Dil Se Dil Tak - A Meeting Point

Dr.Rahul in his column discusses technicalities about voices, ranges, expressive singing and playback singing as the dangling carrot.

In my last post, I commented about elements of Raja’s figure-skating-gayaki. Let’s move-on now to the all-important voice factor. When Toshi said in Ustaadon ke Ustaad that I am a big fan of Raja bhai’s gayaki, in specifying “gayaki”, he had left open an area of singing for himself and other reality show singers in the genre called “voice”. In a private interview to Zahida, Sharib did confirm that they were really big fans of Raja’s gayaki but “unki awaaz mere kanon main chubhti hai“. A lot has been said by Padma in defense of Raja’s voice, but let me explore some technical aspects here.

The ultimate success metric of a reality show singer is to become a playback singer. I do not agree with this but at least in India right now this how it is. However, searching for playback singing potential especially for male voices through reality shows is in a way an oxymoron. The most important factor in playback singing is voice and expressions. Sur becomes secondary. The factor which goes against the real voice is the age of the contestants. Most of the young male contestants do not have fully developed male voices and range. Most of them sing in high pitches.

Voice is something which is a lot more subjective than sur-and-gayaki to discuss. Most people who don’t like Raja or Aneek, have their primary reasons as not being able to connect to their voices. In Saregamapa 2007, the contestants were good in sur-gayaki axis, but this time around they have been more careful in selecting playback friendly voices. Let me first spit out some technical aspects of voice and ranges:

From low to high pitch there are 4 vocal registers: Vocal Fry, Modal, Falsetto, Whistle. In singing, mainly Modal and Falsetto registers are used. Vocal Pedagogist as well as Indian playback singing insist only on Modal voice whereas falsetto is a big no no. However, in pop/rock and even in new generation Indian fim music, if you know how to use falsetto, it is a big plus. Yoddling, songs like “aake sidhi lagi” are all the examples of use of falsetto voice. In Saregamapa Challenge 2009, Mitika is one singer who takes very good falsettos. Generally, falsetto is considered as head voice and Modal voice is called chest voice.

Since many reality show contestants are young adults and suffer from limited vocal ranges, may be this discussion is also relevant. Females generally sing one octave above males. As the voices change, male pitch shifts gradually to much lower scale. In females, there are two type of singing voices/ranges: Alto (low range) and Soprano (high range). Alto are low-pitched singers like Poonam and Himani. Real Soprano (Lata’s range) singers are hard to find in reality shows, and many females either don’t sing open-voice on high pitches or end-up mixing falsetto voices. In males, there are two types of ranges: Baritone (low range F2-F4) and Tenor (high range C3-A5). These are known as Kishore-genre and Rafi-genre in terms of Bollywood singing. In terms of sufi singing, ghazal singers like Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh or Mehdi Hasan are the baritones and qawwals like NFAK, Aziz Nazan are typical Tenors voices. In most young males tenor is easily found but good baritone range is hard to find and most of them end up being light baritones with under-developed low-notes. In young males, sometimes one also finds and intermediate transitioning range which is between Tenor and Alto (like our champ sings from E3 - C5), which is falsetto-ish cambiata voice where the chest voice has not yet kicked in. Baritone voice is typically heavier and deep, while tenor is more fluent voice. This in a way makes it easy for tenor singers to sing baritone songs (albeit on their own scale and minus the magic of baritone voice) but not the vice-versa. This has some obvious implications on the versatility debates. Saregamapa 2005 saw a typical baritone vs typical tenor finals.

Moving on from baritone-tenor axis, many singers end-up singing both as required, although their natural tendency is only one of these two. The control factor is always the best in their own-voice type. In case of Raja, his range is C3-A5 and the natural voice is tenor. However, he does end-up bringing in baritone voice while singing Kishore songs. His baritone voice although has a lot of appeal to me, it is vulnerable to modulation errors in live performance, but can come out great in recording (example: yaad aa raha hai). His sweet spot of range comes from B4-G4 where his voice really shines. SEL made him sing right in this range, also Maari Teetri is almost around in that range. Although Sukhwinder is a high-pitched singers like Raja, his voice has a distinct baritone component (which comes from the front-center of throat).

One more component in high-pitched singing is vocal weight. A good trained and mature voices singers will work on reducing vocal weight as they go on higher pitches. If this is not done, the voice will sound like shouting and/or screaming. Kailash Kher is a high pitch tenor singer also but he effectively does this factor very well and same with Rabbi Shergill. A mark of a “good voice” is the consistency of the type of voice over a long range of pitch. With Raja, this is the department to work and develop. Some of this will come naturally by age also.

I have always experienced that if gayaki is powerful, you can win hearts, regardless of your voice quality. This is the factor, I believe, drove Raja’s success in Saregamapa. However, most of the playback he is getting hardly uses all of his gayaki prowess. It is mainly based on his shining voice quality in his sweet-spot range. The originality and freshness of his voice and gayaki helps him there. Another thing which is next most important after voice especially these days is expression and character factor of the voice. Raja has many of these expressions especially those coming from folk singing background up his sleeves. One of them being the ‘khas’ of throat (like in “deewano ka kaam hai” line of Jawani Diwani). Sukhwinder also specializes in these expressions. If you listen to his tune mujhe pahechana nahi or his bhojpuri song many of these expressions are evident. Even when he does not do murki-based songs he has his lahekas and small harkats (like in his Krishna bhajan). His Maine puchha chand se was also another type of expression marvel. Now, some of this expressive techniques he is trying out for western singing also. With more and more western influence, expressive singing is something hot these days. In fact, in young males, more likely chances for reality singer to become a playback singer is through this path of expressive singing (Kunal Ganjawala being a prime example).

To end on a lighter note, let take technical-to-figurative leap. I tend to associate colors with voices, let me see who agrees with my coloring scheme Raja: Orange, Amanat: Yellow- ochre, Aneek : Magenta, Mussarat: Red, Vinit: Vermilion, Harshit : Green, Debojit : Blue.

I also tend to associate musical instruments with voices/gayaki Raja: harmonium, Amanat : sarangi, Jeffery Iqbal: piano, Sara Raza Khan : santoor, Aneek: pan-flute/clarinet etc. I am tempted to associate tastes and smells with voices also, but let me not go too much down the synaesthesia lane.