Technical explanation of Jon's voice
 

This is not meant to be the post n. 76,215 about Jon’s voice.
We all know Jon’s singing has tuned down over the past 10 years…we’ll probably never know the true reasons but this is a fact and personally I must accept it.
I’m just wondering how Jon can be classified as a singer in terms of vocal extension and also which are the notes he used to reach in records like KTF or TD and which nowadays.
I’m not an expert but as a “shower singer” I tend to notice that now I can sing almost everything they record but when I try to sing, in example These Days, my voice always fall on “…LADDER ON THE STREETS ….”. Obviously it is because of the different tone of the songs but I’m very curious to have a technical explanation.
Any professional singer out there?
Thanks in advance.

Aloha !

Jon used to be capable of singing pretty much everything and nowadays most of the stuff is written in C or anything that comes close to it.

In These Arms for example is a song originally recorded in E. The band tuned down their guitars on the Keep The Faith Tour and while Jon was capable of nailing it in the beginning of the tour he started to struggle with it a bit near the end of it. In 1996 he was no longer capable of doing it in E and the band started playing it acoustic in D.

It's A B C D E F G A

When looking at this you see that it's one note lower. However, Bon Jovi tunes down their guitars half a step which means that it originally is in C#, which is pretty much how far Jon can go nowadays. And he's still incapable of delivering a quality vocal for it.

I've got no idea what you just said there.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I'm no expert, but quite simply, this line is just out of your range, a bit too high for you to get. I can't sing it either, same with plently of people.

I mean that there's a level in Bon Jovi songs (in These Days at that point I mentioned) where my voice just break down. Always in the small but highest part of the songs.
So I suppose there's a note I simply can't go beyond and I would like to know which note is this.
Thanks for your explanation Seb.

Exactly but I want to identify technically my range and Jon's one.

My understanding of vocal technique is limited but the range is different depending on whether you're using chest voice or head voice. A lot of people could probably reach the pitch in that line of 'These Days' using head voice but if you were to listen to it on it's own without the track playing in the background, the voice would be weak and nasal.

Part of proper singing technique is to expand the range of your chest voice in order to reach notes that you'd previously only be able to reach with head voice. Chest voice is much more powerful and appealing to listen to.

After that, there's falsetto which only has very limited use before it becomes really grating.

Everyone has to resort to head voice to hit their highest range but practice and development of good technique means that you have to resort to it less and less.

All this singing stuff confuses me... but can anybody post the ranges they classify singers by? Like falsetto, saprano, etc. What is the highest and lowest? What does the high notes that say... Mark Slaughter hits classified as? What does Jon sing in?

Thanks.

Read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_range

Basically you have: (if middle C = C4)

Soprano: C4 - C6 (that's 2 octaves)
Mezzo-Soprano: A3 - A5
Contralto: F3 - F5
Tenor: C3 - C5
Baritone: F2 - F4
Bass/Basso: E2 - E4

These days Jon is a Baritone and early on in his career probably was considered a tenor.

I'd have to go sit at my piano to tell you about Mark Slaughter and tonight I'm exhausted from helping my son's girlfriend move - sorry.

Falsetto doesn't count in classical and neither does head voice, which is how most rock singers sing. So it's kinda hard to define the vocal ranges of rock singers, since they sing in a very different way than classical singers.

My range as a rock singer is about 4 and a half octaves, but as a classical singer I would be a baritone. But I can still reach notes of a mezzo-soprano, but it's not classical, it's head voice and/or falsetto.

Jon's range is a mix between baritrone and soprano, the highest notes he can hit are around high A, but he rarely does it anymore. Sounds like he can hit higher notes if they are short, but longer high notes (higher than high E) seem to give him trouble.

Ice

I can sing it now but just because I've been taking some singing classes. But earlier on it was too high for me too... And now we are recording it....