Norry so Sorry

when taylor changed that note in ikywt on tour, i thought it sounded SUPER familiar. and after thinking back, i remembered it from Michelle Chamuel’s performance on The Voice. it’s basically the rock version of ikywt, 2 years before taylor sang it that way. and it’s totally cool that taylor sings it this way on tour; i really like this version, but i just wanted you guys to know that comments like “OH MY GOD THAT NOTE CHANGE THOUGH” already existed two years ago okay

I’m not quite sure.

(x)

Love the bridge…

"It doesn’t need to cost a lot to feel like home"

Michelle Chamuel - Sonic Lunch 2014 ( Aug 21, 2014 )

Theo Katzman & Michelle Chamuel at Sonic Lunch today. (With Tyler Duncan (keys), Joe Dart (bass) and Julian Allen (drums))

Seeing all of these amazing people perform was incredible so I hope you got to come out and rock with us.

Michelle Chamuel’s Live Vocal Range. (Because she didn’t have one of these videos, and she should. Plus, I was curious…) From what she’s shown, Michelle’s range is F3-F#5, which is 2 octaves and a semi-tone (or half a note.) 

So a few notes..

First..For anyone that does not know how this works.. There are 8 octaves, a range is measured by how many octaves a singer can sing from. C1 is the lowest note, B8 being the highest (I don’t know of any singers who can sing either..btw, notes go “C,D,E,F,G,A,B..and back to C) But when I say something like “B5” It simply means, the note B on the fifth octave. There’s a frequency that is associated with it as well. (And, when people say off pitch, that means the frequency level they hit is not within 30% of the frequency they were going for. So..noteX has a frequency level of 10, singer hits 6..that’s off pitch. Yea. Music is Math…Fml.) 

It’s a quick video, and there is more than the one note that I listed in each clip. A general rule..if it’s below C4, the lowest note is the one I’m talking about..above C4, and the highest note is the one I’m talking about. Also, I didn’t put every note on there, but if someone can sing a D4 and a F4, they can also sing an E4. The only time that isn’t the case is when you start to shift into whistle register (which is like a ..really high head voice. So..instead of a flute, think piccolo.) Sometimes singers can’t flow the whole way through, and then it becomes debatable about whether its part of a vocalists range or not, but that’s irrelevant here. 

I noted in the Youtube video, the F#5 is not the top of Michelle’s range. I’m confident the F3 is the bottom. She tends to not be able to sing that note as strongly as her others, and she can have some pitch problems with it. On the other side..she hits F#5 easily, it’s accurate, and it’s pretty strong. If I had to guess..her range probably goes to Bb5. She hits the F#5 easily, so the G5, shouldn’t be an issue at all. In fact, I’m positive she can hit that. B5 has a tendency to be the top of the belting range, so it’s likely that the top of her range is spread somewhere between G5-B5, which is two notes.(C6 tends to start the whistle range) Like I said, the ease at which she hits the F#5 makes me think she’s likely to have the ability to at least go a note higher, and I’d think even further, but I can’t prove it because she hasn’t done it in a live performance (from what I can tell.). As for why she doesn’t/hasn’t? Michelle’s picky about the way she sounds, and it gets hard to control up there, and those notes aren’t always the most pleasant to listen too when belted. She’s not the type of singer to sing high just to sing high either, it has to sound right in the song too. But those are just guesses and likely something only Michelle knows. I’d guess, as her career goes along, we’ll hear her sing higher. 

Another interesting thing about Michelle’s voice is that she doesn’t use her head voice (the head voice is when her voice sounds kind of like a flute.) to expand her range. She uses it to create a different sound. I’m sure there are other artists that do this as well, but the only other one I am aware of is Carrie Underwood. (And the two have a similar range.) It’s interesting to me, because she uses her head voice frequently, and has incredible control with it, but the actual notes are not any higher than her belts. Because of this, I left the head voice out of the video. It sounds like it’s higher, which ends up confusing people. 

Finally, Michelle is apparently an alto. I would have guessed Mezzo, but from what her live performances have shown..she’s the exact definition of an Alto. She seems to prefer singing verses in the fourth octave, while belting in the fifth. (neither is unusual for any current female artist.)

Also, most of the clips in the video come from The Voice, but one is from Tunebomb’s video from the New Years S/He video, one is from Michelle herself, and the other is from MJ’s Blog from the Darren Criss concert. 

So, what’s it mean? In general, great singers have vocal ranges between 2-2.5. Some are greater (Mariah Carey stretched to almost five octaves in her prime, which is ridiculous) but around that range is needed to sing a majority of songs, so Michelle fits right in. I am a little surprised she hasn’t stretched her head voice simply because she’s cited Christina Aguilera (who Michelle can belt higher than) as a vocalist she idolizes, and that’s exactly what Christina has done.  (But like I said, she could have..and just doesn’t put it in any of her songs.)