I was listening to kpop (don’t judge) and I was wondering what specifically made the singer’s voice sound so pleasant, even though they were singing in a language I don’t understand. Is it something you can practice or is it simply something that you are born with?
In: Biology
To directly answer the question, what makes a voice sound pleasant is the range and number of different frequencies produced when singing. (If we only produced the exact pitch of a note, we’d sound like old-school synthesizers- harsh and robotic.) Every singer produces additional frequencies that blend together to produce the timbre or tone color of their voice. This is easy to demonstrate by singing into an oscilloscope, which visually displays the frequencies. Two different voices will have very different imprints, so to speak.
This is absolutely something that can be changed, to a degree. That is why we have voice teachers, who lead students through ranges of exercises over time to hone their sound.
In addition to the sound of the voice itself, the other things that matter are singing in tune, diction and vowel shaping, dynamics, expression, etc.
While it’s pretty unlikely that you could take any random person and turn them into an opera singer, every single person can improve their singing voice with proper training and practice!
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