Were low-bass singers a thing before amplification?
Before there were good ways to record and play back bass sounds, did anybody bother to train their voice to sing low bass? I imagine the uses for the skill would be rather limited before good microphones, recording equipment and widely available hi-fi stereos to play back bass sounds.
10 replies
Yes, we have choral pieces from centuries back arranged with parts for second and third bass.
If you are a basso profondo, you can basically take your pick of things to sing. There are very few of you, and every baroque chamber choir needs you. Take a listen to the All-Night Vigil by Rachmaninoff some time. Or male Orthodox choirs.
Hoom papa, hoom papa, hoom papa mow mow... my heart's on fire, for Gojira.
Look up gospel quartets. They'll have a bass.
Barbershop quartets, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basso_profondo
And I mean, yes, vocal performances were around way before recording equipment.
Yes.
Amplification does not require electronics. Good acoustics in a hall can be all you need for all vocal registers to be heard. (Edit: Whether a hall is a church isn't strictly relevant. Took that part out.)
Even if you can't quite pick out the low notes in poor acoustics, they'll be bolstering the sub-harmonics of the higher pitches, giving weight to the performance anyway.
And for small groups around a fire you don't need a hall at all, which gets us back to prehistory easily.
I mean, opera may not have invented it, but they certainly codified it. Ages before amplification.
Thatβs like asking if anyone bothered to sing at all before they could be recorded. A choir has always been made of many notes sung by various people. There was a lot of music in the world before 808s came about.
I mean, not everyone has to train their voice to sing low notes. If it's just your natural range, you won't have much choice but to sing bass.
Anecdotal, but I've also had to be called back the one time I was singing in a choir, because I was too loud compared to the rest.
To some degree, I imagine that's a physics thing, due to having a larger (resonance) body and being able to push more air through the longer vocal cords. But of course, you also simply don't need to be as present as the melody on top.