Singing ability is rooted in vocal-motor control of pitch

Abstract

The inability to vocally match a pitch can be caused by poor pitch perception or by poor vocal-motor control. Although previous studies have tried to examine the relationship between pitch perception and vocal production, they have failed to control for the timbre of the target to be matched. In the present study, we compare pitch-matching accuracy with an unfamiliar instrument (the slider) and with the voice, designed such that the slider plays back recordings of the participant's own voice. We also measured pitch accuracy in singing a familiar melody ("Happy Birthday") to assess the relationship between single-pitch-matching tasks and melodic singing. Our results showed that participants (all nonmusicians) were significantly better at matching recordings of their own voices with the slider than with their voice, indicating that vocal-motor control is an important limiting factor on singing ability. We also found significant correlations between the ability to sing a melody in tune and vocal pitch matching, but not pitch matching on the slider. Better melodic singers also tended to have higher quality voices (as measured by acoustic variables). These results provide important evidence about the role of vocal-motor control in poor singing ability and demonstrate that single-pitch-matching tasks can be useful in measuring general singing abilities.

Effects of vocal training in a musicophile with congenital amusia

“…We also asked Tim to sing "Happy Birthday" from memory and without a starting pitch (as per Pfordesher & Brown, 2007;Hutchins, Larrouy-Maestri, & Peretz, 2014). We determined deviance for each interval and then averaged the absolute values of those deviances for each performance of the song.…”

On drawing a line through the spectrogram: how do we understand deficits of vocal pitch imitation?

“…Another potentially important factor may be whether one is accompanied while singing, manipulations of which have led to variable outcomes ( Petzold, 1969 ; Goetze and Horii, 1989 ; Pfordresher and Brown, 2007 ; Wise and Sloboda, 2008 ; Hutchins et al, 2010 ; Nichols, unpublished doctoral dissertation). Finally, the extent of VPID is enhanced when participants are asked to imitate pitches that are far from the center of their range, as opposed to pitches that are more comfortable for them to sing ( Sims et al, 1982 ; Small and McCachern, 1983 ; Green, 1989 ; Pfordresher and Brown, 2007 ; Hutchins et al, 2014 ).…”

“…This can be done by comparing pairwise differences in sung melodic intervals to matched pairwise differences in the target melody. In addition to the comparison of consecutive notes, one can also estimate the pitch stability ( Dalla Bella et al, 2007 ), or the tonal center deviation ( Hutchins et al, 2014 ; Larrouy-Maestri and Morsomme, 2014 ) by choosing specific notes along the tonal sequences. Such measures will reflect deviations in relative but not absolute pitch; a participant who imitates the interval C to G by singing D to A may be 100 cents sharp for each sung note but will be perfectly accurate with respect to relative pitch (both intervals are a perfect 5 th ).…”

A Mechanism for Sensorimotor Translation in Singing

“…The negative relationship between Y and X values replicates the attracting influence of comfort pitch on sung pitch errors reported by Pfordresher andBrown (2007, cf. Hutchins, Larrouy-Maestri &Peretz, 2014). Namely, when participants attempt to sing a pitch that is higher than their comfort pitch, errors drift in the flat direction, toward their comfort pitch, and vice versa when they attempt to sing a pitch that is lower than their comfort pitch.…”