Female vocal range

[hummingbird]

Seeing this thread jump up again I thought I'd mention a trap I fell into using female singers.
There are some great points made by previous posters here BTW.

It's important to take into account that they may be singing an octave above your guide vocal.
I built up a track with fancy guitar licks and icing to inspire the singer and I did a great job to stay out of the way of my vocal only to find my handiwork was treading all over her lead. Dang!!

That's a really good point. [I always remind new male students that I am demonstrating an octave above where they are singing, but the piano is playing their notes in their octave.]

Ergo, it's important to think about what frequency a female voice is going to inhabit in the mix when setting up the instrumental backup for the song!

[mojobone]

Yeah, I had a couple more thoughts; if you know who you're writing for, you just work with what they've got. I heard the rule as 'keep the melody within an octave and a half' because that's about all most untrained singers have; I think I got that from Pete Seeger.

If you're adapting for a different singer, you can usually adjust upward about a whole step or downward about two whole steps without buggering the arrangement too much.

If you can't play it on a pennywhistle, it's probably too range-ey for folk or indie, but other genres have other rules. You're not supposed to do stuff like begin a line with an octave leap, but boy did that work for "Over The Rainbow".

[Len911]

Probably because sopranos and tenors get all the best vocal parts anyway, write for their range, the altos, baritones and basses are probably used to it, and better at making adaptations when necessary,lol!