I have a love-hate relationship with karaoke,
if I'm not in a costume at a crappy bar; it's tough to get me in there, but when I do, some
people ruin it by trying to sing well, and some people make it awesome by caterwauling
their way through Meatloaf's discography! Some people are better singers than others,
but it's no different than some being better runners, ball players, guitarists, or good
writers. According to William Vennard's 1967 book, "Singing: The Mechanism and the Technic,"
singing is not a "natural" skill, but an art. Singing is very mechanical, there's much to
be said about the shape of the skull, the resonance of the space in the nasal cavity,
and how much air can be pushed out of the chest, but let's come back to that, since
we're talking not just about singing, but singing WELL and mechanics will only get a
person so far; they also need to hear the music and understand it. What musicians call pitch, scientists call
frequency. Sound frequency is a measure of the wave oscillations per second, measured
in Hertz. Having good pitch requires the ears to pick up a precise frequency, the brain
to recognize the minute differences in hertz, and direct the vocal chords to reproduce them.
From there, the brain has to hear what's coming out and tweak it it ever so slightly and constantly.
It sounds difficult, but to be honest, it just takes practice to match a pitch. Musicians
nail that down through practice, but in a study by the University of Montreal, about
one-fifth of nonmusicians couldn't control their vocal muscles well, and 35 percent couldn't
match their voice to a note. But both musicians and nonmusicians were able to listen to and
match a pitch using a slide instrument. Only five percent couldn't hear the difference
in pitch. When the physique is taken out, it would seem 95 percent of people's brains
get pitch. A study in PlosONE took functional MRI scans
of brain activity and compared musical processing to analyzing visual information: you'd need
memory, context, pattern recognition… And when it comes to music, it uses the speech
center, but other parts of the brain light up too looking for "contour… pitch encoding
and production." More research is needed to find how these connections can influence musical
ability, But again, it's possible with practice! According to the founder of New York Vocal
Coaching, Justin Stoney, "training our voice is similar to going to the gym and training
any other muscle." So, to get back to mechanical things, and
break some little hearts, YES some musicality is inborn. Human song vocalization is a big
part of our culturosocial development. Groups of humans sing together to bond, worship,
celebrate, and just for fun. This means social groups that valued singing may have looked
for musical characteristics in their mates. This is supported by a study in the Journal
of Medical Genetics which linked mutations on chromosomes 4q22 and 8q13-21 to musical
ability. Further studies have found these genes can influence perception, memory and
even participation in music. Funnily enough, 8q13 has also been linked to dyslexia! Mechanically speaking, a singer is like a
piano or guitar, the same piano strings on a different instrument would sound different,
because of the manufacturing, stress, humidity and such. Every instrument, and every person,
is also different. Women and men have sex differences in their voiceboxes, and people
of different genetic backgrounds tend have different sized nasal cavities. There are
people whose skulls, chest cavities and physiological structures are more beneficial to their singing
abilities! And on top of that, as reported by Medical News Daily, being raised in an
encouraging or musical environment will affect your confidence, inherent skill level interest
and ultimately, abilities. Not unlike any other sports or physical activities. Maybe
that's why we see so many singers from churches become singers in the music biz? What do you think? Why are some people better
singers? Practice or Providence? Also, for the opposite of singing… check
out this great sounding video explaining what the heck is vocal fryyyyyy
