I never take their word for it. Three Words... STAR SPANGLED BANNER.

 

Sing it in the key of Ab. Those who have difficulty getting to the lowest note "oh, SAY can you..." are probably Sopranos and Tenors, and those who strain to get to "And the rockets RED GLARE..." are probably Basses and Altos. Have them sing through it, and listen as much as you can to each individual voice. When you hear straining, send them to another section.

 

This is a quick and easy way to do an initial separation. Nothing can substitute, however, for a one on one assessment.

I borrowed this technique either from Bob Zazzarra of New York or Dr Cooksey or both. This has proven very reliable over the course of a high school boy's progress through the vocal change. High School women have not been so predictable, however. They all seem to chant at the g below middle c.

 

I ask the singer to count backwards from 20 which turns into a fairly stable pitch. I match the pitch on the piano and this "chanting pitch" indicates where the level of vocal maturity. If the boy chants at the g below middle c, the voice is unchanged. Chanting below that at e-f is the next stage of maturation; c-d the next. A young tenor may chant at b-c but later may chant at low g which is fairly predictive that the voice is ready to fill in. Cooksey describes this as indicative of the "young baritone": a voice prepared to mature. The notes have all filled in through the range of roughly an octave and a half or so with no particular power or resonance. The voice should not be taxed. I have found many young men who are still "changing" through their 11th grade year.

 

There are several advantages to this approach. It demystifies the whole process of the change. The young singer sees that there is hope and that they can get through this. I "test" several times a year and I have even made a progress graph so that they see "progress". This also explains to you and them that there is nothing wrong with them when they do not have any notes from middle-c to the f below and why they lose falsetto and why they get it back. Be assured that t" only doing as much as you need to do to get the job done" are watch words and, with me, nearly mantras.

S

Rob Tingdahl asked:

 

"how do you go about doing so from listening to a voice? I understand asking them where they are most comfortable singing, but what if you suspect that a singer is too proud to admit their tessitura may sit lower than they claim?"

 

Hi, Rob. The simple answer is that you can't classify a voice by just listening to it, so I don't try. And I may ask what voice part a newcomer has sung before, but I don't let that influence me either. I'm afraid I'm burdened by the knowledge that every human voice is different, and they simply don't fit into the nice, neat little boxes we try to put them in. A person is first a singer (or not!), and only after that can be assigned to the various parts which we need to have covered.

 

Part of my background is that I developed the habit of given every singer a quick but thorough voice check as part of an audition since that was company policy when I was directing the vocal auditions for Disney's All American College Singers, and after auditioning 1,280 singers had to help select a cast of 14 for each of the theme parks. But to answer your specific question, I always vocalize them in 5-note scales going up, since that tends to reveal problems quickly. (I would never warm them up that way, for the same reason!) While they vocalize, I listen to the voice quality, which doesn't always line up with the usable range.

 

When I've been involved in auditions for our annual summer musical theater show, I use a very different apporach. Carl's suggestion about using the Star Spangled Banner is an excellent one for a quick and dirty voice check, but I tend to use it in at least 3 different keys. But while listening to their prepared songs, I keep track of the range they're singing in by checking the key with my C fork and noting the highest and lowest notes they seem comfortable with. That's usually close enough for our needs.

 

In auditioning for my college ensembles, I've sometimes had singers who were first sopranos in high school but who became first altos for me, or the opposite, singers who were altos in school (usually because they could read music!) but who became 1st sopranos for me!

 

In classical singing the rule of thumb is that you don't want your singers using their extreme range, because you don't want them to strain their voices. But in an ensemble devoted to entertainment arts I've occasionally (rarely, but it does happen) had singers who could use a wider range in a song than they could in vocalizing, because in the song they simply do whatever they need to do to make it work.

 

Stephen's suggestion is especially interesting, although I'd have to say that it's suggestive rather than definitive since you aren't actually measuring range. Still, for a quick and dirty triage, it sounds worth trying. And you're absolutely correct to divorce range from tessitura. Singing Purcell's choral music is especially hard on female sopranos, not at all because of the range, but because of the tessitura which sits right up at the top of the treble staff for what seems like hours! And of course it's because he was writing for boys, not for women, and they can float up there and stay there, well, for hours!!

 

I also may be unusual in that I really don't like a soprano-heavy sound in choral music, so I tend to stack the lower parts with more voices than the upper parts (perhaps a separate thread if anyone cares to discuss it). In fact when I took over a women's show ensemble, The Belles of Indiana, and revamped it into a modern ensemble, I experimented for the first year and then settled on 18 voices: 3 1st sopranos, 4 2nd sopranos, 5 mezzos, and 6 altos. The inverted pyramid worked beautifully because the 1st sopranos tended to have the most vocal training and the altos the least, but it meant that I absolutely had to select 1st sopranos whose voices didn't fight eacy other.

 

Auditioning voices is more an art than a science, and I think each of us eventually finds what works best for us and our singers. But every voice IS different, and those of us in education don't always get to pick and choose the voices we work with. And maybe that's a good thing.

 

John

 

 

Lots of good replies so far. Another factor to take into consideration is the efficiency of the voice at different pitch levels. The more breaths you take in a given period of time, the less efficient the voice. The person's true "part" can be indicated to some degree by where they don't have to breathe so often. But, as has been said, voices don't fit into little boxes any more than tuning does (darn that Pythagoras and his infernal comma!) There is certainly a mental aspect to it as well. I have a friend who is clearly a bass baritone who prefers to live in tenorland, and has been focusing his training in that direction with some degree of success.

Wow, so many great responses!  Thank you so much, everyone!

I found Stephen's suggestion very interesting, and something I will likely experiment with in time.

 

It seems that the one-on-one assessment during an audition process would be ideal, as I suspected.

If anyone thinks of more techniques, I'd love to read them!

I once heard a session by Dr. Lisa Fredenburgh (formerly of Meredith College, now with U. Central Missouri) that revolutionized my approach to voicing young singers.  In her college's women's choir, she frequently revoiced students.  In this way, a student might sing all four female parts (S1, S2, A1, A2) on any given concert.  This allowed her to change the timbre of the group to match the composer at hand (Bach vs. Palestrina).  Plus, it kept students from singing really high notes or really low notes for the whole concert.

 

I have since adopted a similar model in my choir.  Having precious few "true" tenors and "true" alto 2s, I choose literature that doesn't have extreme tessituras, but ask members of the choir to switch parts frequently.  Baritones practice using their falsetto when needed (over time, they learn to navigate the transitions from falsetto to mixed, head, and chest voices).

 

This is my third year taking this approach, and here are a few of the benefits I've observed:

1.  A soprano with a beautiful, but huge voice learned how to blend by singing alto on a couple of songs.

2.  A self-proclaimed "eternal alto" discovered that she could actually hit a high A (and she has since learned how to sustain it with good tone and support).

3.  Several of my baritones have found their "mixed range" and developed much better "head voice" sounds.

4.  Several sopranos now have not only experience, but confidence in singing harmony parts.

5.  In a county honor choir, we ended up with an over-abundance of sopranos, and the clinician asked if anyone would feel comfortable switching parts.  The only ones who volunteered were students from my choir.

 

Initially, there was some resistance, but as the students have bought into the approach, it has become a hallmark of the group.  I'm not an expert, but I strongly recommend trying this approach, even if it's only on one or two songs for the first year or so.  It takes a bit more organization and planning, but it's ultimately been very beneficial for our choir and the individual singers.

 See "Training Soprano Voices" for RIchard Miller's chart of passaggi for each female vocal types. It's a very quick, very accurate way of classifying voices. We have repeatedly found that women are misclassified when younger and so never develop their full vocal potential. Too often singers are put where the director needs an extra voice rather than a  place that's most suitable for their voice type.

I frequently remind my singers that the parts they sing in choir might have very little to do with their actual voice type.  The truth of the matter is that there is that unless you're doing really high level music, most everything will be in everyone's range.  For example, everyone has that big honkin soprano that can't blend on the soprano part to save her life.  Truth is she probably has a fantastic voice, and should work on singing soprano lit when singing solo.  In choir, if she sings alto it will keep her from straining and help train her ears. My big sopranos always thank me for this after singing alto for a little while and realizing it makes the choral expirience a lot more postive for them.  But they always remember that even though they sing alto in choir, it doesn't mean that's their "voice type."   I also have a girl who can sing a solid low E and can't really get past a G or A above the staff.  But she's totally in tune where most soprano lines are in most choral music.  So even though she can sing lower than most of the altos, she's in my soprano section. 

 

Its a part on a song, not a personal identity!  :)