Singing songs in lower keys - good or bad for your voice???

kylevox1987

I'm curious about this...

If we take a song like Sweet Child o Mine.. where a lot of the high notes are head voice (reinforced falsetto in Axl's style)... is it a bad idea lowering the key of the song so that a lot of the high notes then end up being the top end of your chest voice, and maybe stretching that a little further, or is it safer to sing the song higher (in it's original key) so you're going into your head voice where you normally would, rather than stretching your chest voice to hit the high notes (if the song was a lower key).

Hope this makes sense - I guess what I'm saying is - is it more stressful and detrimental to the voice to lower the key of a song like Sweet Child O Mine and is it more stressful on the chest voice or is it all around healthier, less tiring on the vocals to not not have to go right up in your head voice like Axl does?

Hope you can help.

Chris82

I think some songs loose a lot when not sung in the original key, that said there are plenty of songs that sound fine in a lowered key. In the end it's perfectly fine to transpose your covers down if it's more comfortable for your voice.

kylevox1987

Yeah cool! I can sing Sweet Child O Mine fine it's just a thought of whether it would save my voice if I lowered the key to something. But then if I'm using chest more for the high notes would that in itself cause just as much stress on my voice as if I was singing the head voice notes on the original tuning.