Crowned “The Queen Of Soul”, Aretha Franklin is one of the best selling musical artists in history. Winner of 18 Grammys and named the Greatest Singer of All Time by Rolling Stone Magazine, Aretha Franklin has had an acclaimed and prolific career. But what is it about her that makes her voice stand above the rest? What makes Aretha Franklin great?
Technique
Tone & Registers
Most people think of Arethas’ tone as thick and weighty at the bottom with a powerful, piercing mixed voice, and this was undoubtedly her voice at its peak. But, although most people associate her with a particular tone, her voice changed a lot throughout the years. When Aretha first signed with Columbia Records at 18 years old, she had already had a fantastic career as a child singer. It is no wonder because her voice was already incredible and powerful beyond her years. Here is a clip of her, aged 14, playing the piano and singing a Gospel song called Precious Lord.
Her father, C.L. Franklin, was a renowned Baptist minister and civil rights activist, known as “the man with the Million Dollar voice”. And she was also brought up by Mahalia Jackson, one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century, who was part of developing and popularising gospel blues music. So, Aretha started singing with Mahalia. She also learned piano by ear with the King of Gospel, Reverend James Cleveland. Because of this background, she grew up surrounded by some of the greatest singers: Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Clara Ward and Jackie Wilson. By 12 years old, Aretha was already touring churches and, at 16, went on tour with Martin Luther King. This training and upbringing, I am sure, had a massive part in her technically sound and emotionally packed singing style.
As you can hear, at the start of her commercial career, in the early 60s, Aretha primarily used a robust, balanced and technically flawless mix with a consistent texture throughout, even on fast runs. Most singers have to grapple with a vocal break in this midrange, but at this point, for Aretha, it doesn’t matter what pitch she sings. Her voice has a seamless, consistent quality between the registers
When teaching singing, most people have inconsistencies throughout their range, but you get the odd person who can keep their tone throughout naturally. The only issue with these people is often they find it difficult to use different vocal textures and colours. This is not the case for Aretha. In the late 60s, Aretha moved to Atlantic Records and started producing some massive hits. At this point, she starts to combine more of the gospel nuances from her youth, resulting in an uplifting, powerful sound full of vocal textures and colours. She still has that wonderfully balanced mix that she can bring up even higher with even more power, warmth and resonance and is more playful with her tone. It is important to point out that Aretha had been smoking since age 13. If you listen carefully, you can hear a raspy edge in that tone, the early signs of damage from the smoking.
In the early 70s, she recorded, in my opinion, her best record - the Gospel album Amazing Grace. She is, of course, technically on point. But, there is something in her voice that goes beyond what can be explained.
As time goes on, into the late 70s and 80s, you can hear her voice has started to lose power, has a husky tone and lowers a lot. This is primarily down to her smoking. I did a video on What Happened to Miley Cyrus Voice, and it goes into more detail on what smoking can do. But in short, smoking will irritate the vocal cords, making them swell so they can't make a clean, powerful sound, and it affects breathing and stamina. You can hear it when you put these two clips of Say A Little Prayer side by side from 1970 to 1985, both in the tonal quality and the ad-libs she attempts.
However, this shows some more of Aretha’s genius. As her instrument fails her a little, she adapts her vocal style to accommodate and still give the same emotional impact. She lowers her songs in performances and revels in the lower range she has gained from the damage. Her loss of power means she leans more into vocal riffs and runs, making them more and more complex. As she loses her consistent tone and has more defined register breaks, she uses the textural differences for artistic effect. CLIP
In 1994 she gave up smoking to save her voice, and you can hear how she regains a little of her clarity and range. By giving up smoking, she won’t have been able to fix all of the damage. However, it will stop the voice from being constantly irritated and bring down some of the swelling in her vocal cords. In the next decade, she suffered many health issues. As before, Aretha managed to adapt her style to fit her voice's condition at any given point - this is a testament to musicality and technique. With that in mind, I thought I’d finish this section with that time at the 1998 Grammy Awards that Pavorotti was sick, and Aretha said she would cover and sing his song. Here is her singing Nessun Dorma.
Range
Throughout her career, Aretha had recorded and performed notes from G2 to D6. Although, because of the lowering of her voice, she probably had a range of just over three octaves at her peak. Most of these lower notes are from later in her career
Again the higher notes are primarily from her early years before any vocal damage. Aretha surprisingly doesn’t tend to use a pure head voice that much, tending to use it for short exclamations of joy.
One of the most impressive parts of Arethas voice is the ease, warmth and resonance she carries throughout a balanced and well-controlled mixed voice that, because it extends so high, she used instead of head voice. This ease means you have the feeling she is speaking to you even when she is belting. I can only think of one other singer who has anything even close to that mix. That is Jennifer Hudson, who unsurprisingly is playing her in an upcoming biopic of Aretha’s life. In the 70s, Aretha could extend that mixed voice with control up to a B5, a feat that is impossible for most singers.
Vowels
Aretha has some interesting techniques for using vowels—sometimes opening up the vowel towards an ah. Listen to the vowel she uses in Son Of A Preacher Man on words ‘son’ and ‘along’. They are more towards ‘san’ and ‘alang”. This means she maintains her warm tone instead of closing and shutting off the sound. CLIP
Although her vowels are open and she doesn’t tend to sing on the consonant, she often opts for vowels with a wider month shape than most people, especially on an ee vowel. So, for example, in ‘Chain of Fools’, Aretha sings ‘chay-een’ rather than the more common ‘cheeen’ with an open eh sound.
That wider ee sound boosts higher frequencies. For a voice like mine, it can sound a little piercing, especially up high. But for Aretha, who already has that warm tone, it makes it more direct. This is also true for nasality, Aretha often used nasality in a way that most singers couldn’t get away with, but because of the depth of her tone, it works in her voice. I am a huge believer that singing isn't one technique fits all. Aretha backs that up by using vowel choices that work for her instrument.
Breath and Attack
Aretha also has fantastic technique in how she attacks notes, and this has been one of the factors that have kept her singing through vocal injury. She has excellent breath support and doesn’t overly push, using a consistent airstream with a relaxed body. This ease of breathing means that even though the sound is big, she can control each note. She consistently uses something called a simultaneous onset, which is basically a fancy way of saying she starts the sound and breath at the same time. This sounds like it should be easy, but when singing these bigger songs, many people will do things like a glottal stop or a breathy onset, which can be pretty harsh on the voice if overused. To demonstrate how she managed to keep her voice going let's have a listen to that iconic performance for the Obamas in 2015 when she was 73 years old!
Further Technique
Aretha's musical understanding was incredibly nuanced and accurate. Her rhythm and pitch were always spot on. Her power defines her voice, and she shows us that pushing out more breath or squeezing our muscles doesn’t make more sound. For the most part, her breath is relaxed and easy, contributing to creating a resonant voice. So instead of pushing, she is shaping her vocal tract to boost the frequencies that she wants. She might have just had a lot of space in her mouth and pharynx but also would have had to adapt to keep that resonance and consistency throughout her range. There are many ways to do this, by lowering or raising the larynx, raising or lowering the soft palate, opening our mouth, changing the mouth shape and moving our tongue. Each of these movements will have a relative tonal change and stability change in each person’s voice. Aretha could control each of these elements quickly and easily and was incredibly intuitive about shaping to make the most expressive sound. CLIP
Emotional Expression
Aretha Franklin had excellent technique, but it was how she used that technique that connected with people. If her mentor Mahalia Jackson helped develop gospel music, Aretha brought these gospel nuances to a broader secular audience - combining gospel with other popular music styles, whether soul or blues and later disco and rock. So let’s look at what these gospel techniques are and how she used them to make her unique sound.
Melisma
Melismatic singing is a fast-moving group of notes sung on one syllable. Rather than scatting where the consonants break it up, it’s all on a vowel. Melisma is used in all types of music across the world throughout history using lots of different scales. Gospel music took this idea and combined it with jazz and blues scales and syncopated rhythms. Rather than sticking to set written musical structures, it became an improvisational method of singing and embodied freedom and expression. Aretha was one of the people that popularised this sound. In the 60s and 70s, Aretha riffs and runs were smooth and clean and generally stuck to one texture and vowel sound. As she moves into the 80s, she uses melisma more and more adding unusual gospel-based scales, textures and moving vowel sounds.
Piano
Aretha was a fantastic piano player. An instrument that plays a central role, along with the Hammond organ, in the sound of Gospel music. She learned by ear with Reverend James Cleveland. Rather than relying on a band, Aretha played the piano at live performances for her whole career. She could change tempo and dynamics at will to compliment her vocal performances. Her performances were not just about the voice but the music as a whole.
Dynamics and Timing
Although Aretha is known for her powerful singing, it would not be so powerful if she did not know when to use dynamics and tempo. In current music, people tend to keep to an even tempo throughout a song and a compressed volume level. Aretha pushed and pulled the speed and dramatically shifted dynamics to take the listener on an emotional journey. You can hear her do this in Son Of A Preacher Man. In the original Dusty Springfield version, the dynamics and tempo stay pretty much the same throughout. Aretha’s brings the final pre-chorus down in tempo and volume, This not only echoes the backing that gospel musicians would use for preachers in church but makes a dynamic valley that builds into the final chorus.
In gospel music, the final chorus is also often repeated, creating a memorable hook with a call and response that people can join in with. This is called the vamp or the special chorus and is also something that preachers would use in sermons. Aretha also uses this in her cover.
Social Context
Arethas songs and voice have become so woven into culture that it is impossible to imagine our world without them. I genuinely believe that without her, our music today would not be as rich, and society would be even less open and free. I’ve talked through some of the techniques that she used, but when you hear Aretha sing, her voice uplifts and empowers in a way that transcends anything you can explain. Unsurprisingly, her music became an anthem for civil rights and feminism. Nothing embodies that more thoroughly than the song “Respect”. The original version of ‘Respect’ was written and performed by Otis Redding. It tells the story of a man demanding respect when he gets home from work. Aretha transforms the song to acknowledge the lack of respect many women, especially black women, unfortunately, face daily. It moves from a plea for an easy life in a personal relationship to a demand for change in the entire world. It shows a woman able to own her own life, including “her money”, showing she was not just self-sufficient but able to support a partner. Unashambley proclaiming this still feels forward-thinking today.
Franklin wrote in her autobiography.
“So many people identified with and related to ‘Respect’. It was the need of a nation, the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect. It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.”
And Aretha, a black woman born from the civil right movement, didn’t just demand respect. She got it.. This empowered many other people to demand the respect they deserved as well. We are still fighting some of these battles today, but when I listen to Aretha’s music, I know that as Aretha and her idol Sam Cooke said, “a change is gonna come”.
