Home On The Range

If you think this post is going to be about that cloudless land where deer and antelope play, you're about to hear your first discouraging word.  I'm talking about a vocal range.  The blessing and curse of every vocalist.  If you're a tenor, you're happy because everybody thinks you're amazing for those notes you hit...And so you are!  If you're a bass, you're automatically a cool dude and everybody wants to hear you sing.

However, I am a baritone.  Yes.  That sorry, middle-of-the-road range that says I'm not man enough to sing tenor, and not cool enough to sing bass, but smart enough to dabble in both.  We baritones get that leftover harmony too low for the tenors and too high for the basses, but not important enough for the lead singers.  At least we're needed!  A group would sound pretty shabby without us baritones! Or would they? Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs both have recorded material featuring tenor, lead, and bass vocals with no baritone, and the result was award winning!  Sheesh. Makes a man feel unwanted.

But take heart! As long as there are quartets (literally 4 people) there will be a need for baritones.  Somebody has to sing those left over notes!  We baritones can actually be pretty thankful our voices settled right in between everybody else's.  Now we have become indispensable.  You might say without us, quartets couldn't exist!

All you baritones like me must feel pretty special now, don't you? What can you expect?  We're the most important guys on the team.  If I was y'all I'd ask for a raise.