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sspadowsky · #1

Why is it that, for the first hour or so after I wake up, I can sing notes several steps lower than normal? After I've been awake for awhile, I can't do it anymore.

I've always wondered this, am too lazy to research it, and figured Seth would know.

Over to you, Seth.

J. Tithonus Pednaud · #2

I can answer that. It's simply because your vocal cords are relaxed after a few hours of inactivity. Vocal cords are basically semi-elastic muscles. High notes are on contraction.

When you have a cold your cords are swollen and unable to contract, thus your voice is usually lower. When you are excited and tense, your voice is higher as the vocal muscles tighten and tense up as well.

Muscles relax and expand during the night. You are taller in the morning as well.

GADZOOKS · #3

So when Bart Simpson from the TV Show The Simpsons would measure himself in the morning to see if he had gotten taller overnight he was only fooling himself.

As probably he would put it after finding this out, AYE CARUMBA!

McClain · #4

It also could be from all those Mansauce Cocktails you guzzle the night before Samuel.
<3

Sethomas · #5

Let me explain my delay.

I opened this thread after getting home from ten hours of work, and thought to myself that I should reply to it just as soon as I had caught up on the chat room posts made since the last time I checked this morning.

Like, 45 minutes later (Jesus Christ, you people) I come back and JTP answers properly.

This is something I've noticed for myself a long time ago. My voice has a much wider range early and late in the day than any time between, usually even with stronger tone quality and better timbre. More regularly, though, my voice fluctuates more wildly depending on the weather, probably a combination of temperature and humidity. Generally, the colder and dryer it is the lower and better I can sing. As a history geek, at the start of the Christmas season I always find myself singing an Advent Gregorian chant whose melody is attested to the 15th century, and like most music from the period it focuses heavily on the lower end of the male voice. Since that's when the weather in Indiana starts getting colder and Indiana is bizarrely inconsistent with its seasonal progression, the way I sing the chant never sounds the same any two years.

One of my favorite movies, Farinelli, is a largely fictionalized account of the life of Carlo Broschi. A baroque-era castrato who worked with Handel, he's widely considered to have been the greatest singer of all time, which holds true today since we have a good record of the sheet music he'd perform along with commentary on his technique and such. The movie shows or alludes to a few weird practices they had to preserve his voice or save it when it was thought to be in danger, and it's interesting to wonder how much of these were effective and how much was just 18th century quackery.

While it would certainly be nice to have a fantastic voice, which I do not by any measure, it must be said that I'm far more content with keeping my fantastic testicles instead.

J. Tithonus Pednaud · #6

Funny, I'm actually writing an article for my website regarding the castrati, specifically their health issues and general unusual physical appearance due to castration.

It's a shame the only recording of a castrato existing today is of Moreschi, the last castrato - who by most accounts wasn't very good. To hear Broschi would have been remarkable.

Esuohlim · #7

I can't sing for shit but I've been ridiculed for having an "abnormally low voice" on a few occasions.

I'll cut my balls off that'll show them

DuFresne · #8

It used to frustrate the hell out of me in high school that my chorus class was always in the morning when I was almost a full bass, but all the concerts would be at night after I'd lost a good deal of low-end. Now I almost only take part in men's groups, so I can stay at a nice, comfy mid-range all day without forcing myself deeper than I probably should.

Sethomas · #9

Yeah, I often think about how super-saturated modern audiences are with media and such. The result is extreme jading, and it'll be interesting and probably scary to see how the constant availability of eclectic entertainment is going to affect the post-modern psyche.

Apply this understanding to the fact that 240 years ago we had the greatest voice in history, and the vast majority of his audience was people who could only attend a musical event very infrequently, if not once in a lifetime.

We can go to any store or website and hear anything we want at any time. Back then they had something that we can never have, and only rarely could they enjoy it. The effect that this must have had on them psychologically is something that we can only conjecture and couldn't possibly experience ourselves, sadly.

What i relate to this would be like the peasant urban migration of the mid-14th century. Pretend you're a serf in central France, 1350. Millions are dead, quite possibly everyone you ever knew aside from yourself (as was known to have happened to many). Nothing left to lose, you take the risk on your life of breaching the ties to your fiefdom and you journey to Paris to start a new life. You have never seen anything but fields and huts, the most opulent structure you've ever seen in your 30 years of life was the stone parochial chapel. Imagine this frame of mind, this lifetime of conditioning, topped by walking into the capital of war-ravaged France and standing in front of Notre Dame de Paris.

I mean, modern tourists today who grew up looking at pictures of megastructures and art and all that still frequently shit themselves at that site.