Do you ever have to jump an octave while singing?

[Kyle76]

Do you sing any songs whose range you can't handle without jumping up or down an octave at different spots?

I have jumped octaves for various harmony parts but never to make the song fit my voice while singing lead, no.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Kyle76

Do you sing any songs whose range you can't handle without jumping up or down an octave at different spots?

That would mean the range of the song is greater than my own range.
I would simply not attempt a song like that!
I don't exactly have a great range myself - I'd hardly even call myself a "singer" - but I can cover around an octave and a half. Very few songs have a bigger range than that, although for any that are bigger than an octave that obviously narrows the range of keys I could sing them in.

IOW, if I found a song whose total range was less than mine, but part of it went higher than I could manage, I'd simply change the key to bring its range within mine. There might be the odd occasion where an entire section could be transposed by an octave, but for me it would depend on the effect of that.

A well known example is Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah, where he raised the verse by an octave.
I.e., both of them sang it in C, but JB sang the verse an octave higher than LC, while both of them sang the chorus in the same register.
IOW, JB - who was a tenor, while LC is a bass - chose not to find a key where he could raise his voice for the chorus like LC did. Instead he chose the same key, and transposed the verse up an octave.

HALLELUJAH IN C MAJOR
LEONARD COHEN
VERSE RANGE - CHORUS RANGE - ENTIRE RANGE
------------|--------------|----------------
------------|--------------|---------------
------------|------2-------|-------2--------
------2-----|--------------|-----------------
------------|-3------------|------------------
-0----------|--------------|--0---------------
 E____E       C____A          E____A (octave + 4th)
.
JEFF BUCKLEY
VERSE RANGE - CHORUS RANGE - ENTIRE RANGE
------0-----|---------(0)--|-------0---------
------------|--------------|----------------
------------|------2-------|----------------
-2----------|--------------|----------------
------------|-3------------|--3--------------
------------|--------------|----------------
 E____E       C____A(__E)     C____E (octave + 3rd)

JB improvises on the last chorus, singing up as far as top E (maybe even the F above), but in general he comes down to that low C at the end.

This has an interesting effect, in that in Leonard Cohen's original the chorus has more emotional intensity, as he pushes his voice upwards -while in Buckley's it's the verses that have intensity, and the chorus is like a calmer resolution of that intensity. So the song acquires a different mood - and works well both ways, of course.

[Davis Webb]

Originally Posted by Kyle76

Do you sing any songs whose range you can't handle without jumping up or down an octave at different spots?

Yes, it happens a lot and I can not do it most of the time so I stay in the same octave but hook back into the next passage as close to key as possible to bring them home.

In "somewhere over the rainbow", that's a jump "Some...UP....Where"....now that kills me, unless I do "Some...Where" on the same note! Then I can hit "way up high"....in key usually. So those tricks can work great.

Tom Waits did a lot of that kind of stuff. Its either that or train with a vocal coach and push the key down or up til you can manage the jump. But its not always possible for the note to sound good, even if you hit it an octave up. Hit what sounds best, not what matches the original melody!

[M19]

"Never Comes the Day." I can't make the jump up on the "If only you knew..." section, so I drop on octave.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

Yes, it happens a lot and I can not do it most of the time so I stay in the same octave but hook back into the next passage as close to key as possible to bring them home.

In "somewhere over the rainbow", that's a jump "Some...UP....Where"....now that kills me, unless I do "Some...Where" on the same note!

You're in good company - that's what Eva Cassidy did. So I guess if she can get away with it...

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

Then I can hit "way up high"....in key usually. So those tricks can work great.
Tom Waits did a lot of that kind of stuff. Its either that or train with a vocal coach and push the key down or up til you can manage the jump. But its not always possible for the note to sound good, even if you hit it an octave up. Hit what sounds best, not what matches the original melody!

Yes - or don't choose songs that hard in the first place!

The range of Over The Rainbow is not actually that wide: an octave and a 3rd, fairly average.
That second note is the highest in the whole song, and the lowest is on "there's". So the trick is find a key where you can hit both. Start with "Some..." towards the bottom of your range.

[pf400]

John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads takes me out of my range for parts of some lines eg. "to the place I belong" and to avoid croaking I have to dip down an octave. To avoid that I have to sing in the lower range and I sound boring. Capo-ing doesn't help. I'll have to transpose it down to A I guess...

[BFD]

"Desperado" is one song I can think of that I do that.

[RedJoker]

I play / sing "Iris" by the GooGoo Dolls and there is an octave jump in that song. I had to transpose it to where I can hit all the notes in both octave parts of the song. I also sing "Colder Weather" by Zac Brown Band and there are a couple of notes that I can't hit but if I sing them in the same key, but lower notes, I can get away with it.

[merlin666]

I have to admit that I do it quite frequently, mainly because my GF says it hurts her ear when I go falsetto. Typical example is "With a little help from my friends" where it goes "... do you need anybody ...".