Girl Groups
Some girl groups are given different concepts that might make them require to pitch their voice or sing with a different vocal quality to better suit their songs and the theme of the group. One clear example of this would be Twice. Twice's concepts are usually 'cute' and happy with their songs being upbeat and pitched extremely high. This results in many of these girl group singers singing with their 'fake' voice instead of 'real' voice. This is referring to singing with a head voice instead of chest voice. Real voice refers to the voice that sounds like our speaking voice while fake voice refers to the voice that is lighter and not as well supported in the chest region.
An Example: Jihyo from Twice
Jihyo from Twice
As seen from the video, when Jihyo sings Heart Shaker, she uses her 'fake' voice which has more of a lighter and airy quality to it. When she sings All About That Bass, it is in a range where she can comfortably use her 'real' voice. She is able to resonate her words better and have better support and projection of her voice in this range as well.
Boy Bands
One of the things I noticed for boy bands would be that the songs they are singing are all in a very high key and most of the male singers in the groups have incredible ranges. After I did some research, I found our that it is a trend that most male idol singers are tenors and there are very few baritones in the Kpop industry. Also, there are even less main vocalists that are baritones. Building on this article, I want to air my thoughts on this as well.
That article mentions how many Kpop songs by Male Idols are targetted at teenage girls. Therefore, songs are written and produced in a range which the company feels a girl would be able to sing along to as well. As songs are usually high, this means that the range of the Idol will have to be around this key as well. This explains why there are so many tenors in the Kpop industry as they will be able to better support their vocals in a higher register and are as a result, better suited to sing these songs.
As a young adult (not really teenager anymore cause I am 20 and OLD), I can actually see this being true. Kpop songs by boy bands are usually in my range or even higher (Since I am a mid-alto singer). I think to market this to teenage girls, it makes sense that the songs are within their range so they will be able to sing along to these songs at home or at their concerts. In fact, when covering song Kpop Boy bands songs, I was surprised that I did not even have to change the key of it to sing it comfortably.
For the changing of vocal color and pitch, I feel it is not as obvious or not at all present for Male Idol singers. Most of them retain their original vocal qualities but just sing in a vocal technique suited for the high songs. This means a lot of use of falsetto and more of their 'fake' voice. The pitch doesn't seem to change as most male idols still retain a deeper sounding voice even as they sing.
Look at how amazing their ranges can go up to. Here is Chen, the main vocalist of EXO. He has one of the best ranges in Kpop for Male Idols.
He is not the only one who can sing extremely high, with many other idols having a vocal range that spans many octaves as well.
