Keys and singing question

merlin666 said:
Uh, I've been singing this song for years and I never found a high note in it. Time to listen to the original ....
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Yes! That is exactly my point. "Sixteen Tons" is not supposed to have high notes. The melody was written to emphasize low notes, and the original recording does the same. Arranging it at the bottom of the singer's range fits the mood of the song and the story it tells. You must know this already, since you choose to sing it in a key that puts "owe" nowhere near the top of your range.

If somebody did arrange this song at the very highest top of his/her range, that would probably sound ridiculous. Although I suppose it's possible that a lyric tenor somewhere is singing "Sixteen Tons" with "owe" on high C and it sounds great.
 
acmespaceship said:
Yes! That is exactly my point. "Sixteen Tons" is not supposed to have high notes. The melody was written to emphasize low notes, and the original recording does the same. Arranging it at the bottom of the singer's range fits the mood of the song and the story it tells. You must know this already, since you choose to sing it in a key that puts "owe" nowhere near the top of your range.

If somebody did arrange this song at the very highest top of his/her range, that would probably sound ridiculous. Although I suppose it's possible that a lyric tenor somewhere is singing "Sixteen Tons" with "owe" on high C and it sounds great.
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This is a link to a video of me singing 16 Tons, with a little help from my friends, haven't figured out how to embed the video.
[video]https://photos.app.goo.gl/jm6q9qfNm1ux5vHG7[/video]
 
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From the perspective of an audience member I would just like to say that if I want to hear the same old Ernie Ford treatment of "16 tons," then I'll go buy the recording. Ideally I want to hear something original and creative. However, if you insist on merely doing a cover...then do something with it, make it worth my while, give me something unique. Change the strum pattern, sing in a higher key, do something!
 
ripock said:
From the perspective of an audience member I would just like to say that if I want to hear the same old Ernie Ford treatment of "16 tons," then I'll go buy the recording. Ideally I want to hear something original and creative. However, if you insist on merely doing a cover...then do something with it, make it worth my while, give me something unique. Change the strum pattern, sing in a higher key, do something!
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I agree with you on that. One group that I play with often goes off on a tangent arguing about how it is "supposed to be played", to the point that someone gets the original on their phone so that we can all hear it. I'm all for making it your own.

Also, same group argues a lot about what key they want to play it in. When I first started singing and playing I thought, for no reason other than I thought, that I probably had an octave to work with and I made it a point to sing in a key that would keep me in that octave. I took some singing lessons and with but a bit of coaching from a voice teacher I found out that I had two and a half octaves. Even so, I'm not fluent in every key. A few keys in the middle of my range come easy and some keys take me to the fringes and push me. But I like that. I'm always working on my singing as well as my playing, and a little challenge doesn't hurt. I would suggest that people work on keys that aren't so comfortable and maybe even scare them a little. Like everything else, singing is something one can improve on with a little practice.
 
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Hi, Jarmo! I've just check major triad shapes (see the figures below). There are 5 shapes. I use C major for this diagrams, but the shapes are same as other major triads. 1st shape is seen in C chord. This shape is movable too. 2nd shape is seen as Bb. According to my guitar book, 3 is not often used, because it is hard to play. 4 is seen as Ab. 5 is E. I see that Bb and E shapes are difficult. I"ve played all of the chords of major and minor triads and now I see that I can play even flat keys. It may be fun to use flat keys in Jazz songs and sing.

 
yahalele said:
Hi, Jarmo! I've just check major triad shapes (see the figures below). There are 5 shapes. I use C major for this diagrams, but the shapes are same as other major triads. 1st shape is seen in C chord. This shape is movable too. 2nd shape is seen as Bb. According to my guitar book, 3 is not often used, because it is hard to play. 4 is seen as Ab. 5 is E. I see that Bb and E shapes are difficult. I"ve played all of the chords of major and minor triads and now I see that I can play even flat keys. It may be fun to use flat keys in Jazz songs and sing.
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Guitarists sometimes want to grasp their fingerboard with a so called CAGED concept, notice a fourth lower tuning.

In terms of open ukulele chords, you could name those also as C, A, G, F, D shapes. If you transpose GEDCA a fourth above with letters as chords, you will get CAGFD. All those chords are C chords in your fretboard diagram. But as you told the G shape is difficult as movable chord. I have never used that concept myself to any advantage, but have always known it with guitar.

Your post and my reply are off topic though.
 
I usually use keys of C or G. But if we have two persons to sing, the vocal range may reduced and sharp keys (in this case Bb on the table below) may be sometimes required. John Denver sings "Country Roads Take Me Home" on the key of A (see the table below). He played G on capo 2. But he played it with capo 3 with Johnny Cash.

NameJohn DenverJohn Denver and Johnny Cash
YT
keyABb
PlayG on capo2G on capo3
 
Jarmo_S said:
Guitarists sometimes want to grasp their fingerboard with a so called CAGED concept, notice a fourth lower tuning.

In terms of open ukulele chords, you could name those also as C, A, G, F, D shapes. If you transpose GEDCA a fourth above with letters as chords, you will get CAGFD. All those chords are C chords in your fretboard diagram. But as you told the G shape is difficult as movable chord. I have never used that concept myself to any advantage, but have always known it with guitar.

Your post and my reply are off topic though.
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The G shape is simple if you mute the G string. Then you have a great, familiar chord to slide up or down the neck to fit whatever key that the singer requires.
 
Hi, ripock!

Ab has two roots (see the red circles below). ripock's movable cord mutes 4th string and Jarmo's Ab mutes 2nd strings. Very interesting.

 
Wrong yahalele, I seldom use mutings and play Ab with the normal F-shape.
Your suggestion does not sound bad either, but I'd prefer ripock's suggestion over it. Thumb muting is more natural and one less barre chord.

The only mutings I use are 1x02 for E and 110x for C#m and sometimes X212 for Dm6 no 5th = Bdim.

And then I usually play F#7 as 342x instead 3424, leaving in this case also the 5th out. Just often sounds better to me as the 4th fret note on A sounds too high for my liking.

Those are the only ones I can think of.
 
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Rllink said:
I agree with you on that. One group that I play with often goes off on a tangent arguing about how it is "supposed to be played", to the point that someone gets the original on their phone so that we can all hear it. I'm all for making it your own.

Also, same group argues a lot about what key they want to play it in. When I first started singing and playing I thought, for no reason other than I thought, that I probably had an octave to work with and I made it a point to sing in a key that would keep me in that octave. I took some singing lessons and with but a bit of coaching from a voice teacher I found out that I had two and a half octaves. Even so, I'm not fluent in every key. A few keys in the middle of my range come easy and some keys take me to the fringes and push me. But I like that. I'm always working on my singing as well as my playing, and a little challenge doesn't hurt. I would suggest that people work on keys that aren't so comfortable and maybe even scare them a little. Like everything else, singing is something one can improve on with a little practice.
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This post made me giggle. We often play using ‘the yellow book’ (daily Uke) and people will argue to play as written. My premise is that music is an expression- interpretation is part of it. Especially when the song is written in 4/4 time and the book has FIVE quarter notes in a single measure.

Or as a former supervisor of mine, born and raised in the nation of India once told me (obnoxiously)
(The United States state north of Missouri should be pronounced)
“eye-OWE-ah, I speak the Queen’s English “

I responded, “Great, but Iowa comes from a Native American term” (I think it does)

Bottom line, if I can’t play with feeling, I don’t wanna play. Nor do I wanna play every rotten song
Up-down up-down up- down up-down

BTW, I have a fantastic three octave singing range — unfortunately it is not contiguous. But Peter Luongo has force me (in his sessions) to power through those gaps
 
I sang today a song that was in C minor/Eb.

Nowadays you can yes find some sites like ultimateguitar, able to transpose anything there to your C or G, yahalele. And it is maybe good too as a beginner to limit yourself just to those keys. It will cover usually our singing ranges, one or the other.

But what if you were given a song, like that in C minor, just sheet music and in a group context. Asked to play just in that key. Would you even know how to save yourself even with a capo?
 
ubulele said:
Yeah, that "C and G only" approach really isn't viable for most folks, because your Cm/Eb case is hardly an isolated exception. I have a wide singing range, and yet I still run into many songs where the keys of C and G, even capoed up a bit, wouldn't work well. Using just two keys also creates an undesirable sameness in your playing, and first-position playing already suffers from too much sonic monotony, too little movement in pitch range, particularly with the pitch clustering of re-entrant tunings.
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I agree. I run into people who tell me that hypothetically a song can be played in any key, it is just a matter of transposing. I have not found that to be true. The key that it is played and sang in has a lot to do with the flavor of the song. I also agree that playing everything in one key gets boring. It doesn't hurt to learn a song in your playlist in two or three keys, just for the versatility.

I belong to two ukulele groups that get together weekly. There are several songs that one group plays in one key and the other group plays in another. I feel like it is good to not limit oneself.
 
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If I do not have ukulele or any other accompaniments, I sing with easiest pitch, which is the comfortable to sing. I think two keys are enough to cover easiest pitch. C and G are good keys in terms of both sound and playability because their diatonic chords use many open strings. When I am uncomfortable to sing with chord chart, I try C first and then G. That is the way to find best keys for me.
 
About 80% of Lightnin's Hopkins's songs are key of E. Because he liked to use open E (6th) string. There are many key of E and A songs on guitars, because E and A are easy to play for bass (root).
We use 1st string (A string on ukulele) for arrangement too, because we hear highest notes as melody line. The diagram below shows very common I IV V I chord progression. The first string goes B C# B A on the key of A. It goes C C C Bb on key of Bb. These are key specific arrangements. I need A or Bb keys for these arrangements. And A is very good because it is open string and Bb is next. Fingering is also easy.





I played a beautiful life from vonbiber's gospel songs on key of C and A (see the arrangement above). I played guitar, but I only use bottom 4 strings.






I sometimes take specific keys for arrangements but I don't think key itself can add flavor in the songs.
 
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yahalele said:
I sometimes take specific keys for arrangements but I don't think key itself can add flavor in the songs.
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I don't either think that any key is different from other. And I hate in general hearing chords played barred, when open chords offer more balance. In that sense I also dislike the virtuoso Jake's solo plays, jumping up and down the fingerboard with chords, so the change is too obvious then.

Of course with re-entrant ukulele the say Cm chord is a little weak when the root is the highest note, but that would not really make me play other chords higher up the neck.

Your "E9" in your diagram is really a Bm chord.
 
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Hi, Jarmo!

Dr. Suzuki of Suzuki violin method always taught new students about sound of violin. He plank open strings and told that we needed to produce this sound. Open strings have best sound.
Thank you E9 is wrong. My guitar book shows it E9 (guitar's B9) but it is wrong. Bm (4222) and E9 (1222) both works. This E9 is rootless.

I want to stay low, no capo or no strap. And I want to sing in standing posture.
 
Good that yahalele, as I always get sort of angry and unhappy when someone posts of using extended chords with ukulele.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_chord

https://ukulelehelper.com/ site as I told in the other thread can maybe help some in such wierdo cases. Propably those chords in such cases won't sound really good with uke, but good to try.

Or if I see a song even, where a harmony is given that much extended, instead simplified that is easy do too instead. Something our brains can handle as uke chords, those added notes in my opinion need play an octave higher in those chords, and our ukes can't handle them. Add something is ok to me, but not extended chords.
 
I wonder if the OP is still following this thread. By now he should be singing "Lucky Old Sun" in his chosen key.

John Colter
 
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