Vocal Ranges

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I was reading up on Brendon Urie and it said his voice is four octaves (D2 to C7). What do these numbers signify? Does this mean he can hit half of all physically possible notes? Also, does this depend on the deepness of his normal talking voice?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

If you look at a piano, you can see a pattern of octaves. D2 refers to the D note on the second octave of the piano (11 white keys from the leftmost). C7 refers to the C note on the 7th octave (8 white keys from the rightmost). This range is one note less than 5 octaves. D2 to D6 is 4 octaves so perhaps you meant C6.

His range, going by what you wrote, is most of the notes on a piano but that is NOT all possible notes in music or playable by musical instruments. But it is a good enough estimate that his vocal range cover half of the notes available in an orchestra (typically 8-9 octaves, give or take)

Hard to say what his normal speaking voice is. Not sure it is related to a vocal range.

Anyway, vocal range is a bit of a “bragging rights” thing and isn’t as important as a number of people think. Arguably more important is a singer’s tessitura, broadly defined as the comfortable singing range. (where they maintain good timbre, able to project power etc)

Some singers can produce a high “whistle” (eg. Mariah Carey) and control the note but it hard to say that it is singing in some sense. (it always sounds like “eeeeee”) IMHO

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