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