Why is that so many people in England feel they can't sing?

[ZZZenAgain]

It's true though, wouldn't you say? I've noticed that in a lot of other countries I've lived in people generally seem able to read music fluently and are able to sing confidently and in tune. Or if they cannot read music, they seem able and happy enough to sing something by ear. Often when you are at parties or spend an evening with people, they'll strike up songs and I don't mean drunken yowling.

I'm also not referring to specifically musically trained people but just generally it seems to be a way of life that goes through all classes/professions. I really noticed this in Denmark for instance or Russia, where everyone seems able to sing something well and do it confidently and looking as if they enjoy it.

So why is it not like that in the UK I wonder? Is it a skill that's gone lost over the years?

Yes, I do beleive that. My husband is a vocal coach and I seen the transformation for myself and beleive me, there have been a wide variety of voices come through our doors.

Kodaly?
Dalcroze?

that's good to hear then dontyoudare. I'm thinking now it had "canto" in it. Will have a google and see if something comes up.

I can't read music to save my life, but I still love to sing- to my youngest, at parties, or in the shower. You don't have to be good at it, just to enjoy it. It lifts the spirit

you can feel less inhibited though, wouldn't you agree, if you knew you were singing in tune (at the very least really)? I don't mean you personally but anyone really bof.

Last year dd's choir gave a concert of Brasilian songs by Villa-Lobos. At the concert this incredibly aristocratic looking Brazilian man swanned up, snapped his fingers for a little woman to run up and hastily hand him a microphone and told the audience a bit about Villa-Lobos and his attempt in Brazil to get the masses singing. At times he would be conducting to a whole stadium full of ordinary people all singing at once. Must have sounded pretty amazing.

Had a bit of a google for that singing organisation Yehudi Menuhin was talking about in that interview but couldn't find it. It definitely exists though, I used to have the webpage on my links but lost it when the pc crashed. They encourage everyone to sing and hold summer camps etc with daily singing for families, all that kind of thing.

I like singing but there are not many opportunities apart from singing along with pop songs or singing hymns or Christmas carols.

I went to karaoke recently and noticed a lot of pop songs are not actually very melodic, the verses scan poorly and the lyrics are boring and repeat a fair amount.

Hymns and carols are generally melodic and the phrasing usually scans naturally but the problem here I think is that they are often in ranges suitable for a small Victorian person rather than a normal larger boned modern-day person with a deeper voice. I think most men now are probably baritone and most women are either alto or mezzo-soprano but something like "In the Bleak Midwinter" suits tenor and soprano voices better. Also of course a lot of people disagree with the sentiments in hymns and so that puts them off these.

We need more Cathy Dennises of the world to write melodic pop songs with decent lyrics, I think.

I can't listen to music without singing along - my DCs love to sing too. But I do come from a muical background and when I was a child we would all sing together round the piano (everyone I knew thought our family bonkers).

I would agree with pasturesnew that quite a lot of traditional English music i.e. hymns, nursery rhymes are pitched for much higher voices than can be comfortably be sung by most people. It's particularly apparent at Christmas when the carols come out - I love carols but they can get a bit squeaky and high in parts and my DH will just mime singing.

A c&p from this article

"....says 'So-called tone deafness is not an aural problem but a psychological one. You won't find any tone-deafness in an African tribe, nor in any situations where music is functional. Here, often the youngsters who have difficulties are those who are in situations where it is not natural to sing, yet they might be the people who are particularly sensitive to their own sound. If they open their mouths and someone says, "That's a horrible sound!" they immediately clam up and the signals become confused, causing a psychological block.' "

I think the problem is poeple think they can sing. On TV.
How can they not know?

wish we had some decent scheme that brought retired folk with musical training into the schools to teach singing properly at primary to ALL dc. I think you'd have to start from the earliest years at primary though. By secondary many pupils feel singing is beyond their grasp and don't want to make a fool of themselves so would just boycott it.

I was just thinking of that thread not long ago where a mum was unhappy with the singing at her school and I have this vision of them mumbling along to a CD of Funky Town. Actually I'm going to google Funky Town, I don't even think it is a sing-along type song at all, more a dance tune if anything.

If we had enough people able to sing and teach it and a decent handbook of good songs to work with, I think almost everyone could come out of primary with the basics.

That's fascinating about voices being generally deeper these days. That wouldn't have occured to me. I'm a soprano but I still have difficulty with some Christmas hymns.

Dh is a good singer but he clears his throat a fair bit at Christmas carol singing in the church, I've noticed that. Dd is an alto come to think of it.

great article shellingpeas, what a wonderful person Yehudi Menuhin was. So he did initiate a scheme to teach teachers how to sing with their pupils.

Zen, yes he was brilliant.

We definitely need people to show the teachers that they can sing so that they then have the confidence to teach their pupils. I also think you need to start pre-primary.

I work quite a bit with nursery school teachers (I'm currently developing a series of lesson plans for non-musically trained teachers to use for early years), and almost everyone I've worked with has said they can't sing and so don't feel comfortable providing music/singing with the children. And this is for tinies under the age of 5, who really wouldn't care about the supposed vocal quality. It's both sad and worrying.

I think there's a huge opinion that if you can't sing perfectly in tune, you shouldn't do it. Certainly while I sang lots at myfirst two primary schools where we sang lots of folk songs and songs from musicals as well as hymns, by the time I reached last year juniors and sometimes earlier, I was being told to be quiet in singing lessons as I couldn't do it 'properly'.

In senior school there was a distinct division between the choirs (general and a talented one) and those not allowed to be in even the general choir.

I always wondered why they were called singing 'teachers' as like PE 'teachers' they didn't teach lots of us, just told you you were crap. It must be related to cultural priorities - imagine if a maths teacher told the slow kids not to bother with exercises and just pretend!

After watching X Factor I want to know why so many people think they can sing?

you're so right notcitrus, that's crap. Actually it's really irresponsible "teaching" when you think about it: giving a dc inhibitions about singing for life

Mind you my dd would love a maths teacher who told her not to bother with the exercises and to just pretend!

That sounds great what you're doing with the nursery staff shellingpeas. Wonder if some kind of effective singing instruction should be a part of teacher training or would it just put a lot of people off training to be teachers?

well you know stripey with Xfactor at least the audience seem to recognise pretty well when performers can't sing so I don't think all hope is lost IYSWIM.

I wonder if the problem with the way people perceive their own singing prowess is to do with the idea that singing is an inborn gift that you don't learn and don't work at. If you have never encountered guided/taught singing, you may well think for all you know you are naturally gifted. Even someone with a beautiful natural singing voice benefits from being taught to articulate, to phrase and to breathe (not speaking as a singing expert myself in any way). I would have thought that was obvious but apparently not eh?

If I was going to sing on stage and have it beamed around the country on tv and myself exposed on youtube forthe world to see, I would invest in a couple of singing lessons first, just to get someone else's opinion really. I would at least tape myself to see how I sound but other people don't worry that much about how others judge them I suppose.

I think it has a lot to do with ego too.
Even in school talent competitions (which seem to have reared their ugly heads in the wake of X-Factor), it's obvious which contestants are up there just to show themselves off no matter what, and in fact you generally see children in the audience who you've heard perform beautifully at school concerts and the like, but wouldn't dream of putting themselves up for something like that because they aren't driven by ego and the desire to be centre of attention.

Re. the lower voices thing, I really don't think it's the case that, as human beings, we're somehow evolving to have lower voices.

If a voice is frequently used to its full capacity it will pretty much retain the range it started with - allowing for a slight lowering due to age, obviously.

I think the problem is that the music we're mainly exposed to in the West has a very limited range - how many popular singers truly stretch their voices and sing 'properly?'

So even those who like singing and have the capacity to sing high but only ever sing along to current music won't be exercising their voice fully, and indeed may never know that, with practise, they could easily hit the high notes.

Most people if they know how to use their voice properly have a 2 octave range and a 3 octave siren. What is happening is that vocal qualities that were previously considered wrong or harmful are now being accepted. In the West End for example, most leading ladies have to have a good belt, wheras previosuly they would be legtimate opera style sopranos.

My two children are a good example of how listening to good model singing can affect them. Dd was very into lazy town and now Hannah Montana etc. Consequently she sings in her lower range a lot, quite nasally. Luckily for her dh is making sure she is not doing anything harmful.

Ds listens to Thomas the Tank a lot which uses tuneful, higher range children's voices and his singing is like that. At school assemblies I notice he often sings an octave higher than everyone else.

The Xfactor thing, IMO, is down to people wanting their 15 minutes of fame and the view that getting on TV, even if it's because you're truly awful, is better than no exposure at all.

And as regards popular music, the developments with digital recording technology are such that quite often what you hear as a finished recording bears little resemblance to that person's raw singing voice (one or two pop 'stars' spring to mind). I know this myself as I possess a mediocre voice (I'm really an instrumental player who sings a bit) but when fiddled about with on various computer programmes can sound pretty damn good in the finished product.

Our Lady - you might well be right with people not exercising their vocal range to it's fullest extent. Most current music probably encompasses less than an octave in range. The parents in my pre-school music classes really struggle with anything pitched above G above middle C. I've found if it's too high for them to sing comfortably then they just clam up and don't sing at all, which kind of defeats the purpose of coming to sing with your children!

Dontyoudare - the Hannah Montana effect is scary. My DD does this a lot - all sung through her nose with a really vast vibrato. Lots of 'hey, hey, heying' while warbling. Previously she used to do the Disney Princess thing all 'tra la la la la' at a very high pitch. Not sure which is preferable.

fast vibrato, not vast, although that works too.

I am not English.
I would say that the English in particular, as a culture, HATE to be embarrassed. Singing badly is embarrassing. That may answer OP's Q.

I have had heaps and heaps of horrid nasty comments most of my life from ppl about my horrendous singing and lack of musicality. Nevertheless I have persevered; I love singing & making music. So now There are some songs I can sort of almost sing in tune (so says my husband & another ex-boyfriend, who both can tell if someone is singing in tune; I cannot). I am doggedly learning piano, too. But other than very quiet contributions during song-time at toddler groups, I only sing or practise piano around close family nowadays, I've had a lifetime's worth already of sniping comments.