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A cringe-worthy chorus of “Happy Birthday” is usually all it takes to earn the label of “tone-deaf.” Yet fewer than 1 percent of the population is truly amusical, that is, lacking the ability to distinguish different pitches. Many more of us simply can’t carry a tune. A study published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General reinforces scientists’ growing belief that the culprit is not the ear but the throat. In a series of pitch-matching experiments, nonmusicians were pretty good at adjusting an instrument to match a specific note, suggesting that they could hear it just fine. They had much more trouble, however, imitating the same note with their own voice. The authors suspect that poor motor control of vocal muscles is partly to blame—findings that reinforce the idea that almost anyone can learn to sing.
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5 Comments
Add CommentI've spent a lifetime with people convinced that I could learn to sing. I've taken numerous lessons. I am not tone deaf. I can HEAR music wonderfully. I can't reproduce a single note no matter how hard I, or a host of music instructors, tries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate articles like this that claim a certain percentage of people are the only ones that can't learn to sing. Or that most people could if they only tried. I'd give my left arm to be able to sing well enough to do it in public. Or to dance. I can hear the rhythm right up to the moment my body tries to respond to it. Not all things are possible for all people.
Lack of ability to make music of any kind (assuming that the person is not tone-deaf) is always a matter of lack of muscle control. If I can't play the violin it is because I lack the muscle control to properly manipulate bow and strings to produce the requisite sounds. Ditto for other instruments, including the voice. It does not follow from this that I could acquire such muscle control if only I tried. That is the fallacy embodied in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a singer and have never taken a lesson but am usually on pitch. My wife is also a singer but has taken many lessons. She tries hard but always tends to slip in pitch which I can hear and she generally cannot. So I think there is a lot more to singing ability then will or effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople could levitate if they just tried hard enough! You are quite correct. Short of extensive biofeedback equipment and a team of trainers engaging in total emersion training, most of us are not going to become opera quality singers. It has nothing to do with will power or time devoted. We could build a ladder to the moon but would it be economically feasible? You and I say no but apparently the authors of this study disagree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The authors suspect that poor motor control of vocal muscles is partly to blame—findings that reinforce the idea that almost anyone can learn to sing."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, true, but that's still glossing over the most difficult part: The *learning* part. You can apply the motor control argument to many other skill-based physical tasks - Shooting a basketball, throwing a good pitch in baseball, etc. - but the devil is in the details, and just because you learn to sing/shoot free throws/pitch a fastball doesn't mean you aquire anything more than a base competency at it. There's still the issue of skill ceilings varying among individuals, and even with very rigorous, long term training a most hopeless singer - such as myself (*has a sad*) - will simply not become a Pavarotti. Nor will I become a Michael Jordan or Nolan Ryan. THe bottom line is that the authors are right, but I'd bet that even they will admit that motor control is only one of the factors.
That said, I think I do agree with them on one point: Too many people believe they're hopeless at singing when in reality they're merely unschooled and unpracticed. Few will become a Pavoratti, but most can improve on where they're starting from.