From Bass to Tenor to Baritone
Friday, February 24, 2023 by Billy Roberts | Singing
The process of finding one’s voice can be difficult for anyone. I’ve been on this journey for over 30 years. Singing during adolescence was complicated by sinus issues and mouth breathing, difficulty navigating the differences between playing horn and vocalizing, and forcing my voice to sing low as an unchanged male in the seventh grade. I can’t give a specific time as to when my voice “changed”. At the age of 12, as I was entering seventh grade, I moved from the children’s choirs at church to the youth choir. I sang with the tenors because I didn’t want to sing with the girls. I was the type that never wanted to draw attention to myself. I learned later that the tenor voice, by definition, is the highest of the changed male voices. An unchanged male is not a tenor. Forcing my voice to sing notes below its natural range gradually set up a host of issues in my neck, throat, and shoulders that would not be resolved until well into adulthood.
In high school, I hit a point where bass notes did come naturally at times. However, my lowest notes were very weak. I continued to sing tenor because I had so little resonance on the lowest notes that I feared I would not be taken seriously if I tried to join the bass section of the choir. When I went off to college, I joined the university chorus at OU. I felt like I should at least try singing baritone, but when I talked to the graduate assistant who was leading the ensemble, he assumed from the range of my speaking voice that I was probably a tenor. There was no audition, and once again I was stuck singing parts that were not very comfortable for me.
After I had been through four and a half years of college and still hadn’t finished, I was out of school for the entire year of 1999. During this time, I began singing with the choir at the church I had gone to throughout college. With a new choir and a new beginning, it was easy to just choose the bass section from the start. Although my voice was pretty weak, I actually began to enjoy choral singing again. For the first time since singing with the children’s choirs in elementary school, I felt like I was on parts where I belonged. Gradually, my voice began to grow stronger. I still had no formal vocal training, but as I began to piece together all of the tips that I had heard from various choral directors over the years, it started to all make sense. When fall came, I tried out the Norman Community Choral Society. I really loved the time that I spent with this ensemble. I joined the bass section even though it was well covered. When the director asked me if I wanted to try singing tenor I knew myself well enough to say, “No thank you.” She was glad to have me anyway.
Several months later, I auditioned for the Choral Colloquium at the University of Oklahoma, a new ensemble led by Dennis Shrock. As he was testing my range, I noticed a smile on his face when I hit the lowest note. I was unable to see the piano keys from where I was standing, but it felt to me like a D below the staff. At the first rehearsal in January of 2000, as men were being placed into the first tenor, second tenor, and baritone sections, I had a bit of apprehension while waiting for my name to be called. When he said “bass”, I actually felt both confirmation and relief. Despite this success, trying to prove myself by putting out as much volume as possible on the lower notes led to more vocal issues. I remember in particular a choral song where we sustained a bottom line G for many measures. Since most baritones have no trouble with low G, this made me doubt that I was a true bass.
By 2002, I preferred singing second tenor, and that is what I stuck with for most of the next decade as I sang in various church and community choirs. I took voice lessons from an opera singer at one point and, although we started out working on low voice literature, I found a way to force my voice to sing higher because I liked the volume I could get if I pushed those high notes through with a ton of air. However, this took a very unnatural technique and a lot of throat tension. There came a point where my throat just couldn’t do it anymore. I found a lighter technique and gave up on operatic literature. In 2010, 2012, and 2014 I was successively placed as a tenor through auditions into the OU Choral Union, the Canterbury Choral Society, and a choir at UCO. Since multiple choir directors accepted me as a tenor, I felt like I just needed to work through my vocal issues and figure it out. I finally discovered that low notes could come out for me just as powerfully as high notes with the right balance of air and resonance.
I had a good three-year period of vocal reset after my second child was born. I got plenty of vocal rest, played piano a lot, and went on long walks. When I did start singing more, I remained open to working all registers of my voice. I discovered that I had about three octaves to work with and, of course, that vocal range and vocal type are two different things. As I began to understand how my voice moved and shifted between registers, it became obvious from music that I looked at on my own that low voice literature just made sense for me to study. By 2019, I was ready to be part of a choir again. I auditioned for Windsong and was invited to join them as a baritone, and my voice has continued to settle as it belongs.
The common thread in my vocal cycle was that I would switch to bass for a while, learn to sing with a more relaxed technique, discover that high notes were starting to come easily again, and then decide that I must be a tenor since I had a few high notes. One reason that using high voice exercises helped me in the past was that my voice was often missing the head voice component. I’ve also come to see that having a high B-flat does not make one a tenor. It is a baritone note. Although at one point in my life I pushed to sing a high B-flat in full voice, I never really had it. As I’ve gradually allowed myself to be content with a lower ceiling, I’ve come to accept that high A-flat is my limit. I'm also finding that I have a much wider palette of expressive tone colors when I stick with baritone literature than I ever had as a tenor.
Singing baritone keeps me in touch with the head voice and my upper register. Being able to access the full range correctly helps me to find strength and resonance on the lowest notes. I’m thankful for the experience I’ve had with singing tenor over the years. When warmed up well, it is fun to hit some of those high notes occasionally, but I have learned not to stay in the upper register for extended periods of time. What I have to work with up there is not really usable for classical works such as opera or choral music. This journey of finding my voice, which ultimately began with a preschool child happily learning his treble clef notes in a church choir, has come full circle. I have finally come to a place where singing is as enjoyable for me as it was back then, even though I have a much different instrument to work with now.
