by fretlessboy on Fri Aug 14, 2009 4:59 pm
Well, my own feeling is that its a purely stylistic change. The reasons I feel this are that firstly, the live material from the changeover period shows him singing comfortably in BOTH styles.
Secondly, a tonsil operation doesnt go anywhere near the old vocal chords ( been there!).
For a singer who had the range David had at the time, singing higher is actually easier than singing in the deep tones of say ,Visions Of China.
How so? Think about it this way. He only becomes more unique when he starts singing low - who else was doing it? So therefore his apprenticeship if you like was spent singing higher like everyone else. He was used to it. And none of that stuff is particularly high anyway - its not Back In Black by a long chalk.
People often make that mistake. They hear someone singing higher than they can and they think " That's so HIGH..it must be straining his voice". But that might not be true. If you can sing high for 2 albums and the associated tours, you're probably well able to do so.
The lower register however...at first you have very limited power there. there are physical reasons for this. The lower the note, the more air you need to move to get it out there. Thats why bass speaker cabinets are bigger than guitar speakers. They move more air.
If he'd been singing high for his career up to that point, the low stuff would've been harder to sing just because the muscles needed to sing would not have been used to working in that region. And its also why he is so adept at it now. The muscles have developed significantly that allow singing low.
Hope that makes some sense.