#patrick's voice

i love that too!!! i also love how in Novocaine he sings “I feel like a photo that’s been overexposed” and it sounds like they overexposed the vocals, which was done post production but is STILL cool. 

in terms of things patrick does just with his voice, there are a handful that make me go “wow” to this day. in “Headfirst Slide” the low notes he sings in the first verse are actually extremely difficult to pull off vocally, especially for a tenor, which patrick is...mostly....(long story)* and to my knowledge, he did those unassisted, which is very impressive because low notes are harder than high notes to hit, especially outside your range which that verse was pushing. like, try to say something in as low a voice you can versus as high a voice you can. low is much harder and more painful and high isn’t as bad, though it doesn’t sound very good. 

*okay i’ll explain. it’s actually when patrick is pushing low notes like in “Headfirst Slide” that it’s most apparent to me. most high lyric tenors, when they attempt notes at the lower end of their range, wind up with breathy, nearly inaudible tones, whereas patrick clearly has a darker, more heavy sounding tone. that tone is the result of a technique he uses, i think. i’m not sure. but it sounds forced (not in a bad way) so you know that’s not his comfort zone, even if the notes are in his range technically. BUT all this is to mention that his ability to hit those notes with that much force leads me to believe that a)his range may be bigger than that and we’ll see more maybe or b) he’s *not* a high lyric tenor at all, and he’s more of a spinto tenor (if we’re using the operatic scale, that is). i mean, these things are all theoretical, because without me sitting his ass down and literally testing him i won’t know, but he certainly attacks low notes more like a spinto than a lyric. 

his lung capacity IS insane, and a lot of people are like “wow he can hold a note for a long time despite his asthma” but actually, he can hold a note for a long time BECAUSE of his asthma. i believe patrick has spoken about his asthma infrequently, but i remember him saying he had it as a kid as well as an adult. when you have asthma that long, you learn techniques to extend your breathing to keep supporting yourself when you’re having an asthma attack. but patrick is a singer! it certainly leads me to believe that he was able to adapt these techniques into singing, which helps him support notes longer than most other singers. it *also* lends itself to my favorite thing patrick does, which is his use of melisma. melisma is when a singer sings several notes over one syllable. he does it a LOT in “I Don’t Care” (The best of us can find happiness in *mi*sery) that’s actually not easy to do in non-classical pieces, because you have to be able to breathe through the melisma and into the rest of the word because you can’t break to breathe halfway through. choirs can do it because of scattered breathing, which is exactly what it sounds like, but solo singers rarely pull it off well and as long as patrick does. usually if a singer can do it, it’s a couple notes, but patrick regularly utilizes it over several measures. it’s impressive as hell, especially when you know how much work goes into it just to get a few notes through and here he is, five lunging it up.