Favorite Alto????????

i dunno, i wouldnt say idina is an alto...i'd say shes a low soprano.

So, would mezzo soprano be a better term here, then?

Idina has a soprano belt voice. She's not an alto or even a mezzo by any stretch of the imagination.

Most pop voices today (certainly Broadway "pop") are belt sopranos (women) and belt tenors (men). The fact that they can hit a low note every once in a while does not change the high tone of their voices.

Pop music doesn't welcome altos (mezzos) or baritones (basses) very often these days.

Many of the "pop" voices of the 1940s and '50s who sang standard tunes were the lower voices. It's kind of funny how that shifted in the later decades. But back in the '40s you had real altos and mezzos: Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Jo Stafford, Patti Page, etc. For the men you had Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, etc.

A different style of music, yes... but also a different type of singer. Lower, deeper tones were needed to put those songs over. Today, everybody's reaching for the rafters with high-pitched voices. "Little girl" and "young boy" sounds, and there aren't too many exceptions to that... unless you want to sing the old stuff.

EDIT: If you want to hear a "belty alto" from Broadway, you have to go back to Susan Johnson, Georgia Brown, Kaye Ballard, etc. Those vocal types (as fantastic as they were) just aren't around now... actually, they're around all right, they just don't get cast in Broadway shows.

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Updated On: 11/25/05 at 05:01 PM

I agree, best12bars.

And I like lower voices, especially in speaking voices for women onstage.

The interesting thing to me is that film actresses (and actors too) are more likely to get cast and taken seriously if they have low-pitched speaking voices.

Yet for Broadway, the "sky's the limit"... literally.

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The film actresses that people seem to admire most today, give Oscars too, and put on their A-lists for casting have lower speaking voices these days. Cate, Kate, Gwyneth, Judi, Meryl, Glenn, and so forth. Not all of them, but most fall into the mellow mezzo-alto range (for speaking voices). I would say that's true for dramatic (NON-musical) theatre today, as well.

Then you get to Broadway musicals... and the demands of a pop score with high-belted notes, and you end up with your belty sopranos and tenors taking over the game. It's so rare to hear a "smokey alto" or a rich baritone on Broadway (with the exception of Stritch).

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A lower-ranged speaking voice, particularly for women, and a chest voice in general, is supposed to be easier on the ear.

There is no such thing as a female tenor or baritone. They'd be considered altos. I think people classify things based on range. It's important to know that range isn't the defining factor of a vocal part. It's timbre, but even that is sometimes difficult to tell. Everyone says that Audra is a mezzo-soprano because she has a heavy sound, but she's a true soprano, just a dramatic one.

Updated On: 11/26/05 at 12:19 AM

Chita Rivera
Gwen Verdon
Ann Reinking
<----- Bebe Neuwirth
Brenda Braxton



I consider them REAL altos.

Updated On: 11/26/05 at 12:26 AM

Idina
AND Lisa Brescia...OMG she's amazing!

It really infuriates me that people now class you as a better singer the higher you can sing. There is this snobbish attitude towards anything other than soprano and tenor. If you're a baritone or alto, generally speaking you are not regarded as a great singer.

"UMMM Idina is amazing, but I love Amy Spanger and Carolee Carmello. There's too many!!!!!"

That "there's" in the first sentence should be "there are".


But that's just obsessive me.

Thank you, I absolutely loathe poor grammar. I can understand spelling because to keep up with a thread you must type quickly.

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