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
With speech. There is a LOT of soft rules people expect. Some frequencys just dont clash togeather, and some people have a voice in those frequencies. Also things like wrong intonation for the setting. Or your formants are to weak.. Things like up talking or down talking to much. Which gets into the gender expectation problem there. Along with general feminine, masculine voices. We expect men to have bass, lower fundemental tone then women. Also harsh nasally tones and having thin peaks in your voice. In a loud setting, everyone sounds worse because you only hear the peaks and thus the voice sounds thin and grating…. And this gets into a problem. Is there a universal bias for some vocal tones more then others. That can be sexist, racist, etc And like most things, does this lead to prejudice, say if you are being hired for a marketing position
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.
When you figure out the answer let me know so I can fix this broken trombone of a voice I have.
not related, but what song/singer?
Good pitch and breath control are important, and being able to sing more than one octave or do tricks with your voice adds to it even more.
Well. Musically, we have notes that are pleasent to our ears (C D E F G A B). And music transcends language.
Sorry this is not very helpful is it?
This is probably just for me but when I hear someone with a nasally voice/accent I can’t stand listening to them talk.
Sorry Americans. It’s not a nice sound.
>pleasant / unpleasant
Intensely grounded in one’s cultural background.
Vocal tones / voices that people from one culture might find pleasant for one reason or another may be *highly* irritating to people from another. And that’s not considering the issue of individual preference.
The best example I can think of at the moment is the voices that some Japanese women affect. I find them grating and incredibly irritating, but some people find them exceptionally attractive and cute.
In short, outside of voices well outside the average human vocal range, it’s not really something you can pin down to a universal.
**Edit:** To stick with your example of k-pop, I really enjoy Psy, but his most frequently used voice isn’t what I would consider a great voice insofar as singing goes.
Similarly, I really don’t care for Justin Timberlake’s singing voice; I think it’s nasal and overly affected. But clearly I’m in the minority as far as that goes.
Most of these comments have to do with pitch and vocal quality and production tricks but as a professional musician I want to note that we have to take into account the actual music/writing/arrangement/language. Kpop uses more musically dense writing (more chords, more elaborate progressions, more sonic candy in general) whole Western pop is usually pretty minimal. The lyrics of a song play a huge roll in it sounding pleasant as well – some consonant/vowel sounds just sound better than others. The producer Max Martin who’s worked with every major pop act since he broke Britney’s career calls this ‘Melodic Math’ – the amount of syllables and sound of the words being more important than the lyrical content. People relate to music for loads of different reasons, it sounds like you relate to Kpop specifically for its sonic qualities.
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