3:12pm: On vocal pigeonholing
By convention, vocalists tend to be pigeonholed into one of several points on a linear scale based upon their vocal range. This procedure probably needs little further explanation.
Occasionally - and this is far more common in the classical domain than anywhere else - there is a separate consideration of timbre, mostly to distinguish between (say) Wagner and Mozart's very different pieces within a soprano range. This, in turn, is done within the context of pigeonholes, creating such classifications as 'lyric soprano'.
I gather it is not entirely inaccurate to state that training classical singers invariably seems to start with pigeonholing, and then making one thrive within those limited confines. Such pressures will be very much weaker in musical theatre, and utterly non-existent for a singer-songwriter who is not working with a teacher operating under the constraints of another style. (Hint.)
Speaking about this with a friend yesterday, I thought of something. Voices are invariably placed as high or low or somewhere in between in a very one-dimensional manner, much as politicians are placed as left or right or somewhere in between. Thus, I proposed the idea of The Vocal Compass, along the same lines as the Political Compass. The vertical axis is for timbre, with light/heavy as either extreme; high/heavy would be the top-right corner. I would propose a patchy, uneven distribution of operatic singers around various given points, and a more even distribution in other styles, though perhaps with some other trends for musical theatre that have already been discussed.
I'm not honestly sure whether this is useful or not, but it just seemed rational at the time of thinking, and worthy at least of a blog post.