Reply To: Music theory and the JoCoeuvre
In an attempt to further my jerk-like reputation… 😉 :
On the whole voice type thing, I’d argue for Jonathan being a baritone, based on voice quality throughout the range. Baritones can usually sing as high as tenors, they just have to jump into falsetto a little lower…but a baritone’s falsetto is usually richer than that of a tenor. Tenors, on the other hand, can usually sing almost as low as a baritone, but they “peter out” in terms of the fullness of the timbre before they ever get that low. As JoCo’s voice tends to sound very rich and dark on something like the beginning of the verses in “I Crush Everything”, I’d call him a baritone. He also has to use some falsetto on certain tunes that aren’t necessarily out of a tenor’s typical head range (“Womb with a View” springs to mind), although he is adept enough at mixing registers that it makes it tough to tell exactly what he’s doing physically.
But then again, I am that wierd exception to the male voice…because I am a countertenor (a male alto, to those who aren’t familiar), I tend to think about these sorts of things a little differently. I can sing “I Crush Everything”, but it’s pretty tough for me to get the lower notes to “speak” unless it’s pretty late at night and my voice is quite tired. On the other hand, I have NO accessible falsetto register (at least not one that I’ve physically found), but a head voice that goes up for days, and so the higher passages in something like “Womb with a View” require little effort for me…and they lose some of their most interesting timbral qualities as a result.