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 recognition… And

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

up too looking for "contour… pitch 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 singing… check out this great sounding video explaining what

the heck is vocal fryyyyyy