Voice and Singing in
Popular Music in the U.S.A. (1900–1960)

Book

Martin Pfleiderer, Tilo Hähnel, Katrin Horn, Christian Bielefeldt (Ed.) Stimme, Kultur, Identität Vokaler Ausdruck in der populären Musik der USA, 1900-1960 [Voice, culture, identity: Vocal expression in popular music of the United States of America, 1900-1960] Bielefeld: transcript, 520 pages, ca. 100 fig., www.transcript-verlag.de/ts3086/ts3086.php The book deals with voices and singing styles in popular music of the United States. The contributions describe in detail how vocal expression of singers from vaudeville, gospel music, blues, American popular song, musical, jazz, country music, folk music, rhythm & blues, rock'n'roll and soul has developped across genre boundaries and how it reflects images, cultural stereotypes and collective identities. The combination of approaches from music analysis as well as cultural history will stimulate new research on popular music and popular singing Content & Introduction (german)

 

Articles
 
Tilo Hähnel, Tobias Marx, Martin Pfleiderer: »Methoden zur Analyse der vokalen Gestaltung populärer Musik«, in: Samples. Online publication of the German Society for Popular Music Studies e.V., 12 (2014).

Although voice and singing play a crucial role in many genres of popular music, to date there are only few approaches to an in-depth exploration of vocal expression. The paper aims at presenting new ways for describing, analysing and visualizing several aspects of singing using computer-based tools. After outlining a theoretical framework for the study of voice and singing in popular music, some of those tools are introduced and exemplified by vocal recordings from various genres (blues, gospel music, country music, jazz). Firstly, pitch gliding (slurs, slides, bends, melismas) and vibrato are discussed referring to a computer-based visualization of pitch contour. Secondly, vocal timbre and phonation (e.g. vocal roughness) are explored and visualized using spectrograms.
 

Tilo Hähnel: »Vokale Ausdrucksmuster im Kontext von Star-Images und kulturellen Stereotypen. Eine exemplarische Analyse der Vokalstile von Bert Williams und Bing Crosby«, in: Samples. Online Publication of the German Society for Popular Music Studies e.V., 12 (2014).

Assuming that star images are interrelated with cultural stereotypes, the present article analyses vocal expression as a means to shape both, images and stereo-types, and control their relationship. An investigation into the vocal style of black-face comedian Bert Williams exemplifies how vocal expression counterpoints a stage persona in a way that allows the star persona to shine through. Bing Crosby is used as a second example to show how vocal expression is related to star images and stereotypes when both are defined ex negativo and characterised as being »normal«.
 

Martin Pfleiderer: »Popstimmen. Theoretische und methodologische Überlegungen zur vokalen Gestaltung populärer Musik«, in: Singstimmen. Ästhetik. Geschlecht. Vokalprofil, ed. by Saskia Maria Woyke, Katrin Losleben, Anno Mungen and Stephan Mösch (= Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater, Vol. 28). Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann 2017, pp. 111-130.

Felix Schönfeld, Tilo Hähnel: »Vocalmetrics: exploring multiple dimensions of singing in early popular music recordings«, in: Proceedings of the Sempre MET 2014. Researching Music, Education, Technology: Critical Insights, ed. by Evangelos Himonides and Andrew King. London: 2014, pp. 145–147.

When exploring large sets of data and seeking for a comprehensive understanding, data visualization generally helps making things more obvious or even revealing new insights. Analysing voice and singing in popular music in the USA from 1900 to 1960 in a funded research project, we developed a web tool called Vocalmetrics, which allows manoeuvring through a corpus of short and exemplary audio files, which had been rated in nine dimensions of vocal expression, namely vibrato, glissando, roughness, breathiness, articulation, off-beat frequency, rubato, loudness, and register emphasis. The newly developed tool helps the user focusing on all these dimensions, which is important not only for musicological reasons but also for educational purposes. Working with Vocalmetrics, students can make themselves familiar with the singing voice, its means of expression and relations between vocal expression, genre, time and many further dimensions. The tool allows for searching the co-occurrences of vocal dimensions as well as to relate vocal styles and metadata, such as genre, year, record label, title, and singer. Therefore, the tool is an intuitive and playful way of exploring voice and singing in music.
 

Axel Berndt, Rainer Groh, Tilo Hähnel, Tobias Marx, Martin Pfleiderer und Felix Schönfeld: Vocalmetrics. Ein Software-Tool für das Visualisieren, das Rating und den Vergleich von Musik-Datensätzen, in: Musikpsychologie. Anwendungsorientierte Forschung, hrsg. von Wolfgang Auhagen, Claudia Bullerjahn und Richard von Georgi (= Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Musikpsychologie, Bd. 25), Göttingen: Hogrefe 2016, S. 254-262.

Axel Berndt, Rainer Groh, Tilo Hähnel, Martin Pfleiderer and Felix Schönfeld: Vocalmetrics. An interactive software for visualization and classification of music, in: Proceedings of the 9th Audio Mostly: A Conference on Interaction With Sound, October 1-3, Aalborg, Denmark.

Martin Pfleiderer: »Vocal Pop Pleasures. Theoretical, Analytical and Empirical Approaches to Voice and Singing in Popular Music«, in: IASMP@Journal. Online Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 1/1 (2010).

Martin Pfleiderer: »Stimmen populärer Musik. Vokale Gestaltungsmittel und Aspekte der Rezeption«, in: Musical Acoustics, Neurocognition, and Psychology of Music / Musikalische Akustik, Neurokognition und Musikpsychologie (= Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Vol. 25), ed. by Rolf Bader. Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2009, pp. 233–274.

contributions to encyclopedia 

Christian Bielefeldt: »Gene Austin«, »James Brown«, »Ray Charles«, »Sam Cooke«, »Son House«, »Blind Lemon Jefferson«, »Charley Patton«, »Whispering Jack Smith«, »Rudy Vallee«, »Muddy Waters«, »Bert Williams«, in: Ann-Christin Mecke, Martin Pfleiderer, Bernhard Richter and Thomas Seedorf (eds.): Lexikon der Gesangsstimme. Geschichte - Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen - Interpreten (= Handbuch des Gesangs, vol. 3). Laaber: Laaber 2016.

Tilo Hähnel: »Mahalia Jackson«, »Robert Johnson«, »Al Jolson«, »Ma Rainey«, »Ethel Waters«, in: Ann-Christin Mecke, Martin Pfleiderer, Bernhard Richter and Thomas Seedorf (eds.): Lexikon der Gesangsstimme. Geschichte - Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen - Interpreten (= Handbuch des Gesangs, vol. 3). Laaber: Laaber 2016.

Tobias Marx: »Little Richard«, »Jimmie Rodgers«, »Fats Waller«, in: Ann-Christin Mecke, Martin Pfleiderer, Bernhard Richter and Thomas Seedorf (eds.): Lexikon der Gesangsstimme. Geschichte - Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen - Interpreten (= Handbuch des Gesangs, vol. 3). Laaber: Laaber 2016.

Martin Pfleiderer: »Louis Armstrong«, »Nat King Cole«, »DooWop«, »Bob Dylan«, »Ella Fitzgerald«, »Aretha Franklin«, »Billie Holiday«, »Howling Wolf«, »Elvis Presley«, »Scat«, »Bessie Smith«, »Vocalese«, in: Ann-Christin Mecke, Martin Pfleiderer, Bernhard Richter and Thomas Seedorf (eds.): Lexikon der Gesangsstimme. Geschichte - Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen - Interpreten (= Handbuch des Gesangs, vol. 3). Laaber: Laaber 2016.

press reports 

Tipp zum Jahresanfang aus Weimar: Vocalmetric - ein Tool nicht nur für Vokalisten | OTZ (04.01.2016)

Stars und Stereotype | LISZT-Magazin (Oktober 2014)

Weimar erforscht Gospel-Königin | TA (29.02.2012)