The Smiley Smile Message Board

Other than parts here and there on All I Wanna Do, can anybody recall any examples of Mike's falsetto (or high range) in the past?

I recall hearing about a version of Please Let Me Wonder with Mike on lead, and hearing that it sounded strange.  ;D

The PLMW with Mike is strange mainly because of the alternate lyrics, which are clunky and don't work with the music at all.  Brian does sing his version way better than Mike, though.

There's a high falsetto voice in "No-Go Showboat" that isn't Brian OR Marilyn.  To me it sounds a lot like Mike when he's making fun of Brian's voice in "Cassius Love Vs. Sonny Wilson".

Actually, I think it's just Brian with an incredibly high falsetto, as he was wont to use in the early days of the Beach Boys. It's a bit buried in the mix, but I can hear Brian's phrasing. Mike doesn't sing like that. His falsetto isn't that clear, either.

EDIT: Compare it with the Brian falsetto in "Don't Back Down" too. They're very similar examples of the early Brian "wailing" voice he used up till Summer Days.

Where would I find the Mike version of Please Let Me Wonder?

The part I'm talking about in No-Go Showboat is not the wailing in the BG.  That's definitely Brian.  The part I'm talking about is the end of the chorus(?) where the group repeats "No-Go Showboat" heard at 0:31, 1:00 and 1:40 where a very high, squeaky voice is heard in the group.  Besides this voice not sounding like Brian, you can hear Brian clearly at the 1:40 part until the fadeout singing at the same time.

Just to be a pedant: Brian almost never sings in falsetto--only a full head voice with its distinctive timbre.

Ohhhh, that! Didn't even notice it until you pointed it out.

You know, it kinda sounds like Brian's post-1974 falsetto. Without BEING it, of course.

True. Has there even been a (recorded) time when Brian sang in a true falsetto?

Speaking of weird falsettos...in My Diane the part that goes "I love you Diane, I miss you Diane" sounds nothing like Brian to my ears. To me it sounds almost like Dennis singing falsetto, though he obviously couldn't hit those notes then.

Good call. To me it almost sounds like a whistle, or a flute.

I'm not sure what you mean by tue falsetto, Brians falsetto parts aren't falsetto? Are they false falsetto??

No,they're head tone.

Anyone?

What the hell is the difference between a genuine falsetto and a "head tone" then? Preferably with examples from BBs music if they exist!

Brian did sing falsetto pretty often. It's just that his passage from head to falsetto was unusually smooth and both tones sounded alike. Plus his head voice was efortless and his falsetto range had a pretty low bottom. Brian's young voice was an unusual instrrument indeed!!

I'm probably wrong, but his leads on any of the Pet Sounds songs sound like head voice, while Don't Back Down and No-Go Showboat sound like falsetto.

There is no consensus on the vocal pedagogy community.  Falsetto, in any case, is a more breathy tone, with less vocal cord adduction.  In terms of range, falsetto is not higher or lower than head-voice, but simply lacks the solid cord closure of head voice.  Some think of falsetto as simply an untrained head voice.

The upshot is more or less that Brian is singing in head voice until the mid 70s, because you can hear that he's able to give the tone plenty.  He can crescendo or bring it down to ppp.  You can't really do that with falsetto because of the breath required to create that vocal cord situation.  Don't Back Down and No-Go are head voice; he has control of the tone. 


IMO you're pretty close to the truth, except I would differ from you in the register classification.  His Falsetto was non-existent, but he could bring his head voice down very, very low.  Head voice can still be full voice, top operatic tenors are in head voice when they hit high Cs, and they likewise bring head voice down as low as possible.

we won't settle here a centuries-long dispute between voice teachers, but Brian's high C, for instance, is radically different than a professional tenor's.

I think that what makes Brian's young falsetto special is its purity (a nasal, thick tone, rather than a breathy one). Valli's on-your-face falsetto wasn't breathy either. However, Brian's falsetto in the BW album and in OCA, for instance, WAS breathy... this leads me to think that technically he was doing what he did 25 years before but -alas!- the instrument had changed. My veredict is that a lot of what you call head voice is simply great falsetto. But he did use his head voice a lot, that's for sure.

It also "feels" different when you're singing. Kinda hard to explain, really.

I think a lot of voice teachers would agree--that head voice is a facet of a very well-trained falsetto.  That's possible.

The only reason I want to make the distinction at all is because, one, Brian's voice is pretty interesting and "better" than some other falsettists of the time.  Dean Torrance, for instance, had a great sound, but he would not have had the dynamic range that Brian had, from ppp to fff, because his was a true falsetto.  And two, it helps explain the evolution of Brian's voice over the decades.

That distinction you made earlier in reply to my question, aeijzsche, was meaningless to me. The most I got out of it was something like this: a genuine falsetto is something that you cannot control in tone or length and so on; a "head voice" is distinguished from a true falsetto because it can be manipulated by the person using their head voice. Is that (more or less, something like) accurate? I probably just don't have the technical sense or vocabulary to properly grasp this distinction, I suspect!

You'd be well served to google this topic and peruse the wide variety of opinions out there, but I think you have the general idea right.

Head voice is the upper part of the male full voice.  The lower part is chest voice, or more technically, modal voice.  Dudes tend to speak in chest/modal voice.

At some point, going higher, the male voice has to make compensations to keep going higher.  Most untrained or inexperienced singers go into what I would term "falsetto."  It can be developed and exploited as a style, but if it is cultivated too much it becomes head voice.  While I do not really compare Brian to an operatic tenor, they do have in common a cultivation of that register that allows them to go pretty high and keep the vocal cords together, which means they can sing very soft or very loud.  If you are untrained, or don't have a bizarre natural voice, chances are you are not fully adducting the vocal cords, which means breath is escaping between the vocal folds which, in the cultivated voice, would go toward creating the tone.

This is all a very nutshell explanation.

As for examples, I would use the following.

Catch a Wave (Brian in head voice) v. Sidewalk Surfin' (Dean Torrance in falsetto)

Surf's Up "Domino" Brian (in head voice) v. Carl (Falsetto, imo)

Mike's attempts to sing higher would probably be properly called falsetto as well.  But remember this is all just a way to describe what the voice does--and I wouldn't make a point of it except I think it highlights our man Brian's abilities.

The only one that comes to mind for me (at least during his prime) is "Barbie."  His voice sounds quite different than it did on pretty much any other recording from that era (that I've heard, anyways).

I learned head voice by imitating my bass player imitating Michael McDonald.  "You don't know me...."  Then I went, "wow, this is so much easier!"  Try it sometime...

I would pay good money to hear Teresa Cowles' impression of Michael McDonald.

So, where does countertenor fit into the head voice vs. falsetto discussion?

I don't recall ever hearing a BB sing in countertenor, but Fleet Foxes uses it.

I have always thought that Brian's voice on the song, "Be Here In The Morning" off of the Friends album, was kinda cool. It must be his "head voice" because he is not straining and he is not singing real loud either.
Is this a good example of Head Voice??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vbclu8ELDE

Beekeeper

It's actually Alan, who definitely sings in falsetto. Re: the Brian head voice debate compare the screechines of Al's voice compared to some of Brian's mid 60's leads.