Singing Proficiency in the Majority

Abstract

Recent evidence indicates that the majority of occasional singers can carry a tune. For example, when asked to sing a well-known song (e.g., "Happy Birthday"), nonmusicians performing at a slow tempo are as proficient as professional singers. Yet, some occasional singers are poor singers, mostly in the pitch domain, and sometimes despite not having impoverished perception. Poor singing is not a monolithic deficit, but is likely to be characterized by a diversity of singing "phenotypes." Here we systematically examined singing proficiency in a group of occasional singers, with the goal of characterizing the different patterns of poor singing. Participants sang three well-known melodies (e.g., "Jingle Bells") at a natural tempo and at a slow tempo, as indicated by a metronome. For each rendition, we computed objective measures of pitch and time accuracy with an acoustical method. The results confirmed previous observations that the majority of occasional singers can sing in tune and in time. Moreover, singing at a slow tempo after the target melody to be imitated was presented with a metronome improved pitch and time accuracy. In general, poor singers were mostly impaired on the pitch dimension, although various patterns of impairment emerged. Pitch accuracy or time accuracy could be selectively impaired; moreover, absolute measures of singing proficiency (pitch or tempo transposition) dissociated from relative measures of proficiency (pitch intervals, relative duration). These patterns of dissociations point to a multicomponent system underlying proficient singing that fractionates as a result of a developmental anomaly.

BAASTA: Battery for the Assessment of Auditory Sensorimotor and Timing Abilities

“…In addition, by combining a set of both perceptual and sensorimotor tasks using the same auditory stimuli, BAASTA clearly allows to uncover potential dissociations between perception and action in the timing domain. There are indications that perception and action in duration and rhythm processing may dissociate in patients with brain damage (e.g., Fries & Swihart, 1990) or beat deafness (Sowiński & Dalla Bella, 2013), as previously observed for pitch processing (Dalla Bella & Berkowska, 2009;Dalla Bella, Berkowska, & Sowiński, 2011;Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, 2007;Loui, Guenther, Mathys, & Schlaug, 2008). In addition, the synchronization and perception tasks were performed with both simple and more complex auditory material (i.e., an isochronous sequence vs. music).…”

Acquired and congenital disorders of sung performance: A review

“…Occasional singers, however, are likely to underestimate their actual singing skills. The prevalence of deficits affecting singing proficiency (e.g., poor-pitch singing) is lower, and probably confined to 10-15% of the population (Dalla Bella & Berkowska, 2009; Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, 2007; Pfordresher & Brown, 2007). Poor singing will be thoroughly examined in a separate section.…”

“…At that time, children already have a fairly large repertoire of songs from their own culture and, if they do not receive additional vocal training, their performances do not qualitatively differ from adult singing. Early singing skills pave the way for adult singing which is proficient in both pitch and time dimensions (Dalla Bella & Berkowska, 2009; Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, 2007), and remarkably consistent both within and between individuals (Bergeson & Trehub, 2002; Halpern, 1989; Levitin, 1994; Levitin & Cook, 1996). Thus, singing appears to be as natural as speaking for the majority.…”

“…This view is consistent with non-musicians’ self-assessment of their own singing proficiency (e.g., Pfordresher & Brown, 2007). Yet, it turns out that they are being too defeatist (Dalla Bella & Berkowska, 2009; Dalla Bella et al, 2007). The second reason pertains to methodology.…”

Neurological and developmental approaches to poor pitch perception and production

“…Researchers in this area have begun to examine how different singing tasks reveal different aspects of singing accuracy and which offer the most information about the nature of a person’s singing problem. 4,19,24,25,26,27 Recently several groups have developed batteries of singing tasks for use by any interested researchers. 19,28 The challenge in creating such a battery is to be comprehensive enough to be useful to researchers exploring a variety of phenomena while being short enough to be used in conjunction with other measures that might be specific to a particular study.…”