Singing ability in the general population
  • gregpgregp
    Posts: 632
    Recently I realized that I had witnessed a semi-controlled experiment of sorts, and I thought I would mention it here to see whether anyone else had experienced the same thing.

    In most of the 'casual' restaurants I have been to, when there is a birthday the serving staff will gather around and sing either "Happy Birthday" or some other birthday-related song. Most of the time, these servers are under the age of 30, and the singing, to put it mildly, is terrible. Someone starts (usually on too low a pitch), and the people who join in are niether in tune nor even singing together. Now, I can attribute some (most?) of this to the fact that they really don't want to be doing this in the first place, but I would hope that SOMEONE in all those groups I've heard would be trying to do more than just croak their way through, be done with it, and go back to work.

    In contrast, I recently heard a random group of women, almost all of them over 60, and most of them over 70, sing "Happy Birthday" in a similar setting (i.e., not organized in any way, a capella) and sing together in unison almost as if they were a choir (they were doing water aerobics at the time).

    My question is this: have you heard this? And, is this just an age/experience/activity-currently-being-engaged-in phenomenon, or was there a sufficient societal change over the last 60 years that makes it very difficult for your normal young person to sing off the cuff, while older people have no trouble? Or is my data sample size too small for this to be meaningful?
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,960
    As a retired teacher, my experience has been that music instruction and art are the first to get the axe during budget cuts. Kids don't sing like they once did, and perhaps no one is teaching them to sing. Even at home, music competes with ipods, smartphones, computer games and the like. What you heard is something I have been commenting on for years.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 978
    Music in churches is the first thing to be cut, too.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,175
    First of all, your data sample is way too small. The two "semi-controlled experiment[s]" are anecdotal at best. They might be, in some sense, representative of a trend or tendency, but they are not statistically significant. Furthermore, the "control" isn't merely by age between the two groups, as you mention the serving staff mentality of the younger group versus the water aerobics environment of the older group; in addition, the first group was (presumably) of mixed gender, while the second group was a group of women.

    Other possible factors may be related to the roughly 40 year age difference between the two groups. Two or more of these factors are quite possibly due to the differences in both the quality and amount of musical education and training the members of the two groups have had. Secular music genres and singing styles 50 or so years ago are not at all like those of 10 or so years ago. School music programs back then were quite different from those in the current millenium, both in quality and in extent of instruction. Furthermore, much of modern singing is oriented away from group or unison singing and toward (usually poor) pop-style solo singing. Finally, there are surely family and social environmental differences, including the current reliance upon every conceivable form of digital entertainment media for most musical stimulation, as opposed media of a much more primitive technology in the 1950s and 1960s that came nowhere near the saturation that we suffer today.

    Do these factors impact the learned ability of people to sing? I believe the answer is yes. But, whether these factors relate directly to singing ability as an inherent trait is extremely difficult to gauge.
    Thanked by 2gregp marajoy
  • rjgrigaitisrjgrigaitis
    Posts: 46
    Last spring, I witnessed a number of my daughter's schoolmates sing Happy Birthday to one of their peers, all of whom were in their early to mid twenties. I have never heard Happy Birthday sung so beautifully before, especially the harmony at the end. However, the song was sung at the end of the birthday girl's senior recital for her Bachelor of Music, and everyone who sang was either in the music program or taking a music minor. Not really your average group of young people.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • canadashcanadash
    Posts: 1,501
    I think the problem is education and the fact that we listen to a lot of "pop" (or whatever you'd like to call it) music. People do not want to hear/learn head tone singing, which good singing requires. Then they learn to sing off-pitch.
  • Mark P.
    Posts: 248
    I had the opportunity to hear the Indian national anthem "Jana Gana Mana" at a ceremony at the Consul General of India's home. It was sung beautifully by a very random group of attendees of all ages. I was struck by how different this was from a restaurant version of "Happy Birthday." The ability to match pitch has been seriously compromised in our own time.
Add a Comment