Posted on 06/14/2008 7:24:12 PM PDT by blam
People Who Can't Carry A Tune Either Don't Know Or Don't Care, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Jun. 15, 2008) — Acoustical analyses of people belting out "Jingle Bells," "Brother John" and a Polish birthday song, "Sto Lat" reveal that most people sing in tune and in time, even without musical training. Moreover, two distinct "phenotypes", or recognizable forms, of impaired singing exist that are linked to perceptual abilities.
Establishing this linkage is helpful for designing a music education curriculum.
Dr. Simone Dalla Bella and colleagues from the University of Finance and Management in Warsaw, Poland, set out to evaluate the proficiency of singing in the general public because little data existed, yet most people believed the majority of people can't carry a tune.
The team individually recorded 42 visitors to a Montreal park whom they asked to sing the familiar anthem of the Quebec sovereignty movement, "Gens du Pays." They compared them to professional singers' renditions.
When the non-musicians were instructed to sing more slowly, 40 of 42 sang as accurately as the pros in terms of pitch and timing. Next, investigators invited 40 volunteers into their acoustics laboratory in Poland and instructed them to sing "Jingle Bells," and other songs.
The investigators then administered a test called the Montreal Battery of the Evaluation of Amusia.
From this they identified two phenotypes of impaired singing: off-pitch singers with perceptional deficits who don't know they're landing on the wrong notes, and poor-pitch singers who can tell they're off and sing anyway.
The talk is entitled "Singing out of tune: Disturbances of vocal performance in the general population."
Adapted from materials provided by American Institute of Physics, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
In church my wife has ordered me to lip sync.
I know, and I care. Everyone around has a lot to be thankful for, even if they don't know it!
I hope this cost less than $50 million to discover.
Singing is fun no matter how bad you are at it.
Still no cure for cancer.
I care too. I know I can’t sing, so I just keep my mouth shut. Keeps me outta trouble that way.
The tone deaf should be shot on sight!
Um...I think it’s because they don’t know. ;-)
How do you tell by looking? *\;-)
...or make a few bucks and die an early death, like Janis Joplin.
I sing some music that is for folks who sing in the choir and also for those who have been asked not to sing in the choir.
Check links on my profile page.
Really
He simply doesn't want to sing off key and mess up others around him who CAN sing it on key.
(..OK..OK...sarcasm off thingee goes in this spot....)
Same here. You won’t see me on American Idol any time soon.
So I sing out loud in the car when I am by myself.
At church I am grateful that the music is loud and peppy, so no one notices that I can not carry a tune, and I am also grateful that during music worship that God doesn't care either.
I think this is where Algore gets his junk science for the Global Warming cult....
I think most people can sing in tune if they have someone to listen to singing the right notes. I sang in a choir of around 200 that had a group of about 16 singer that were given the music early and they knew it when the choir sang it the first time. Anyone could join the choir and the only two restrictions were that you would to let the choir director help you if you needed help and you show up for practice 80% of the time. This rule extended to everyone in the choir included those who had sung professionally.
If you sight Roseanne singing the National Anthem, that is close enough.
The event I dread the most every year is the forced Christmas caroling in my department at work. I try to be a good sport and lip sync, but that isn’t good enough...NOOOOOOO they insist I sing out loud and humiliate myself, lol.
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