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
When they dont know what their saying. My brother comes in & just rambles, it really grates.
Your natural physiology plays a lot into it. I will never sing like Freddy Mercury but I’ve been told I have a nice voice.
Singing, in particular, takes a lot of practice and you’re not going to have a “good voice” right away even if you have a naturally pleasant voice. When you sing, you’re making a musical instrument of your body, and it takes as much patience and practice as any other musical instrument.
Hearing your own voice.
That’s generally considered unpleasant unless your ego is particularly large.
It’s definitely something you can practice. As someone who has studied voice and taken a lot of voice lessons, I’ve been taught that a key to sounding good (both when speaking and singing) is *keeping it in the mask*. This is a pretty ambiguous phrase, but what it basically means is that when singing, the sound should be allowed to resonate around in your sinuses and the cavities in your face. This allows the voice to have rich overtones, regardless of whether or not you have a low or high voice, are male or female. Without it, the voice will sound dull. With it, there is a distinctive *ping* to the voice, a nice brassy quality that is somehow both warm and cutting at the same time.
A side effect of this that I’ve personally experienced is that my speaking voice has become louder and much more clear. I used to constantly have people asking me to speak up, but since learning how to allow my voice to resonate, I can speak without feeling as though I am shouting.
Ok, I teach music at a high school for a living and one of the ensembles I teach is a choir. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this so let me clarify a couple of points. Everyone can be a pleasing singer. The first challenge is having a solid sense of pitch. [Musictheory.net](https://www.musictheory.net/exercises) has a bunch of really excellent explanations of music theory and then a great ear training segment that can help a person develop an idea of pitch. So anyone can learn this and be able to sing in their own voice if they are willing to experiment. THAT BEING SAID, some people have much more resonant voices than others and there is fuck all we can do about that. It’s really all about being as relaxed as possible when one sings. Some people happen to have a very relaxed neck setup and sound amazing with little effort. I used to think it had something to do with having a bigger build with a resonant chamber but I’ve seen small framed people have amazing sounds as well. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some singers who were had more notes then other people and there isn’t anything we can do about it. It’s like working out, you might not be able to have the exact body you want but if you exercise and lift some weights, you can still be attractive in your own way. Even the best of voices doesn’t function without a sense of pitch. The best singers I had weren’t the ones with the most notes, but the ones who could hear pitches, sing expressively, and remember their music.
People refer to that as “timbre” and can describe several different specific qualities of a voice. It can be smooth, rough, thin, full, etc. It is extremely subjective as to whether you like a singer’s tonal qualities.
For example I really can’t stand Carrie Underwood’s voice as I think it has a shrill quality that I can’t quite describe, but millions of other people absolutely love her voice which is totally fine. For a kpop example my favorite vocalist is probably Wendy from RV, she has an extremely smooth and slightly smoky, powerful voice but I would totally understand if someone else didn’t really like her so much.
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!
It can be learned. Anybody can sing well with enough dedication. I’m a voice teacher, and I couldn’t even sing Mary Had a little lamb until I was almost 18 years old. But I wanted to sing so I started taking lessons, now ten years later I am a professional singer and voice teacher.
The biggest difference between what makes a voice sound pleasant or unpleasant is “resonance”. When we sing parts of our bodies and skulls act as resonators for the sound being produced from our vocal folds. Specifically the pharynx and nasopharynx. Those are our “primary resonators” for singing. There are other factors involved in pleasant sounding singing vs unpleasant such as intonation, emotion, musicality etc. Classical Italian style singing is called “Bel Canto” singing which literally means “beautiful sound” and is completely based around the concept of beautiful resonance.
There’s a lot more that goes into it but that’s the closest I can get to explaining like your 5. (though I definitely failed at hitting that mark too lol)
There’s different factors that go into the answer. For example, someone who can sing every note in the right key will probably be more pleasant sounding. This is something you can work on.
There’s also the timbre of a person’s voice. Some voices resonate very well in the person’s body, and that can make the singing sound very pleasant. Most people will have a particular range of notes where their voice sounds very good resonating in their own chest and head. This is genetic, but by learning the range where your voice resonates well with your own body, you can improve this.
Similarly, your voice will resonate differently in different places, and you can improve this by picking a good place to sing. You’ll notice a lot of singers record home demos in echoing places like bathrooms and kitchens.
Finally, everyone has their own unique voice, and some people will just subjectively like the sound of certain voices. Some people love Bob Dylan’s voice, for example. Others hate it. This is hard to change, although you can adjust your own voice to some extent, or sometimes to a great extent. It just depends on the person.
Maybe I missed it but I’m surprised no one has given a technical answer — what about a sound (not just a voice) — makes it pleasant or unpleasant. I won’t say I’m an expert on acoustics, but much of any pleasant sound comes from the mix of primary and harmonic tones. (The mix of frequencies basically, with certain ratios complementing each other…this is what another commenter referred to as timbre and is also much of what gives an instrument its distinctive sound.)
So that’s one part of a voice. Another part is that our vocal chords make our voice a mix of wind instrument and percussion, but I’m not sure how to describe that succinctly. That doesn’t even get into the role your teeth and tongue play into cleanly, precisely letting air pass over and through them.
Another “why” question is, why do we prefer certain vocal qualities over others? My assumption for all this stuff is evolution. A smooth, resonant voice in a male would be a proxy for health and strength. A smooth, sweet voice in a female would be a proxy for health and ability to comfort a child (though that’s a chicken and egg thing I guess). In contrast, a rough voice would be a proxy for everything from susceptibility to illness to bad oral/dental health, availability of sleep, and genetic disorders.
Latest Answers