Kevin Woo’s Vocal Analysis

0. M Vocalists: Mid-range vocalists, Soloists, Tenors, Vocal Analyses, Vocal Ranges: 2 Octave Ranges, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Vocal Range

A2 ~ E5 (2 Octaves, 3 notes and 1 semitone)

Supported Range

E3/F3 ~ F4/F#4

Voice Type

Tenor

Strengths/Achievements

  • Second strongest vocalist in U-KISS
  • Support is present in his voice
  • Pitch is mostly precise
  • Has shown improvement in his vocal approach throughout the years
  • Able to keep forward chest projection down to E3/F3 in his chest voice
  • Mixed voice shows relaxation and support up until F4/F#4
  • Falsetto can be transitioned into with relative ease

Points for Improvement

  • Tends to place his voice heavily in his nose
  • Tongue tension present whenever more volume is used
  • Unable to keep pitch controlled in vocal runs
  • Notes above F#4 tend to sound really tight and throaty
  • Notes below E3 become airy and lose tone easily
  • Placement issues and inconsistency issues depending on vowels and volume output
  • Falsetto generally is very airy, quiet and lacks projection
  • Doesn’t explore his falsetto range very often

Registers

  • Lower register: The lower part of his range is generally underdeveloped and airy. He has an adequate amount of development and connection in his vocal cords down to E3/F3 but below that he loses support and tone.
  • Mixed register: His mixed voice is generally more on the chestier side with a lot of tension anywhere above F#4. He is able to mix with a relaxed and supported sound up to F4/F#4.
  • Upper register: His falsetto is his weakest register. Mostly airy, thin and unprojected. He loses volume as soon as he sings in this register. He generally sings with decent pitch in his falsetto and transitions into it with relative ease.

Agility

Kevin is a vocalist who seems to show mostly a pop and contemporary R&B influence to his singing. He often attempts singing pop-R&B songs when doing covers but has proved that early on during his debut days, as well as right now, vocal runs are a challenge to him. He’s unable to sing with a relaxed and forward sound in his runs and usually slides through notes with a clear direction of pitch. Examples include “Say Goodbye“, “Because Of You“, “Take Me Away” and “땡벌“. Thus becoming quite pitchy and even in simpler trills, he shows a lack of ability to separate notes one by one, such as in “Now and Forever“.

Overall analysis

Debuting in 2006 as a member of Xing, Kevin later re-debuted as a member of U-KISS in 2008 as their lead vocalist, where he’s remained a member ever since. Later joined by Hoon as a lead vocalist, Kevin never lost his spot as the second strongest vocalist in U-KISS with superior technique to any other member aside from Soohyun. His voice is one that’s bright, light, youthful, and soft in tone; very likely to be classified as a light lyric tenor. Although being classified as a lead vocalist, Kevin has had very few chances to showcase his vocals over the years and has been unable to fully explore his potential since his vocals aren’t often challenged enough in U-KISS songs.

His lower range is soft, but full. He is able to keep a chest placed sound in his chest voice with good connection between his vocal cords within his supported range. He does not often rely on airiness to overcompensate for lack of support or style, keeping a consistently well-rounded sound in his supported range, such as in “With You” and “Now and Forever“.  Below F3/E3, he quickly loses tone and his voice becomes airy. Support is lost and his tone becomes muffled anywhere below E3 with little to no projection, such as the D3’s in “땡벌” and “Lucky“, C3 in “내눈물모아“, B2 in “Way Back Into Love” and the Bb2 in “Remember“.

His mixed voice is where he becomes more comfortable. He is generally able to keep his mixed voice supported with little to no tension when singing a medium to low volume output. His support is consistent up to Eb4’s such as in “Way Back Into Love“, E4’s such as in “끼부리지마“, “Now And Forever“, F4’s such as in “내눈물모아“, “놀이터” and F#4’s such as in “내여자야“, “Melody” and “My Reason“. There are certain inconsistencies within his supported caused by bad vocal habits. He has the tendency to add an unneeded amount of tension in his throat and tongue when attempting to sing with more volume in his mix, even within his supported range. This results in a more throaty and glottal approach to his louder mixed notes, even E4’s such as in “땡벌” and F4’s such as in “Remember“. Support is generally not present anywhere above F#4 in his mixed voice, where he’s unable to relax his throat. His throat and tongue tension generally intensify the higher he sings, causing his mix to become tight and strained, such as the G4’s in “Someday“, “With You“, G#4’s in “Mysterious Lady“, “하나“, “My Reason“, and the A4’s in “Fall In Love“, “Distance” and “A Thousand Miles Away“.

His falsetto is his most noticeably underdeveloped and under-explored register. He rarely sings in this register for a long period of time; and when he does sing this high, he will keep it within a reasonably low range. His transitions into falsetto can be adequate, such as in “끼부리지마” and “A Thousand Miles Away“, but he does have a huge contrast of volume and tone from his mix to his falsetto, where his voice becomes much thinner and quieter. His pitch isn’t lost in his falsetto, but he seems to have issues projecting and maintaining full stability in tone, as heard in “My Reason“, “내눈물모아” and “Fall In Love“.

Overall Kevin is a tenor with a limited amount of ability to create differences in his voice. He generally relies on a somewhat tongue tense, nasal and tight sound throughout his range. Although tone is present throughout, he doesn’t have many options of dynamics that he can approach outside his supported range. Within his supported range, he’s unable to play with dynamics without relying on some sort of source of tension in the process. Nonetheless, he’s still able to perform with an adequate level of skill within a lower range of songs, where he seems to be most comfortable singing for covers especially.

Although it is true that Kevin’s overall set of skills and level of vocal technique aren’t high, he has managed to stay consistent in his vocal health. He’s shown adequate skill to stay in shape and not lose his spot as the second strongest vocalist in U-KISS. Although improvement has been minimal, he’s shown that he’s a consistent and healthy vocalist and doesn’t often try to sing too high for his supported range. There’s a certain degree of limit and lack of development to his voice caused by staying in his comfort range too often. For future improvement, learning to eliminate nasality, tongue tension and allow more openness to his voice would be the first things for him to fix.

Musicianship

As he comes from the U.S., trying to add his own musical and melodic ideas to his covers and performances often becomes part of his mentality as a vocalist. He has shown the potential ability to not only sing with good harmonies and add his own ideas to songs, but fails to practice them well enough before doing them and often results in messy vocal performances with pitch issues. Examples include his adlibs in “Because Of You” as well as his harmonies in “Lucky“, “All Of Me” and “Way Back Into Love“, where he goes on and off with pitch precision.

Label (Type of Vocalist)

M Vocalists: Mid-Range Vocalists

Vocal Range Video(s)

Coming Soon!

Best Vocal Performance(s)

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Analyzed by Ahmin (Kitsunemale)

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31 thoughts on “Kevin Woo’s Vocal Analysis”

  1. Hey not bad, I was expecting weak to average or just weak, nice to know Kevin is decent, he gets like 0 love outside of U-KISS fans,so it’s good that he’s ok.

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      1. No disrespect to Kevin as a vocalist but wtf is his range? A2-D5? Has he really displayed that little of his range or does he just like to sing around a certain octave?

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      2. Mhmm? I mean so many females in K-pop barely showcase more than a 2 octave range, so I don’t see why be surprised about it with Kevin. I’m sure he could sing higher if they made him sing a high note battle or something.

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  4. Wow, almost a month has passed by nice to see another one! I figured this was his rating when you said he surprised you, or a little higher (since it’s obviously not uncommon for the strongest and 2nd strongest to be fairly close). I am surprised how limited both his range and Soohyun’s are considering that nearly all of the males that were analyzed so far had at least a 3 octave range.

    I’ve noticed that I tend to gravitate towards the more the vocalists with a bright quality to their voice like Kevin (as well as Junsu and my current favorite male Kpop singer, Yoo Seung Woo).

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  5. Hmm this is going to be very hypothetical, but what if Kevin improved his lower register down to B2/C3, eliminated most of his nasality/tightness, and became more consistently supported with his mix? (Still remains at F4/F#4, just better supported)

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  8. I’ve only ever seen him sing on After School Club, and what struck out to me the most were his decent harmonies that seemed pretty spontaneous. I really like his vocal color, although I knew he wasn’t all that good of a vocalist. Lovely analysis though, I always enjoy reading these. It’s so interesting, because now when I listen to people singing, even though their voices might sound really pleasant to me, I notice so many new things like straining and resonance.

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  10. hi there ahmin. could you please give me a little review on Leona Lewis vocals if you don’t mind because I really adore her and I only trusted this site lol. what’s her voice type, vocal pluses etc. thank you❤

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    1. I am sorry but as you know, we don’t analyze non-kpop vocalists for users who already know of this rule. I can tell you Leona is a light lyric Soprano, she has issues with her falsetto and head voice consistency, she doesn’t support very high, I’m not even sure she supports C5. I am not familiar with her vocally to tell you much about her.

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  12. I was reading the old posts you guys posted and there were some people who asked you guys to give a brief review of non-kpop vocalists so I was thinking to do the same thing but I was kinda scolded and no one loves Leona 😦 kinda sad but thanks for replying although it’s not what I hoped for. sorry once again. *bows 90 degree*

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    1. Key word is “old”. We used to analyze them but then it became so irrelevant to what we do and so time consuming, we just don’t have the time to answer questions that aren’t related to what we do.

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    1. He is a weak vocalist, I was initially going to analyze him cause I thought he was average or more but as I listened through, I realized he sings almost exclusively through his throat and he had just so much closeness and tension in his singing, I just decided against analyzing him. I didn’t see why analyze him considering U-Kiss has like 2 rappers, so 2/5 vocalists is enough for them.

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  15. Kevin recently did a cover of All Of Me and I was wondering how he did in this specific performance. I feel as if his support wasn’t bad, although he was nasal. Was his G#4 at 2:51 strained/tight? Also, I noticed his shoulders moving a bit while singing. Is this because he’s not breathing from his diaphragm?

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    1. Well like the usual, Kevin is able to support is consistently 1:23 that F3 was way too muffled for how not low it is but the rest was fine. His breaths are quite shallow, that’s why. 1:40 the support is there but the vowel closed his throat, the your was better at 1:47. 2:08 pushed G#4’s, tight yeah. His falsetto transitions aren’t bad. 2:43 was closed 2:51 was more shouted than the other 2 G#4’s, he was singing with a more high larynx position, the others were closed but less shouted. Overall this is not bad, it’s actually alright. Nothing new really.

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  17. So, Kevin started uploading covers on his YT channel recently, and I wanted to ask about his live performance of Lay Me Down. I believe he lowered the key down by a note, so he’s hitting some nice F#4’s in the chorus instead of the G#4’s. Any improvement in his technique, or has he remained stagnant?

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