Crooning

Crooning is an intimate popular-singing style built around a soft tone, close phrasing, and microphone amplification. It brings a singer’s voice across as personal and conversational.

Microphone: A transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal for recording or amplification. Electrical amplification lets a singer use a soft voice without projecting across a room.
Rudy Vallée: An American singer and bandleader whose radio fame made him one of the first major crooning stars. His amplified, intimate radio performances helped establish crooning as a popular style.
Al Jolson: An American stage and film performer known for forceful singing and theatrical delivery. His projecting style illustrates the vocal approach microphone-era crooners moved beyond.
Belting: A forceful singing technique that produces a powerful, speech-like sound in a high or upper-middle register. Belting emphasizes vocal power, while crooning favors softness and closeness.
Proximity effect: The increased bass response produced by many directional microphones when a sound source is very close. Close microphone placement can give a crooner’s voice added warmth and intimacy.
Bing Crosby: An American singer and actor known for relaxed phrasing and a warm, understated vocal style. Crosby refined crooning into a flexible approach that shaped popular singing for decades.
Frank Sinatra: An American singer and actor celebrated for precise phrasing and interpretive control. Sinatra made close, conversational delivery central to a highly influential singing style.
Operatic singing: A classical vocal style designed for expressive projection over an orchestra, traditionally without electronic amplification. Its projected sound and formal technique differ from crooning’s microphone-dependent intimacy.
Vocal register: A range of pitches produced with a particular pattern of vocal-fold vibration and resonance. Crooners shape register and resonance to keep a gentle tone across the melody.
Radio broadcasting: The transmission of audio programs to receivers through electromagnetic waves. Radio carried crooners’ close, conversational voices into homes across wide areas.

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