for the transmitter to broadcast higher frequencies with the same amplitude fidelity of sounds nearer the mid-range, and virtually impossible for receivers of the earliest times to play them back, so sopranos simply didn't sound as good - especially at the receiving end. The "blow-out" refered to by broadcast engineers was the loss of good sound quality for signals far from the limited frequency range that the equipment could handle.

By the time of Sinatra and Crosby fidelity of broadcasting had improved to the point where higher voices could be included, but it perhaps remained true that the baritone voices of the male "crooners" and alto voices for females still tended to have less apparent static and noise and were thus more "pleasant" for radio listening.

While it probably was technically feasible to broadcast a different audio frequency range that might have been more favorable to other voice ranges, the main use of early radio was for spoken voice frequencies, so those are the ones for which equipment was optimized - to the extent that optimizing could be done.

Others with better knowledge of "traditions" may correct me, but I believe the term "crooning" dates to far before any kind of broadcasting was known or even thought of, with the connotation being that the singer is relating a love/affection for the object to whom it's sung. The "crooners" of the thirties/forties were so-called because they mainly sang "love ballads," which could have been done by singers in other ranges, but sounded better when done by singers with voice ranges closer to spoken voice frequencies(?).

The technical limitations that made sopranos less listenable than alto and baritone voices also tended to exclude deep bassos in the early days of radio, simply because no matter how well the signal was broadcast nothing much came out of the speakers at the recieving end.
Clear enunciation was also needed for pleasant listening, so the singers of the times tended to choose songs with "verses" that could be understood(?).

The central point of it all is that in that earlier era "what works best" was more pleasant for the audience, so that's what got broadcast - and was most popular.

John

Subject: Folklore: Crooning
From: GUEST,~~~() ()~~~
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 12:49 AM

Don't know which category this belongs in, but it's musical, and it says "according to one story," so maybe it's folklore. Switch it to a more appropriate category if necessary.

From "A Pictorial History of Radio" by Irving Settel:

According to one story, Miss de Leath was invited into the original De Forest Laboratory, where she faced a phonograph horn. Then, it is said, she sang "The Old Folks at home"--just for a lark. In any case, Vaughn de Leath, in the early 1920's, created the style of singing known as "crooning." Her style was imposed on her by the limitations of the radio equipment of the day, since the high notes of sopranos often blew out the delicate tubes of the transmitters. Ben Gross of the New York Daily News reported that "after her first broadcast, more than thirty years ago, Vaughn received one of the first radio fan letters ever written. It read: 'You have inaugurated a new form of song which, no doubt, will become very popular."

Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and those singers. I never knew there was a technological reason for their style of singing. The information's not folk music-related, but I thought someone might find it interesting.