Stylistic Differences in Glides and Drops
Different styles of music can have different styles of glides.
Rock/Popular
Usually, in rock and popular music, the glide is about the size of a third, and it occurs fairly quickly. You would expect to find this for example, in the Beatles, Elvis Presley, or musicals.
There are then two choices: no drop or a semi-subliminal drop.
Rock II
Another style in rock singing is a long glide up to a note, followed by a long drop. It seems that very little time is spent singing the actual pitch of the note.
I think of Elton John as being the quintessential example of this. As far as I know, his first hit Your Song is unsingable except if you can execute this style.
Crooning
As far as I know, the only distinctive feature of crooning is the a large glide. If the typical glide is around an interval of a third, the typical croon is about a fifth or even an octave. For example, I would start "White Christmas" in a Bing Crosby style by gliding up from the fifth below to the third (G to E in the key of C). I would start "Thanks for the Memories" in the Bob Hope style with an octave glide.
Perhaps these glides need to be longer in duration simply because they are larger in size. But I think the crooners also increase the duration of the glide, to further emphasize it.
Punk
The singer in "Simple Plan" (a debatably punk band) tends to have a normal size of glide, about a third, but to prolong it to the point of obnoxiousness. It is "suspenseful" when it takes a long time to resolve the glide to the correct note. But another word for this is "annoying".
Worse, the lead singer for Simple Plan almost gets to the correct note, then holds this off-chord note. The note he is singing is not harmonic, it is annoying. He then resolves the note to the correct pitch, but the overall effect is kind of like whining. (I really like their famous CD, No Pads, No Helmets, No Balls.)
Country
I am not positive, but it seems to me that in Country music, the glide never makes it to the correct pitch of the note. Instead, the note stops just before reaching the correct pitch. Now that creates a mystery -- how can something be the correct pitch of a note if it is never song? I think the correct pitch is implied, so people somehow know what it is.
Blues
Blues characteristically has a pronounced drop at the end of the note.
Differences in Singers
I don't even know if Avril Lavigne does glides, but she makes good use of drops. Typically, the last verse of her songs doesn't have a drop on the notes, which makes it sound much stronger (in contrast). She also sings some of her drops, which I find heavenly.
Kelly Clarkson has glides but the drops seem more important. Her drops are a little stronger than Karen Carpenter's, so there is a little bit of singing added to the drop.
Caressing. If there is a glide and a drop on the note, then the note can sound caressed. Jim Croce for example does this.
Warbling. To exaggerate the harmonic note of the drop, you can hold it at a steady pitch, instead of just gliding from it. You can further emphasize it by going straight from the harmonic to the correct pitch, and you can even further emphasize it by putting a break in sound in between the harmonic and the correct pitch.
If you do all of these, it sounds like what I call warbling. If you just hold the harmonic, you probably won't have much time for a glide, and it will still have a warbling effect, though not as strong as if there was a sound break.
For example, Gordon Lightfoot has some complete warbles, but most of the time he is doing more subtle warbles -- he holds the harmonic, but there is no sound break between the harmonic and the correct pitch.
DionThere are some singers, such as Lind ("Elusive Butterfly") and Dion ("Abraham, Martin, and John", probably "Runaround Sue") that I find difficult to analyze. There are doing something right, but I don't know exactly what. I think maybe possibly that one of the things Dion does is a very small glide into a note. Assuming harmony, this implies a more complex chord. For example, if you glide from the fourth into the fifth, you could be just singing the modern second-fourth-fifth chord.
NEXT: Style when you sing with others
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