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What is the rarest voice type female?

Contraltos Check these ladies out. Contraltos are arguably the rarest of female voice types and they possess a tone so dark they often give the men a run for their money. If mezzos are like clarinets, contraltos are more like bass clarinets.

kennedy-center.org - Understanding Different Voice Types - Kennedy Center

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You might think that when it comes to voice types, everything depends on vocal range. Yet the actual notes a person can sing are only a small part of what determines their vocal category. A huge deciding factor is a concept known as timbre, or tonal quality. Timbre is entirely different from a musical note: A note (or pitch) refers to the place a single sound falls on a scale, while timbre is the phenomenon of the specific color or texture of a voice. Right about now, you’re thinking, “Color? Texture? How can those ideas apply to sound? I can’t see a voice and I certainly can’t touch one.” And you’re right–––you can’t. Voices are subtle and invisible things. Even the experts agree there is very little “science” involved when deciding what makes one voice so different from the next. It’s almost like asking someone to explain how one cloud differs from another; that is, it’s nearly impossible. So what do vocal professionals do when they have to describe something as seemingly indescribable as the human voice? They call on their other senses for help. Singers, voice teachers, and other vocal scholars like to fall back on sight, touch, and taste when discussing specific voices. Vocal professionals will often “borrow” words associated with these senses so they can expand the vocabulary used to define the qualities that make a voice special and unique. This is where phrases like “color” and “texture” come in. For example: Want to tell a friend about an extraordinarily deep voice but can’t find the right words? Try these metaphors on for size:

“That voice makes me think of the color purple.” (eyesight)

“That voice is like velvet.” (touch/texture)

“That voice reminds me of hot chocolate.” (taste)

Comparisons like these will help get the point across because the brain is pretty good at translating one sensation into another. Your friend may never have heard this particular deep voice, but they’ll get the meaning that the taste of hot chocolate is like a rich, soothing, and beautiful sound. The timbre of a voice along with its musical range, its tessitura (pronounced tes-see-TOO-rah, meaning the span of notes where the voice feels most comfortable), and its flexibility (how fast the voice can move from note to note) combine to form a vocal category. The standard vocal categories in Western music are:

Soprano

Mezzo-Soprano

Contralto

Tenor

Baritone

Bass

The following is a basic overview of each of these voice types and a look at how they function in modern and classical music. As you read on, though, keep in mind that these voice categories are merely guidelines. There are many variations within each voice group, so much so that vocal scholars often have trouble agreeing on where one voice category begins and another ends. Get to know these voice types, but don’t get too attached––there’s no “ultimate” example of a voice category. No soprano is more soprano-y than another.

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What female singer holds the longest note?

The longest same-pitch vocal note in a song that made the US Billboard Hot 100 chart was “Dim All the Lights”, from Donna Summer's (US) seventh studio album Bad Girls, which contains a note lasting 16 seconds.

guinnessworldrecords.com - Longest-held vocal note in a US hit single (female artist)

The longest same-pitch vocal note in a song that made the US Billboard Hot 100 chart was “Dim All the Lights”, from Donna Summer’s (US) seventh studio album Bad Girls, which contains a note lasting 16 seconds. The disco track peaked at No.2 on 10-17 November 1979. Summer’s enduring note begins 46 seconds into the track, on the word “up”. It beats a note in another Summer classic, which, remarkably, hovered just below “Dim All the Lights” in the Hot 100 Top 10 on 10-17 November 1979: “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”, featuring the queen of long-held vocal notes, Barbra Streisand, contains a 14-second lung-buster on the word “tear”, from 1 minute 43 seconds. By 24 November 1979, “No More Tears” had risen to the top of the chart – the longest-held vocal note in a US No.1 single (female artist), beating Streisand’s “Woman in Love” (11 seconds) in 1980. Melba Moore’s 36-second note at the end of “The Other Side of the Rainbow”, the title track of her 1982 studio album, is the longest studio-recorded note by a female singer and the longest-held single note on an album track, but it was never a Hot 100 hit in the US. “Dim All the Lights” stalled at No.2 behind the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight” on 10 November 1979 and “Still” by the Commodores on 17 November.

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