What is happening to young girls' voices and the voices of modern popular singers these days?
There seems to be a strange phenomenon going on with the voices of many young women today, where they periodically stop sounding like normal humans and instead they create this buzzy, crackly, indeterminate sound with a few frog croaks strategically placed here and there and it actually sounds pretty terrible. I understand that there is a name for this and it is called vocal fry. I'm not exactly sure why so many younger women do this, but it seems to be almost the new universal norm in the speech of these younger women, mostly in the age range from mid teens to mid thirties. Perhaps they think it sounds more sophisticated. Perhaps they believe that it makes their voices sound lower, like men's voices; maybe they believe it sounds sexy, although I think it's a real turn off. Maybe they don't even know they are doing it, although that seems doubtful. I notice that this rarely happens in men's voices to the point that it makes me think that most girls are deliberately making their voices sound in this terrible distorted manner.
An online search shows that there is actually quite a lot on Google about vocal fry and how it happens; for those of you interested in physiology, there are even videos somehow taken inside real people to show what the production of vocal fry looks like; so there's no need for me to devote any extra page space to physiology here.
The important point I'm stressing is that voices with vocal fry sound bad. They are certainly not "cute" or "sexy," any more than any other annoying sounds would be, so my advice to any younger ladies who might read this is simply this. If you purposely make "fry" sounds when you talk to impress men, knock it off! You're not impressing us, you're annoying at least some of us, and I am not alone in this opinion! And if you do it by accident and possibly are not even aware of it, you should record yourself on your cell phone and then listen carefully. Then practice doing whatever it takes to stop fry from happening. You'll be doing anybody who happens to be listening to you a favor, and quite possibly the biggest favor of all will be the favor you do for yourself by losing what is to quite a few other people a really very annoying speech habit.
Now, with regard to what is happening to many popular (mostly male) singers' voices these days, this is different. What's going on here? I don't notice fry happening in singers' voices but it seems that especially male singers and some female singers as well are really not sounding very good at all these days. Many contemporary male voices seem to sound sort of like teenage boys whose voices have just started to change so that they no longer sound like little kids, but they also do not yet sound like men either. For one thing, I'd suggest to any males who wish to sing, try using a normal male pitch range, and do not sing as though your balls are stuck in a mousetrap.
Many contemporary male singers today sound to me sort of like cartoon characters, maybe like Bugs Bunny, or Mickey Mouse voice overs, sort of like a cross between the voices of little kids and adults. Anyhow, voices like these are not pleasant. So why, if you are a singer, especially with the idea of selling recordings, why would you cultivate such an unpleasant sound? So many male singers today sound twangy and nasal. And then of course we come to the all important question of vibrato.
Vocal vibrato has always been an important part of good singing, and real singers often devote months and even years to perfecting vibrato. True vibrato is a periodic wavering in a voice in which the instantaneous pitch or frequency changes regularly and slightly, at usually between 6 to 7 times per second, and goes very slightly above and then very slightly below the desired pitch so that the average frequency remains accurately at the desired pitch but the instantaneous changes. Vibrato is useful in producing emotional appeal, and also, among other things, a more interesting tone, better blending with other voices as well as musical instruments, and has also become an important part of the tone of many other musical instruments as well, but we won't worry about instrumental vibrato here. The important consideration is that so many modern singers either do not use it at all, or very rarely; or worse they use or produce it incorrectly.
There are two main types of vibrato, only one of which really sounds good, and that is true frequency or pitch modulation vibrato. The other is called "hammer vibrato" which is where frequency remains relatively constant but the volume pulsates, sort of like a rapid hammering or machine gun effect. This is sometimes also referred to as the "nervous singer" effect which we hear in the voices of some inexperienced singers who may have a severe case of stage fright and their voices have become infused with a rapid shake. Hammer vibrato is usually quite a lot faster than normal vibrato, way over 7 per second or 420 per minute, and it really sounds genuinely ugly.
Not so very long ago, we had male singers such as Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and of course the great classical musicians such as Luciano Pavarotti, although I shouldn't really classify him in the same category as the more popular singers like Bennett, for example. But I can't believe that the physiology of the human voice would have changed so drastically from the way it was just 25 or 30 years ago, so the question then remains why do so many contemporary male singers that we hear now sound so awful today?
It may actually come down to the following idea which is that although just about anybody at all can sing to some degree, actually most people do not sing well, and likewise, their voices really are not all that good for singing. If your natural voice is buzzy or tinny, or squawky or nasal, you're fine when you talk, because in speaking, it doesn't matter what you sound like for the most part. But singing is a whole different ball game, and now, if you are tinny or buzzy or nasal or squawky, when you sing, you'll sound pretty unpleasant. In a sense, the voice is like any other physical attribute. Anybody can exercise, but only a few people can be body builders. I think having a good voice is something that you are pretty much born with, and if you have a good natural voice, singing well will come easily to you. But if you don't have a good voice, you will probably never sound really good at all, although it is possible with modern electronics and digital signal processing to take some of the curse out of a bad voice, but digital processing can only go so far. You can't really turn shit into gold no matter how hard you try, but modern equipment has made it possible for anybody who has a voice to make a recording, and possibly even publicize it somewhat on TikTok or YouTube, for example. There are probably thousands of YouTube musicians out there today. Some are supremely talented, whether they are singers or instrumentalists, others at best truly suck. Since it generally takes a long time; many years, for example, of serious study and dilligent practice to be a good musician, regardless of whether you play an instrument or sing, this is probably why. Because most people can sing, with virtually no practice or effort at least marginally even as very young children, and because just about anybody who wants to can make a TikTok or YouTube video, this is probably why we are hearing (and accepting)so much bad singing.
So who am I to criticize singers? Well, I'm a guy who has the wisdom to realize that I have a soft, dull-sounding voice, I don't know how to produce any type of decent vocal vibrato, and that I would never have even a snowball's chance in hell of being a good sounding singer, but that's OK, because I don't want to be a singer. Yet I love music and making music, but my instruments of choice are the Hammond Organ, and the theater pipe organ. So I have chosen to devote many countless hours of my life into being as good as I can possibly be on these two instruments. So they do the singing for me. Hammond organs can produce lots of sounds, most of which sound very nice. The same is true of large pipe organs particularly theater organs. So in a sense, I sing, but by use of these instruments. The important thing for me is to accept my limitations. Realizing that my voice is physically useless for singing, I don't even try. Musical instruments can do my singing, and my task is to practice and be as good as physically possible on my chosen instruments. Physiology or God did not give me a good singing voice, so I avoid doing what I would suck at doing.
Likewise, I am somewhat out of shape, but I have no aspirations of being a body builder or of pursuing any athletic activity at all. Again, know your limitations. Devote your serious effort to things that you have a shot at. Can't sing? Maybe you can play an instrument. Can't be a body builder; don't even try, you'll probably only injure yourself. Try something like swimming for exercise, And there likewise, as far as I am concerned, I can stay on top of the water and move slowly ahead. I'm not out to be a champion swimmer, it's just for me a fun and easy way to get a little physical exercise, Anyhow, my thoughts about vocal fry and contemporary popular male singers remain in effect, based upon evidence that I hear daily.
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