Jon Anderson's Vocal Range!

[Yesspaz]

I copy/pasted this from a NFTE:



"Despite age, Jon Anderson is still hitting the high notes.

Throughout the nineties, Yes released a number of albums that I'm sure don't need to be listed. Every time a new album was released, a number of commentaries both official and unofficial could easily be read, usually on the internet. The funny thing was, at least a few of these commentaries always said something like "Jon Anderson still sounds great, even though his range has decreased a little," or "Jon can't quite hit the highest notes he used to."

After going through a few Yes albums and determining the vocal melodies using a piano, I have found that, as I had long suspected, this is totally mistaken. In fact, Jon Anderson sings with essentially the same range as he always did; if anything, the tessitura of his songs is slightly higher than in the seventies, not lower. (The "tessitura" of a song is a voice teacher's term meaning the approximate note that the melody generally hangs around.) I have not as yet included MAGNIFICATION in my analysis, but I'm looking forward to finding out once again that Anderson's range is not decreasing.

Jon Anderson's working range seems to be the two octaves from E3 to E5. On a piano, E3 is below middle C, E4 is above middle C, and E5 is one and one-third octaves above middle C. This is, as I have written before in this forum (NFTE #175), essentially an alto range. An operatic tenor part, by contrast, will include the highest notes of any tenor songs, and these are usually C5 (the fabled "high C") and sometimes C#5. It takes a real Pavarotti to sing these, not just any classical tenor can do it since the notes are essentially above the boundaries of the tenor range in general. Classically trained alto counter-tenors are called upon to sing above E5 only rarely, and many professional counter-tenors actually cannot, even though they are singing in falsetto, which as we all know Jon Anderson is not. This little comparison makes Jon Anderson's rarity as a musician all the more palpable; he isn't just irreplaceable as a Yes front man, he is virtually irreplaceable as a musical resource for humanity. More on this in a later piece.

The above doesn't claim that Anderson can't sing beyond this range, I'm simply saying that he generally doesn't for whatever reason. At the upper reaches, one might assume that the reason for not singing there persistently is comfort, not ability.

Now let's consider where the highest notes are sung in Yes songs. The oft-cited "highest ever note" by Jon Anderson is usually said to be the E5 that occurs over and over as the first note of verse lines in "GOING FOR THE ONE." Much was made by some fans of the fact that the recent live recording of this song on KEYS TO ASCENSION had seemingly been transposed down to the key of D so that this note would be D5, but in reality it isn't a crime for a singer to seek a more comfortable, less straining note under the circumstances. A somewhat more frequent high note is the semitone lower Eb5 that occurs as the final climactic "I feel lost in the ciTY" in Heart of the Sunrise.

But even this note occurs very infrequently in the classic Yes canon; a more commonplace high note in songs is the still lower D5. Now, moving on to the more recent past, comments that are easy to find about Jon's diminishing range would suggest that these notes are never sung nowadays, but it just ain't so my friends. In fact, on Talk (1994), Eb5 occurs as the final climax "bring me back AGAIN" in "Endless Dream", and that super-duper E5 occurs over and over in the chorus of "Real Love" as the high note in "call THIS real love". There is also an E5 as part of a chorus of voices as the highest note in "The Calling" in the line "there's a FIRE raging somewhere near."

More recently, that fabled E5 is sung to absolutely beautiful effect by a lone Jon Anderson on the last "COVER me up and bring me to the power" in KEYS TO ASCENSION II's "Bring Me to the Power," one of my all-time favorite Yes songs. The slightly lower Eb5 is sung in The Ladder's "Homeworld," as the high note in the climax "nothing can ever CHANGE us now, we follow the sun." There are many more occurrences of these notes (particularly the Eb5) on nineties Yes albums, the preceding is not meant as a complete catalogue.

I always thought that Jon's voice reached its peak strength and ability during the early part of the eighties; his voice was showcased to dazzling effect on the three albums with Vangelis from that period. Helping to support this thesis, one finds that the high note in the chorus of "Hold On" from 90125, you know the part that just says "hold on, HOLD on," is actually an F5, higher than all the others I have found on any Jon Anderson material. This is a truly killer high note, even for a classically trained male alto. It is buried amidst a chorus of singing, so we can only assume that it was Jon and not Trevor, but you never know because Trevor did always have a high falsetto of some sort.

In conclusion, we might suggest that the continual remarks to the effect that "Jon's range ain't what it used to be" are really a product of flawed perception influenced by our knowledge that he is getting on in years, and our amazement that he could possibly still sing E5 without a falsetto voice. I wish Jon the best of voices for years to come, so those high alto notes remain within his grasp."

[progdirjim(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
I copy/pasted this from a NFTE:

he isn't just irreplaceable as a Yes front man, he is virtually irreplaceable as a musical resource for humanity.

puh-leeze!

He's just a musician.

Originally posted by progdirjim
puh-leeze!

He's just a musician.

Not sure I agree with Jon being JUST a musician Jim. He's a truly spiritual being and whether or not you believe in spirituality I defy anyone not to be moved by his presence. He has the most soul searching eyes of anyone I've ever met. I felt he was reading my thoughts.

I guess VAX could comment more on this because he spent quite a bit of time in his company last month. When I met him it was only for a short while but that was enough to turn me into an emotional wreck.

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by progdirjim
puh-leeze!

He's just a musician.

Heh! That's the one super-pretentious part to me too. Otherwise a graet little "essay."

[Rick and Roll]

I err on the side of Jim here.

[kirk]

yesspaz- i'm not quite ready to deify jon, but he's made a
rather substantial mark on my time on earth.
i believe that he'll be remembered beyond rock music
as a spiritual visionary.

however.... from a production side, it's almost impossible
to tell if a voice is enhanced, even in concert.
any number of programs and devices are capable
of doing the job, as well as creating tuned harmonies, ect.
the industry standard "auto-tune", available either as a standalone unit
or as software(which i own) can invisibly sweeten a note to perfect pitch,
change the octave, root note.
my home studio rig can generate 5 harmony lines,
all in perfect pitch, and can morph M to F or vice versa.
auto-tune can even follow midi from a keyboard, so that no matter
what note's being sung, it records the voice in the
note played.
imagine if money were no object.

i'm not accusing anyone, but the bottom line- even IF jon couldn't hit the old notes,
he could continue w/o it being noticable to the listener.

k

[black max]

On a side note: when Geddy Lee sings, do dogs howl in Quebec?