A question for people who can’t sing….

When you know the notes to sing
You can sing most anything

Apparently

@Greeniscalming That’s interesting - I’m very good at learning foreign languages, and I don’t sound particularly ‘English’ when I speak them (I’ve been mistaken for Swiss when speaking French, for example), but I can’t ‘do’ a foreign accent to save my life.

It’s like other posters have said - I can do it in my head but I don’t know how to make it come out of my mouth!

I can tune a guitar by ear and hear easily when a singer is off pitch. But when I try to sing I can’t translate that knowledge to my vocal cords.

I cant sing at all. I mean it sounds kinda ok to me but I know if I hummed something nobody would be able to tell what I was aiming for!😆
TBH I very rarely sing, even alone, as it makes my throat hurt....probably coz I dont even talk much so my throat muscles are very weedy!

My singing is so awful that at primary school I was told not to sing just mouth the words. I can tell if singing is out of tune though. I am very good at recognising people from their voices, (face blindness is another of my curses). If I could have had a wish before I was born about a special talent it would be that I could sing in tune.

Fascinating subject OP! I cannot sing harmony for the death of me and can only sing in tune if I hear the accompaniement.

Funny thing is I can tune a guitar or violin by ear ( for my children) though never played them! I do play piano ( amateur) and once studied the clarinet and played in school orchestras.

Strange!

@mathanxiety This is why I’ve never tried to learn Mandarin - even if I could learn to hear the tones, I wouldn’t trust myself to be able to replicate them and I’d end up accidentally telling someone to fuck off instead of asking where the bathroom is.

Aaah that's basically a similar swing but in a downward direction. It is possibly that it's the big jump plus it could be fairly close to the edge of your range or even just outside it. Lady Gaga has a wide range and she is strong on the lower end, which most women aren't (especially sopranos) and the main part of most female-voiced songs is soprano, the alto part is often the harmony.

If you want to get it, try practising it shifted an octave higher, and try doing a warm up where you warm up the lower ranges of your voice before singing it as well. I think that might make it easier to reach.

This is absolutely fascinating, do you happen to know any reference papers I could geek out over?

I’m an awful singer, and I can hear that what is coming out of my mouth is both a fairly unpleasant sound , as well as being off key (and, well, frankly not the right note at all, never mind key). I am musical, so I can hear what the note is, and what the key is, and can hear when something is out of tune. It’s just I can very rarely hit the right note/key. Some songs that have a small range and which I know well I can more or less hit the right notes at the right time (debatable whether tune - sometimes yes, sometimes no), but even that doesn’t alter the fact that my singing voice isn’t a ‘good’ or particularly pleasant sounding voice even when I am in tune!

alas, it’s something I really wish I could do well, because I do enjoy singing.

Was about to also add the same thing. I studied languages at uni and speak several fluently. I know my pronunciation is good, and I’ve been told my accent passes pretty much as a native speaker, so I can make the right sounds when speaking (and I guess also have an ear for what sounds right or wrong in the same way I can hear I’m off key) - just can’t make the sound I want to when singing it.

I'm the opposite way round. I'm told that I have a very good voice but it doesn't sound good in my head

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3364198/

But I think it works both ways: I think amusica is also strong in neurodivergent people.

I actually have a theory that neurotypical people are somewhere in the middle of the sensory spectrum for everything, and that neurodivergent people are either extremely high or low on any sensory measure.

I don't even know what middle C is! I know that I'm terrible, I can hear that I'm terrible, but I enjoy it all the same!

I know a tune when I hear it, but if I think about it I can't hear it in my head and I certainly can't sing it. I can't remember tunes, think like work blindness I have note blindness.

I can't always tell who is singing though I know, I know the song.
I am useless at music quizzes.

I can tell I am out of tune when I sing, there is no doubt in my mind, I have a deep flat voice and I can't breath properly.

I think I would be a great challenge for Gareth Malone.

I am slightly dyslexic and have very little sense of smell (I can smell sweet things but not country smells or farts - very useful life skill!) so I am wondering if that is all connected.

I can't sing. I can hear a nice tune or lyrics and try to replicate and it just doesn't come out sounding that way or any good. I will be belting along to Hamilton in the car and the song skips and I hear myself and it's bloody terrible. I also run out of breath if trying to copy big notes, just can't do it

Ah, I guess if you can’t do it for every note, and can’t hear a note and say what pitch it is, then that wouldn’t be classed as perfect pitch.

It's interesting isn't it. My mum is always adamant she can't sing, despite actually being perfectly capable of replicating a note as she heard it, so I guess it sounds bad in her head. I have decent enough pitch and a good musical education, so I am reasonably confident I'm a good singer (although couldn't necessarily identify a middle c without some context!). I also have a child who is working through music grades so I'm back to practicing aural exam portions with them, and interestingly despite being a decent player her ability to hear and replicate pitch is currently quite iffy but I firmly believe that this is something you can improve with practice!

I can hear when I sing off key. I don't have a good or strong singing voice, I have an embarrassingly limited vocal range and am not a singer but I generally can sing in tune. When I get a note wrong I hear it. Sometimes when I sing along to a song in my range I think I sound OK. I did karaoke a few months ago and was awful I couldn't get the right pitch and just flustered and confused so sang out of key the whole time jumping up and down the notes. I finally got there for the last 30 seconds and it was embarrassing cos I could hear how bad I was. That said karaoke is about having fun and I did have fun. I went back twice more with songs that suited me better.

My twins often sing along together, both have short vocal ranges and not amazing singers. However if they hit a part of the song that doesn't suit their own range they automatically adjust by dropping or leaping up an octave or a 3rd / 5th (not sure what it's called) and they continue on in perfect harmony like they've rehearsed 100 times. Ds has a very deep voice, dd quite high. I think its from being a twin and so in tune literally with each other all their lives that they know how to harmonise.

Interesting.

I can sing and pick up languages really quickly. I am ND.

Oh interesting. I can't sing. I can tell my singing is crap but I can't tell what's wrong with it or what to do differently. I'm also not at all musical.

My youngest is fairly musical and sings much better than me. She usually tells me what is wrong with my singing but it doesn't make any sense to me. I also can't identify instruments from music either (I remember finding it impossible at secondary school music lessons) and that's something she's good at.

I consider myself a reasonably good musician (keyboards, guitar and also write my own stuff) but when I’m really tired I develop a very specific form of ‘tone-deafness’: I can’t tell the difference between a note and its fifth, or mess up which octave a note is in.

Sometimes if I’m transcribing a song or learning it by ear I end up playing a phrase an octave up, or playing a G instead of a C, B instead of an E etc. I think the mixing up octaves is kind of understandable but the fifths one is not one I’ve heard other people having!

yes this is a common ND trait. It’s linked to pattern recognition.

Not at all - all sounds exactly the same to me!