Lovin’ You — Minnie Riperton
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Lovin’ You — by Minnie Riperton
Amazing Moments in Timbre | Timbre and Orchestration Writings
by Michelle Sulaiman
Various speech pathologists and vocal pedagogists categorized four distinctive vocal registers based on the various vibratory patterns produced by the vocal cords. These four categories—vocal fry, modal register, middle register, head register, falsetto, and the whistle register—do not simply have different pitch ranges as the term “vocal registers” implies; they also have unique timbres (Kiesgen, 2006).
In regard to the use of the whistle register, while some opera arias demand singers to produce extremely high pitches—imagine Queen of the Night’s aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute—there are very few operatic works in the standard repertoire that require the whistle register. In the realm of popular music, few singers sing consistently in the whistle register. Several vocalists, however, set themselves apart with their use of this characteristic register. Mariah Carey, for instance, repeatedly uses whistle registers in her songs. In Christmas 2020, she released a remix of “Oh Santa” with Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande, where Carey harmonizes with Grande in using this vocal technique. Minnie Riperton (1947-1979) is the first popular singer who became commercially known for her prowess of the whistle register. Here, I will focus on Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” specifically her performance in Burt Sugarman’s “The Midnight Special Live,” recorded in 1975.
The 1975 live version of Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” sets itself apart from her 1974 album, Perfect Angel, not just because of its extended length but also because of Riperton’s whistle register ad-lib in the middle of modal register singing. In this four-minute performance, Riperton sang in her distinctive whistle register four times: once during the verse (0:50-52) and three times during the bridge. Her choice of using the whistle register for the words “more than” heightened the emotion of the poetic persona through the high pitch and an inhuman, ethereal sonic quality. This instance showcases how Riperton exceeds the limitations of human body through pitch and timbre, which mirrors the romantic ecstasy of the text (“Lovin' you is more than just a dream come true”).
While Riperton’s use of the whistle register may seem very natural due to her ease of switching between the modal and whistle register, the latter’s timbre can be characterized as ethereal. There seems to be a precedent on how certain pitches —and their respective timbres when sung — are used to create specific effects in a composition (such as A6, which Riperton sang at the last moment of the performance) and have a quality that does not sound human-like.
Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880), for instance, used vocal acrobatics along with extreme vocal register in his opera Les Contes d’Hoffman (1880), demanding the singer to reach Eb6, and in which a G6 and Ab6 are sometimes interpolated in the repeat, for Olympia’s aria, “Les oiseaux dans la charmille.” In this aria, Olympia is an automaton—a machine, and this characteristic must be heard through the soprano’s performance and through the resulting timbres of the high tessituras. The prowess to sing such high pitch is an anomaly—an outlier.
Riperton’s clear, pure timbre in these moments in Lovin’ You is also an important factor in this ethereal quality. While her modal register is breathy and airy (a quality connected to “pillow talk”), the “more than” sound eliminates all inharmonic breathiness. What makes Riperton’s timbre so ethereal? First, she enunciates her words clearly in the whistle register. While Carey and Grande (and Christina Aguilera) use the whistle register with ease, they always use it with vowels (vocables) and not in the middle of a verse. Second, Riperton switches between modal and whistle register in a split second. Third, her voice’s sine-tone-like timbres are very pure (not noisy). Finally, she also does not employ much vibrato in this high passage, which showcases her ability to maintain these high pitches with strong breath control; this lack of vibrato induces a disembodied sensation in the listener. These performative and perceptual qualities of the vocal timbre in the whistle register set Riperton’s apart from other singers using the similar technique and register.
