Mariah Carey's 1991 single, Emotions,
is a certified gold RnB Pop.
It was the fifth single in a string of number one hits
that proved Mariah had diva potential.
Mostly because of notes like this.
Mariah Carey hits a D7 here.
That's three full octaves above middle C or 38 notes higher than the middle of the piano.
From the lowest note to the highest,
her voice covers four octaves in this song.
Mariah Carey's range is legendary.
Oh yeah. I think Mariah has a fantastic voice. Absolutely.
That's Dr. Ingo Titze.
He's the director of the National Center for voice and speech.
I called him to ask how Mariah Carey manages to hit those high notes.
This is a big problem we have.
Everybody wants us to explain the great singers.
I wish I knew.
Apparently this isn't an easy answer because
Mariah's high notes fall into what is known as the whistle register.
The highest vocal range that is humanly possible.
So high that the notes sound like whistles.
They're rarely called for in music and usually only
pop up in the most difficult of Arias in Opera.
But we really don't understand how whistle register works.
There have been studies on whistle voice but they're not uniformly conclusive.
Even Mariah has admitted in interviews
that she doesn't even understand how she pulls it off.
I don't really know how to explain it.
It's just a certain part of my voice that I've always had that I can hit certain notes.
For singers like Mariah Carey,
whistle register is more talent than technique.
So where can aspiring singers turn to when they
want to learn how to hit the super high notes?
Well, tons of other mammals produce high frequency sounds, and they do it easily.
There's one animal in particular who might be
the best teacher for singers who want to sing like Mariah Carey;
the Rocky Mountain bull elk.
The way land mammals produce sound is pretty simple.
Air from our lungs is pushed through our larynx.
The air vibrates vocal folds,
those things we used to call vocal chords,
and the folds produce a sound wave that resonates in our mouths and gets
changed by the shape of our tongues and lips to form different words.
We produce higher and lower pitches by stretching and contracting our vocal folds.
Behold, the glorious grossness of song.
See how the vocal folds stretch out?
It's kind of like a big thick rubber band.
It's a good comparison,
but the rubber is terrible as an instrument.
What's special about our vocal folds is the range of pitches we're able to
produce without having to stretch them nearly as much as a rubber band.
To get the same pitch range on an instrument,
you would need multiple strings or dozens of piano keys.
But there is a limit, because the higher you go up the harder it gets.
La la la la.
I hate this.
Different people have different vocal ranges largely because of differences in anatomy.
Women's vocal folds tend to be shorter and thinner than men's.
So women tend to be able to sing higher.
In general, shorter vocal folds lead to higher pitches across the animal kingdom,
because shorter vocal folds can create more tension easier.
As a result, smaller mammals like bats and mice make
much higher frequency sounds than humans and tigers.
But some large mammals can have a wider vocal range than expected,
producing higher pitched sounds they shouldn't be able to produce given their size.
One large animal that has an exceptionally wide vocal range is the Rocky Mountain Elk.
It's a 700 pound animal with a large voice box tailor made for low frequency sounds.
But its vocal range extends up to 2,400 hertz.
That's right up there with Mariah Carey's D7 note.
This is a big animal.
One of the biggest ones on the globe,
and it can produce those incredibly high pitches.
So you're not limited by your size.
Doctor Titze and a team of scientists researched how large animals like
the Rocky Mountain Elk were able to create such high pitched sounds.
It's all because of a molecule that's known as collagen.
Between the inner muscle layer and the outer gel like layers of
the vocal folds is a ligament layer filled with collagen fibers.
Collagen is a unique molecule because it gets very
rigid when very little force is applied to it,
going from a zigzag tangle to a straight and orderly bundle easily.
As muscles pull against each other and the vocal folds lengthen,
the collagen fibers create exponentially
more tension than the folds would normally be able to maintain.
So at low elongation,
it's more like the rubber band, easier to elongate.
But then when you have stretched out the zigzag part of it,
then it becomes like a cotton thread.
The Rocky Mountain Elk has beefed up collagen filled ligaments that give its vocal
folds the tension necessary to produce high pitched sounds without a ton of effort.
So how could this help you hit the high notes like Mariah Carey?
Humans have a ligament and we are interested to see
how that can be developed for applications in singing.
Doctor Titze is researching ways humans can beef up
that ligament through exercises that expand and contract the vocal folds.
For example [inaudible] you're
actually strengthening that ligament by giving it a greater collagen density.
This strengthening could expand a singer's range,
potentially into the whistle register.
But just because you can sing at the same frequency as an elk,
doesn't mean you'll have the power and control that
Mariah has to make the notes sound good.
That will be more coordination.
The elk probably just drives it up as high as it can.
Just don't expect every animal in the animal kingdom to
be as impressed with your whistle register as we are.
The animal kingdom is filled with crazy and amazing sounds.
What's your favorite? Or what's your favorite Mariah Carey song?
Let us know in the comments below,
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