All About That Tenor: Why Men Don’t Sing in Worship

CCM is a little higher than a standard baritone, but.....I'm sorry....it's not a true tenor. I regularly pick out a higher harmony than CCM songs at my church, and my range is nowhere near that of a true tenor like Pavarotti.

That noted, one of the great bits of genius by Bing Crosby was to bring popular music into the baritone range. That noted, even Crosby's work is a bit high for a lot of people who seem to (like I used to) try to mumble through a bass line.

Not quite sure what the deal is, but sometimes it almost seems like there is a fear of being too exuberant. Hence the men especially just kind of mumble along as well as they can. Had an interesting experience as well when I was singing with a young man who wanted to learn to sing the tenor part--most young men's voices change into a medium/high bass and then rebound into a baritone or higher--and I just told him to relax and have fun. A week later, he was hitting the highest notes in the song we were singing, and doing it well.

So my overall thought is that most men, if they bother to sing, have a much greater range than they give themselves credit for.

I think the article has at least a kernel of truth, though I haven’t really analyzed the ranges of many CCM songs.

>>So my overall thought is that most men, if they bother to sing, have a much greater range than they give themselves credit for.<<

I’m sure that’s true, but the way even hymnals are keyed these days, the men’s parts do seem higher than they were years ago. (For reference, I sing 2nd-tenor/Baritone when singing with a choir.) I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard men in the congregation attempt to sing the melody line an octave below where the song leader is singing it as soon as they realize that they can’t hit all the notes at the higher end of the scale after the first verse/chorus. Or at least they can’t/won’t sing where the song leader is singing it because it would make them feel self-conscious (may be related to what you said about the “fear of being too exuberant”).

There are probably many reasons men sing less these days than it seems they did when I was a kid in church. However, having songs in a comfortable range for men to sing certainly doesn’t hurt.

CCM is a little higher than a standard baritone, but…..I’m sorry….it’s not a true tenor. I regularly pick out a higher harmony than CCM songs at my church, and my range is nowhere near that of a true tenor

My sample is probably too small to generalize from, and I’m not really sure any of what we sing qualifies as ‘CCM.’ Some would say it does, since a lot is written in the last five years—and chord progressions and harmonies are pretty late 20th/21st century.

So we sing a lot of Getty, Townend, Kauflin, Merker some other Sov Grace and City Alight songs.

The City Alight songs we sing are definitely written for lower ranges. They often take what is basically a 19th Century style melody and harmony, speed it up and lower it a 3rd or a 4th—too low for there to be a normal alto part because the melody is essentially in the high alto range. For men, those are very much baritone/low tenor (bass, baritone, and tenor ranges all overlap). The ones we’ve sung from CA have also been melodically simple—easy to sing, easy to learn, pretty easy to pick up without sheet music in front of you.

But, disclaimer: I only know the maybe half a dozen City Alight songs we’ve sung, and I can’t say with confidence that they are representative of the whole.

The Getty/Townend/Kauflin/Merker neck of the woods… This work is more hymn style, is often more difficult to sing, hitting those Eb’s and D’s above middle C on a pretty regular basis… but they are usually harmonically rich. I really love almost all of them, and so the vocal range discomfort is worth it.

From what I’ve read, D or Eb above middle C (if I have it straight, D4 and Eb4) are not out of range for most baritones. Of course, if the whole melody is up there, call the tenors!

So, in my limited experience, the “CCM” melodies reach into tenor territory but are mostly in the baritone range. … but again, is what we sing at our church even CCM? Mostly not, probably.

This is worth nothing, though: many of the old hymns are way higher than the average newer hymn-style and CCM songs I’m aware of!