Why You Can't Sing

This post by Christopher Shea appeared in the WSJ on September 28, 2011.  


Why do people sing badly? Usually NOT because they have tin ears, a study finds. 

Twenty-five nonmusicians and 13 musicians attempted to match pitches, using either their voices or synthesized vocal-like sounds triggered by a moveable "slider." Musicians were nearly perfect using the slider and close to perfect using their voices. Nonmusicians were 97% accurate using the slider (although it took them longer), showing that most could recognize pitch. But when they sang, their pitch-accuracy rate fell to 59%.

To isolate possible causes, the researchers had 31 nonmusicians also match vocal tones that they themselves had recorded. Three types of bad singer emerged: those who couldn't match tones even using the slider (a very small group); those who could match pitches with the slider but not with their voices, suggesting that their problem was poor vocal-muscle control; and those who could match with the slider and self-match (vocal control was fine) but who couldn't vocally match the synthesized sound. For that group, the largest of the three by far, the problem appeared to be mentally translating the sound of the synthesizer tone (its "timbre").

If I’m reading the study correctly, this seems to offer hope to the bulk of us poor singers, since vocal control and timbre-translation could likely be improved through study and practice.


"A Frog in Your Throat or in Your Ear? Searching for the Causes of Poor Singing," Sean Hutchins and Isabelle Peretz, Journal of Experimental Psychology (forthcoming)