At 7:12 PM -0700 7/22/05, Mark D Lew wrote:

Mariah Carey's top isn't that much beyond Queen of the Night. The whistle tones in her early songs were typically around F, G and A in the same octave as the QotN F. I remember one song in which she went up to Bb.

Actually I've transcribed some of her things, at least one of which goes a full octave above Queenie's high F. Maybe they were later recordings and she was pushing the envelope.

What's amazing is that one of my college sopranos, who was soloing on a Carey song, discovered suddenly that she could easily produce those notes. She discovered it unexpectedly, in the middle of a shoundcheck, and came close to blowing a speaker as the audio mixist dove for the board!!

Several opera singers have made fine careers with a range no larger than two octaves. About two and a half is typical for a well-trained singer, about three for a particularly versatile one.

I'm always amazed to note that even though she sounds like a fairly high soprano at times, Barbra Streisand (almost?) never sings above a d". She's only one of a group of canny pop singers who know absolutely what their good range is, and never, ever exceed it.

John


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