Yodel species: a typology of falsetto effects in popular music vocal styles

Abstract

This article presents a classification system for falsetto vocal effects commonly occurring in popular music. This typology developed from my research into yodelling and related vocal phenomena, which took as its starting point an analysis of yodel types prominent in pre-World War II hillbilly music. The intention in this brief summary is to provide a definition of yodelling that is meaningful and useful for the description of popular music vocal styles and in the process to problematise some of the ways yodelling effects have been conceptualised previously. Along the way I indicate a number of mood categories associated with them, but an aspect of my thesis concerns the ideological implications of the use of such techniques: that the audible break in the vocal register while singing has become a significant marker separating the aesthetics of the ‘popular’ from that of the ‘classical’.

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