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  • 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 recognitionAnd

  • when it comes to music, it uses the speech center, but other parts of the brain light

  • up too looking for "contourpitch 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 singingcheck out this great sounding video explaining what

  • the heck is vocal fryyyyyy

I have a love-hate relationship with karaoke, if I'm not in a costume at a crappy bar; it's

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