Hee! I don't mind. It was a bit of a chore to figure out when exactly I'd written it in almost four years of stuff on that LJ but I stumbled upon it at last!

Nother question!

Since you have ChoralLeader!Superpowers, tell me: what are Jensen Ackles' & Jared Padelecki's natural singing registers?

I didn't know that Jesus was traditionally a bass, because of course he's the lead tenor in JC Superstar, also in Godspell. Interestingly, Judas is also a tenor in JCS, but he's a baritone in Godspell.

Yes, and these are the same questions we all had for my prof at the time. I think it was in the comments of this post originally that I remember discussing this -- I think Andrew Lloyd Webber did something a bit extraordinary in making Jesus (and Judas, for that matter) a tenor in JCS. In the 20th/21st century we like our god figures to be much more human, and the Jesus of JCS (and the Judas) are eminently human. But that's not the way things have been done traditionally.

For these purposes -- it doesn't bring the Jesus/Judas the way JCS does, *g*, which IMHO is part of the point ALW had in making them both tenors.

Hmm, maybe I'm thinking more of the post-Reformation concept of a "personal Savior". As a singer, I haven't encountered much early music (though granted, not at all my area of specialty) that has the kind of "Jesus died for me me me me" theme you find in contemporary Christian praise songs. (Can you tell I hate those songs?) It's the first-person-ness that I meant, the focus on "I" versus "we". It's one of the most annoying things about contemporary church music IMO. There is a song (which I have banned from my church) that has the line "Jesus, I am so in love with you." Creepy.

I guess if any one Christian figure was fetishized as extraordinarily "personal" in the Medieval/early Baroque period, it's probably Mary. In what I've encountered in music, she tends to be the human face of the divine, and can be appealed to on the basis of her humanity (read: femininity).

How do you think all this relates to SGA

Interesting -- I wrote this before I had watched SGA, so I have to think about this for a bit. I often see both John and Rodney described as having low voices in fic, but all you have to do is compare them to Ronon and you realize -- they really don't. Ronon/Jason Momoa is probably a bass-baritone (that voice type sandwiched between the lowest and the middle voice types for men) whereas Rodney and John are both baritones. I might even be tempted to put John down as a tenor, truth be told, because there is quite a lot of lightness to his tone. But I think the impression of John having a low voice comes from the "tough guy" talk he does a lot on the show. Joe Flanigan, as John, uses vocal fry (I don't know the linguistic term here, but it's that low popping noise that's actually a different vocal mechanism than normal phonation) a *lot* when he's being Col. Action Hero, but his speaking voice is quite a bit higher. Rodney/David Hewlett has somewhat more of a mellow, lower voice compared to John/JF, but again, his character spends a lot of time doing hysterics and that means he talks quite high in his natural range, sometimes even in falsetto. It's actually quite interesting that both these guys almost play against their voice types.

I wonder if it's proper vocal fry or if he's just sort of forcing his voice down lower. I don't usually associate vocal fry with very energetic speaking, now I come to think of it, and most of the time, badass!John is pretty intense. Either way, if you compare his voice when delivering normal dialogue to his voice when he's being the action hero, you can hear there's about a fifth drop in register from one to the other. (I'm such a nerd, I played a bit of "The Shrine" with my tuner open and yes, John/JF talks around a G or F below middle C in normal speech, which is consistent with a baritone or lower tenor. Rodney/DH talks about a third lower when he's not whining, around a D or E. It's not a huge difference, but enough to put DH one rung lower on the vocal fach scale.)

I always associated vocal fry with horror movies or 'funny' effect, although I think it might be phonemic in some languages.

My vocal tech prof used to say that it was part of male adolescent vocal development -- because so many teenage boys spend a few years talking in vocal fry to sound cooler. It's a hard thing to emulate in a female voice but I can attest to the fact that a lot of young male singers do talk in this way, trying to make their voices sound lower. I think of, for example, the character of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock -- talking almost exclusively in that vocal fry. It's sort of contemporary badass shorthand.

Are you saying DH actually has a lower voice than JF?

Yes, though they are very close. Put it this way -- if they both auditioned for my choir tomorrow (IF ONLY) I would probably put JF on tenor 2 and DH on baritone. Within my choir, many of these voices are nearly interchangeable in terms of their vocal range but the tenor 2s tend to have a slightly lighter registration which makes them more pleasant to listen to in the upper range. A baritone around a middle C (about 278 Hz) starts sounding a little too powerful and may overbalance the ensemble. (This is, of course, assuming either of them could carry a tune.)

And what do you mean with "when he's being the action hero", like when he's mouthing off to the wraith as compared to when he's just talking with Rodney?

Yes, essentially. When John's being intense and tough and/or emotional for that matter, his voice drops quite a bit. In normal calm dialogue, it rises again. It's kind of the opposite of Rodney (though Rodney's "intense" is less tough and more "hysterical".)

Might even compare their fundamental frequency, which is what I think you've been doing (musical vs. linguistic terms are always so confusing! we're talking about the same thing but using words that are foreign to me!)

*g* Yes, I mean the fundamental frequency. I've done a little bit of acoustics during my music studies so really I should be the one attempting to change languages here! And it sounds very cool, the spectrogram thingy! I'd be curious to hear more about it when you do that!

hahaha, more proof that Sheppard is actually a 15 year-old at heart!

YES. I didn't even go there, but YES.

Hmm, now what's the most intense scene, for Sheppard?

Good question... I would probably go with something from that episode where he's captured by Kolya and first meets Todd (the name escapes me). He's pretty intense in that ep. But you can probably find an example of him grating away in just about any scene where Rodney is pissing him off by dithering about some repair.

I find linguistics/speech path SO fascinating -- and I know it goes the other way, too. I've had no fewer than four speech path and linguistics grad students in my choir, all champing at the bit to learn more "music speak" for what they were studying in school

No worries! I love giant comment convos and this is so interesting to me!

I probably shouldn't get started on the African clicks we do in our choir, then, huh? *g*

My organization has a long history of association with southern African music, with twin choirs in Namibia and South Africa. We've travelled there twice on tours and we have exchange members going back and forth every year now, so we've had a lot of access to Xhosa and Damara/Nama speakers, both languages having four different kinds of clicks in them. Many of our kids seem to pick up some of the "hard" (they mean difficult, but they also happen to be the clicks produced on the hard palate) clicks quite easily with a little practice. I'm not as good at the hard clicks myself but we do our best!

Here, have a sample track by our twin choir (who do clicks one gazillion times better than we do even though not all of them speak Damara/Nama): http://www.sendspace.com/file/zw43k3 (http://www.sendspace.com/file/zw43k3)

Haha, you get used to it being "normal" when you are living with an exchange singer and hear them talking on the phone in Damara all the time! It's always entertaining though!

Whenever I try to do clicks, there's what seems to be a long pause before I actually do my click, so it never sounds like "running" speech at all.

This is ALL of us at first, but you get faster when you simply have to stay in rhythm! I still get stymied when there are several different clicks in a single phrase. They all turn into the same one over and over.

This was also beautiful!! You can tell your choir tomorrow that a random stranger thinks you all sing very well! (Of course I have no *idea* what would be good or not apart from "it sounds good", but still.)

Yes -- or, rather, a qualified yes. They are Namibians, and there are 11 ethnic groups in that country. Only some of those groups are represented in this choir, and of those, only one or two groups have clicks in their mother tongue. (They all speak English and Afrikaans too.) But having grown up around many speakers of the "clicking" languages (Damara and Nama) almost all the singers are very good at doing the clicks themselves.

The other track I linked further down does have a native Damara speaker doing the prayer in the middle, if you want a comparison.

The clicks are CRAZY loud when you hear them in person. As children, the native speakers play tongue-twister games involving all four clicks -- we get our Damara exchange students to do the tongue twister for choirs in workshop and it never ceases to boggle the mind. Two of the clicks are quite easy for Westerners to reproduce and two are NOT.

I forgot to add -- the second kind of click, [//], is also a hard palate click but is produced much closer to the front of the mouth.

Did either of you ever read Silver City Risen (http://community.livejournal.com/sga_flashfic/479523.html): SGA as an opera in an artificial (well duh), Pegasus style. In this tradition, male roles are traditionally taken by castrati -- "MAJOR-CAPTAIN SHEPPARD, duke of Atlantis" is a soprano, while "RODNI MCKAY, chief sage of Atlantis" is the first major role for an entire male, a tenor.

Glad you liked! It made me grin a bit to realize I'd thoughtfully defined "tenor" and "bass/baritone" at the beginning of the thing and then launched into words like "oratorio" with zero explanation. It's good to know you found it interesting!

No problem! Glad you enjoyed!

No problem! And I'm glad you mentioned it too! It seemed to prompt some great discussion!