I am a tenor who is learning classical mandolin on my own. Mostly a beginner except I have a little rock bass and guitar knowledge.

I am looking for vocal pieces that have mandolin accompaniment. I know Deh, vieni ala finestra from Don Giovanni but it is really not in my range. It seems to me there ought to be a bunch of serenades and aubades that match this description.

Bonus points for French songs because that's what I like to sing. Even more bonus if it has fun and funny or even goofy characterization like Schubert's An Die Laute.

I am a tenor who is learning classical mandolin on my own. Mostly a beginner except I have a little rock bass and guitar knowledge.

I am looking for vocal pieces that have mandolin accompaniment. I know Deh, vieni ala finestra from Don Giovanni but it is really not in my range. It seems to me there ought to be a bunch of serenades and aubades that match this description.

Bonus points for French songs because that's what I like to sing. Even more bonus if it has fun and funny or even goofy characterization like Schubert's An Die Laute.

My voice works best at high volume / resonance when I sing classical music. If I am using full control, I am generally on the louder side (not shouting) and usually have less tension in the neck and shoulders.

However, I do not have much opportunity to practice at full voice because either members if my family do not like it or I do not want to expose the public to my half-prepared songs.

Two questions:

Can I continue to practice and develop my high tessitura songs at lower resonance or soft falsetto even if there are some fold problems? I know when to stop, usually. If the answer is no then I will probably just 'sing' using lip trills or a straw. However, I do often need to figure out the diction at some point.

What strategies do you have to find practice time and space that does not bother other people?

Thanks for your help!

Reddit markdown does not support abc notation as far as I can tell. ABC is code that will render (and even play) musical notation with the right converter. If you want to hear and see the musical notation, you can use the following ABC Converter.

Music people will refer to a range of concepts, sometimes assuming others know they mean. I just thought I would share my own explanations of these terms. Perhaps they can be polished in the future.

Tessitura

Literally "weaving" or "webbing" from the Italian, I hear it used two ways:

1. The range of notes that are predominantly used inside a song.
2. A range where particular voices find singing easy to do.

        X: 1
        T: An die Laute Sample
        M: 6/8
        L: 1/8
        K: D
        | A2 A A>B A | A d f2 d|
        w: lei-ser, lei--ser klein-ne Lau-te

In this above passage, even those there is a reasonably high F, the tessitura is around an A. If you go to most church hymnals, the tessitura will be around an A or a B with notes rarely exceeding E. That's because most voices can figure out how to sing in this range without straining.

Passaggio

"The Bridge" - there is a point in the vocal chords where a person needs to switch their style to be able to comfortably sing. In each case, the approach feels quite different and so switching back and forth, or worse landing on the border where the shift happens is truly challenging and requires practice.

If you sing a siren sound from low to high, there's a point where your voice breaks. What is happening is that your vocal chords are going from a thick contact to a more thin contact. In order to get a nice sound on either side of that break, you need to practice changing from one to the other. It's also useful to know where that break happens because songs that have a tessitura around your break are going to be super challenging and you will need a strategy to handle being on the edge between your two voices.

If a song seems high and the song is not reaching out beyond the staff, it is probably that you are singing near the passagio for your voice.

Figuring out passaggio can be a big help to improve resonance in all music styles, but opera is where it is pretty much necessary. Most people talk about this problem in terms of lifting the soft palate, blending, support and so on.

The bottom line, however, is that you will have to get used to two "feelings" when you sing and will have to decide which ones to follow.

Notes with numbers on them

These are dumb, but used so often that they might as well be explained. The first C on a piano is C1. Except the first key on the piano is A, so we call that A0, because how dare we think that a minor mode should be the primary unit of measurement. I digress. C1 sits at a sound frequency of around 32.7. No one sings that low.

The next octave is C2 and still no one sings that low. An occassional bass can go as low as E2, one line below the bottom of the staff on the bass clef. G2 is more common.

The highest notes are soprano who can reach as high as an A5. This can be confusing for tenors who should be using the bass clef for their singing, but often end up doing treble clef but an octave lower. Their A4 (a usually challenging high note) is in the same spot as the soprano A5 in most pieces, whereas the famous C5 (two notes above that) is the near top of the range.

Meanwhile Altos go as high as D5, which is lower than A5 (WHY?) and as low as F3.

Finding your Voice

Either you are going to sing classical art song, choral music or opera, or you really should not care other than to say that you have a low, medium or high voice. If you are a woman, you are going to be low, medium or high for a woman. If you are a man, you are going to be low, medium or high for a man. If you are transgender, there can be significant changes depending on the transitions you are going through, in which case, seeing a coach becomes more a necessity.

Finding your voice on your own is super challenging because it is hard to hear which octave you are in, where exactly the passagio point sits, and what counts as tessitura given that people inevitably have a bias towards head or chest voice.

Whatever voice you are, a big mistake occurs when someone hears that Freddie Mercury had a vocal range of four octaves and then spends their time squeaking out F6s and growling out low F2s. Despite all of this, Mercury was a baritone for the most part, which is not really high pitched at all.

It's not a particular vocal range that determines good singing. It's singing, using all the tools at your disposal to bring out a good sound, and interesting story. It's a shame that song competitions make it seem like singing is an olympic sport.