Ayu's Singing Voice..REAL?
 

Do you think she's holding out her 'real' voice? I was listening to some of her earlier songs & she sounds normal. (Not that she didn't sound normal to begin with but...) Do you think she over-nasals some songs? There are songs like 'YOU' where there is hardly any sweaks & there is 'Trust' where there is quite a few. So I don't know. Is she singing w/ her real voice or trying too hard to hit high notes so she sweaks to sound better? What do you think?

(Hope this makes sence...)

hmm.. i think it's pretty real... *shrugs*

Well I wouldn't say trying to hit high notes would be part of her fake voice... but it may be a bit unnatural for her, yes. She's no Mariah.

I think her voice is naturally like that...and it naturally sometimes squeaks...sometimes doesn't.

i think it's her real voice

It is her voice.. I think it just matured with the passing of time.

of course it's her voice! Oo; why would she purpously squeak..

In recordings, it's probably unintentional when she squeaks because the high notes aren't really that natural for her.

During lives, though, I think she sometimes uses the squeakiness on purpose because people think it's cute or whatever.

O_? It's real unless proven otherwise. Sure the sound may get to sounded different, due to too many different reasons that I'm too lazy to jog down.

Duh that it is her real voice. Trying to hit higher notes doesn't mean to you are not singing for real. Yes, sometime she "over-nasals" some songs, but i guess it's to sound 'cute' or something. Lots of Japanese girls talks like that. I think it's cute over there talking like that. Ayu tried to do it on a song? I don't know. But she's singing for real.

i sure is her real voice

Hey where are you from?

It should be her real voice. Maybe she just got really emotional during that song and squeaked.

most of Ayu older song she squeakes mabye she cant hit the high notes.

sure...if u want to know the better quality u can listen to memorial address.. ^^ she sang so great there

Yeah, i think i know what spacelion is talking about and I DO NOT think Ayu is using her own voice hence the inconsistencies in her live performances. Usually when she sings at concerts she does sometimes use her true deeper voice but a lot of times she artificially inflates it.

No ones voice is that naturally nasal and high. Just compare her talking voice to her singing.

with singing, you have to use falsettos often. it is her voice, but it sounds different to her speaking voice.

OK. But that doesn't make it not her real voice does it? I can make sorts of different tones while speaking the same words/phrases. But I'm sure that they're my real voices.

Choose the word to use here. Should had asked if Ayu is trying too hard and made the song sounded very differently from her usual singing style.

I think it's a little bit of what everyone's said, personally. I think at first she may have put on a little squeakiness in order to please (I still to this day can't listen to her original version of "Depend on you" without cringing), since her Japanese fans are often saying how that sounds cute.

But then, listening to her now, you can still tell her voice is kind of high by nature, but it's not squeaky as much as it used to be.

And even further, listening to her live, I believe that's the closest to her pure voice. The acapella portion of "A Song for XX" in A MUSEUM is good evidence of this.

So yes, I'd say Ayu's singing voice is real, although she's been known to 'spice it up' with some kawaii squeakiness at times. She herself even said she sang higher in "HONEY" to make it sound cute. :yes

She has the hability to change, modulete, reach other notes, and sound different in many songs & times and that's what makes her voice one in a million[wth xD...oh ie B'Girl]

I still don't know what people are talking about when speaking of squeakiness. To squeak would be to have some sort of squeak in the voice that is unwanted (i.e. when a boy is going through puberty and his voice falters.) Her first recordings were using the way that she learned to sing. When singing higher notes, she always projected through the mask of the face (which includes the nose) and made her sound more nasally. I think this was the most comfortable way for her to hit the higher notes. She's gone away from it because this is stressful to the voice and caused her voice to become ragged in the first tour she did (2000.) Moreover, her voice has sustained trauma from overuse and thus it MAY be that she can no longer sing with the same kind of clarity she did when she debuted and uses vibrato to compensate.

On a related note, she no longer sings UNITE!, Trauma, or Duty in the same key she did when recording. I checked the latest countdown's version of Duty with the original, which I had been watching on a tour DVD from 2001. They do not match keys. I think that it was a mistake for them to have written the music so high at the beginning and now she can no longer hit those notes because of overuse and strain.

i think it's real...

Thanks hanabiwings you totally answered my question! What I was trying to say that I thought Ayu was holding back vocally because she too busy sounding cute, but I guess Ayu was just used to singing that way. Haru yo Koi was wonderful when she preformed it. I always thought that was Ayu's 'REAL' voice.

yup u are right :yes
trying to hit that extreme high note with that clarity is very difficult not everyone can do it actually... even me tried doing it (im a soprano) the way she sings for her first album's songs.. my voice got bad after half a song =\ so it is extremely straining for one's voice to do such way of singing that why i never grumble when she went out of tune.. her songs, IMO, is very difficult to sing even though the tune and melody sound easy... and IMO, she is the only one who is able to sing in that clarity... so far...

EXACTLY! :yes