Yodeling

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(Redirected from Yodelling)

Yodeling (or yodelling) is a form of singing that involves singing an extended note which rapidly and repeatedly changes in pitch from from the vocal chest register (or "chest voice") to the head register (or "head voice"), making a high-low-high-low sound. This vocal technique is found in many cultures throughout the world.

In Swiss folk music, it was probably developed in the Swiss Alps as a method of communication between mountain peaks, and it later became a part of the traditional music of the region. In Persian and Azeri Classical musics, singers frequently use tahrir, a yodeling technique that oscillates on neighbor tones. In Georgian traditional music, yodelling takes the form of krimanchuli technique. In Central Africa, Pygmy singers use yodels within their elaborate polyphonic singing. Yodeling is often used in American bluegrass and country music.

1 Technique
2 Examples
3 Miscellany
4 See also
5 External links

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Technique

All (human) voices are usually thought of as having at least two distinct vocal "registers", called the head and chest voices, which result from different ways that the tone is produced by the human body. Most people can sing tones within a certain range of relatively lower pitch well in their chest voices, and then a certain range of relatively higher pitch in their head voices. There is often a gap between these ranges, especially in inexperienced or untrained singers. Experienced singers, who often have control of their voices to the point where these ranges overlap, can switch between them easily to produce high-quality tones in either. Yodelling is one of the most developed uses of this technique, wherein a singer will switch between these registers several times within the same note, at a high volume. Going back and forth over this "voice break" repeatedly produces one of the most distinctive types of sounds in music.

For example, in the famous example syllable "Yodl - Ay - EEE - Ooooo", the "EEE" is sung in the head voice, while all other syllables are in the chest voice.

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Examples

Some good examples of Alpine yodeling can be heard in the songs of Franzl Lang, Stefanie Hertel, Zillertaler Schürzenjäger, Ursprung Buam and Mary Schneider.
Examples of country/western yodeling can be heard by Kerry Christensen, Elton Britt, Wilf Carter, Yodelin' Slim Clark, Slim Whitman and Patsy Montana. The Band used yodeling on Up On Cripple Creek. The most notable country and western yodeler was pioneer star Jimmie Rodgers, who recorded more than a dozen songs under the title "Blue Yodel" with an appended number. Gene Autry was another country-style yodeler. Recently, Texan Don Walser has achieved the most recognition and commercial success of any country yodeler.
Yodeling is less often seen in pop music and rock, probably because there is not much of an accompanying tradition of its use. One of the most famous examples of yodeling in popular music is "Hocus Pocus" by the Dutch rock group Focus. International pop star Jewel is another example - she can yodel, and while she does not truly yodel in her commercial music, her proficiency at it contributes to her vocal style, which features nearly instantaneous transitions between her head voice and chest voice.
Soul singer Aaron Neville was inspired by Gene Autry's yodelling to develop his unusual vibrato singing style.
Kishore Kumar, the Indian singer, yodelled in some of his songs. He is considered to be the best yodeller in Hindi cinema.

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Miscellany

"Appenzeller" and "Bravourjodler" are yodeling standards which are performed by many different singers.

The best places for Alpine-style yodelling are those with an echo. They include lakes, rocky gorges, anywhere with a distant rock face, the outdoor areas between office buildings, in a canoe next to a rocky shoreline, or down a long hallway, and best of all, a mountain range.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word yodel is derived from a German word jodeln (originally Bavarian) meaning "to utter the syllable jo".

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