Even if it’s not the same, it may still be close enough. How can we know what to do with the vocal chords in order to reproduce the sound?
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Same as any other physical task you might perform, such as walking, reaching for a glass, etc. You’ve watched babies, toddlers, and little kids practicing and honing those skills, and we all have, too. We take it for granted later on, but there was a time when all of those were a struggle for us. It’s not different here. It’s the coordination of muscle control and feedback, to obtain a desired result.
I was raised a singer, and was singing from a very young age, so for me this is like if I asked you to explain walking. I don’t really remember. It was too long ago, and I was very young. But I do know what I’m doing now when I do that, and I know that that’s what’s going on. I hear a tone, and I use conscious muscle control to shape a tone I produce, and my ear tells me if those tones match or are very close.
Not everyone can do it, by the way. Some people are ‘tone deaf’, meaning they either cannot accurately assess the pitch of tones they hear, or cannot accurately reproduce them. Some people can’t sing, for lack or deficiency of some neurological bridge that makes it possible. William Shatner is such a person, whom you’ve probably heard of. So if you have great difficulty with it, don’t feel bad about it.
Otherwise, it’s just a matter of practice, practice, practice.
Talking (and therefor singing) is merely muscle control. What they teach you in music school is how to control that muscle. Like athletes, musicians need to warm up their muscles to avoid damaging them while singing.
When copying a sound, it’s purely muscle memory. Your brain knows how you flexed the muscle to create the sound, so now it’s repeating that same movement.
Looks like I’ve been wasting my life trying to become a human jukebox when I could’ve just talked more.
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