Please Help: New to singing barritone

[Baritone]

I’m 28, and I am a songwriter/guitarist, I want to be a singer (I will be a singer.) For as long as I remember I thought I was a tenor. I could hit the notes but not very well at a higher volume and was very quiet when I would do open mics. So I decided to get some lessons and to my surprise I’ve been doing it all wrong. I had no idea I was a baritone and I was trying to force myself to sing tenor. Does anyone have any advice to work on my baritone singing? I feel as if I have to rewrite some songs and have to learn to sing in that range. I still find myself trying to go too high because of habit but it sounds awful.:robothappy: Any advice is appreciated. 

[staticsound]

My advice would be to definitely write songs that are in your range. But on another note, don't pigeonhole yourself into thinking you can only sing in the baritone range. With the right teacher and technique, you can sing well into the tenor range.

 

The baritone and tenor range do overlap...

 

[Masklin]

 

Yeah don't impose imaginary limits on your voice. It won't help you.

 

But it is true that there is a certain range within which you sound your best - if you believe that that range is more or less equal to the canonical baritone then I suggest you keep to songs that are say... 3-5 seminotes below the average radio song (sung by a male). Female songs you could probably just drop an octave, depending slightly on the singer.

 

For inspiration, you could try Josh Turner, Randy Travis, Cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen (when he was young), Bob Dylan, etc.

 

When you sing around what you feel is low, try not to think of it as low - sing it as you would a high note. If you don't, you risk changing your timbre in a way that makes you lose clarity and sound a bit weird.

 

Good luck!

[RobertHouse]

Many artists have made a great career out of singing in lower ranges. Think of how big Ian Anderson got with his low range singing with Jethro Tull. 

That said I will agree with the others above. Look for a classical singing teacher and learn the techniques to resonate your voice and you may be surprised at how high you might get. I started singing in my chest voice and sang parts like Eponine in Les Mis. After finding the right teacher I have sung songs up to a D6 recently. There are a lot of so called teachers out there that arn't very good. Be sure to search a bit and not settle for the first one.