{"id":19766,"date":"2020-02-25T23:55:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T23:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19766"},"modified":"2020-02-26T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T14:47:10","slug":"why-some-of-the-best-known-tunes-like-happy-birthday-are-the-hardest-to-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-some-of-the-best-known-tunes-like-happy-birthday-are-the-hardest-to-sing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why some of the best-known tunes, like ‘Happy Birthday,’ are the hardest to sing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bryan Nichols<\/a>, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Some friends and I recently went to karaoke. You can likely picture the scene: a restaurant adjacent to a bowling alley with a cheerful crowd and enthusiastic DJ aiming lights at a small stage. We sang a popular duet, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper\u2019s \u201cShallow,\u201d to the room\u2019s applause, and I remembered how good it felt to sing into a microphone.<\/p>\n

It brought me back to my time as a music teacher in the late 2000s in my home state of Kentucky. Like all of us, my students had their own preferences in terms of the styles and genres they liked to sing, but of course there were the mainstays that we all had to learn \u2013 for example, the national anthem, which we practiced as soloists and as a multi-part choir. We often sang spontaneously, too, belting out \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d if someone was celebrating theirs on a rehearsal day.<\/p>\n

Without a doubt, some of the students, no matter their singing ability, had a tough time hitting some of the notes in these two familiar songs. Teaching those students and others later eventually led me to wonder, why is it that some of the songs we know the best are the hardest ones to sing?<\/p>\n

The Happy Birthday Club<\/h2>\n

As a professor, choir director and researcher<\/a> at Penn State University, I\u2019m trying to answer this question with my colleagues, in what we affectionately named the \u201cHappy Birthday Club<\/a>,\u201d by investigating the conditions that elicit the best singing from individuals.<\/p>\n

So far it seems that any emphasis on singing perfectly in tune can be detrimental to the idea that everyone can sing<\/a> because it suggests that people should sing only if they sing exceptionally well. This is problematic for several reasons, but especially because self-concept \u2013 or one\u2019s beliefs about oneself \u2013 turns out to be really important for participation in the arts<\/a>. Our preliminary findings also tell us that we shouldn\u2019t make judgments about singing based on familiar tunes that happen to be really hard.<\/p>\n

Ciara Newman, a Penn State music student, sings \u2018Happy Birthday.\u2019
\nPenn State University<\/span>928 KB (download)<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

As part of our work, our colleague Peter Pfordresher<\/a>, of the University at Buffalo, shared some data with us on college students singing \u201cHappy Birthday.\u201d Some of the students started the song high in their vocal range, more started lower in their vocal range, but many of them failed when it came to the big ascending leap: the third \u201chappy birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what makes this universal song so difficult for people around the world to sing. The third \u201chappy birthday\u201d has an octave leap, meaning a seven-note jump in the musical scale. It can be hard for people to manage, especially if you started too high in the beginning and have already topped out your range. Fun fact: \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d happens to have originated in Kentucky in the 1890s as a simpler song called \u201cGood Morning to All<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The arrow points to the highest note of \u2018Happy Birthday,\u2019 which is the hardest note for many people to hit.<\/span>
\nDouglas McCall and Bryan Nichols\/Penn State University<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another notoriously tough song to sing is the \u201cStar-Spangled Banner.\u201d Most Americans have heard it and likely even sung it. You may have seen singer Demi Lovato perform it earlier this month<\/a> at the Super Bowl, singing it well in the common key of A-flat. At last year\u2019s Super Bowl, Gladys Knight sang it beautifully<\/a> and much lower, in a range that seemed to fit her voice perfectly.<\/p>\n

No matter the key, like \u201cHappy Birthday,\u201d the national anthem is just plain difficult. That\u2019s because it has a huge range; you have to sing high, low and everything in between. It has small intervals, or notes that are near each other on the musical scale, but it also has big skips upward \u2013 sometimes several in a row, such as the fourth, fifth and sixth notes in the song. And if you start the song with notes that are too high, well, often there\u2019s just no hope in hitting them all perfectly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The arrows show the third, fourth, fifth and sixth notes in \u2018Happy Birthday.\u2019 Little steps upward and downward like these are generally easier to manage than the big leaps of the national anthem\u2019s beginning.<\/span>
\nDouglas McCall and Bryan Nichols\/Penn State University<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The social influence of singing<\/h2>\n

In a recent lab meeting, one research assistant asked, \u201cWhat if the reason we sing \u2018Happy Birthday\u2019 wrong is because we hear it sung poorly so often?\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t yet know the answer to whether people learn songs incorrectly to begin with and if that\u2019s part of what makes the songs so hard. Add to this that the research says some children seem to sing better alone<\/a> while others seem to sing better with other voices. This means that singing a more difficult song like \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d is actually a complex task with multiple variables, including what part of the range you try to sing it in and whether you or someone else has chosen the starting note for you.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, people don\u2019t think they sing as well as they actually do. Children in one study who formed a \u201cpoor singer\u201d experimental group<\/a> were actually determined to be quite accurate pitch-wise once the researcher identified a good range for their singing voice and heard them sing alone. For adults who aren\u2019t sure about their own singing ability, chances are you\u2019re quite normal. Very few people have amusia<\/a>, which means they can\u2019t hear changes in pitches and can\u2019t know if they\u2019re singing the right note or not. Likely, you\u2019re not one of them.<\/p>\n

So what should we sing?<\/h2>\n

Thinking back to the karaoke room, I chose that duet because I was confident Bradley Cooper\u2019s part fit my range. (I even tried it at home first.)<\/p>\n

So here is some advice from the researchers of the Happy Birthday Club: Don\u2019t judge your singing skills on familiar cultural songs; they\u2019re just not good measures of our singing abilities. Instead, target the songs and the artists that you like, and then try to identify the music that fits your range the best. If the range is good for you, you\u2019re much more likely to enjoy and find ease in singing it.<\/p>\n

Nearly all pop songs have a very small range, so that may be a good place to start. Find the notes that fit you best, and give them a try at home or the next time you find yourself on a karaoke stage.<\/p>\n

[You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors.<\/em> You can get our highlights each weekend<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Bryan Nichols<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Music, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bryan Nichols, Pennsylvania State University Some friends and I recently went to karaoke. You can likely picture the scene: a restaurant adjacent to a bowling alley with a cheerful crowd and enthusiastic DJ aiming lights at a small stage. We sang a popular duet, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper\u2019s \u201cShallow,\u201d to the room\u2019s applause, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[53,7586,3232,541,7714,7715],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19772,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19766\/revisions\/19772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}