Why can people hum certain high/low notes but can’t sing them?

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Why can people hum certain high/low notes but can’t sing them?

In: Biology

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s like certain vowels. You can sing them it just requires different amounts of breath and people who hum a note prolly aren’t putting enough into their chest or too much into their chest to correctly sing it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Humming makes it easier to achieve certain kinds of resonances in the throat and nasal cavity necessary to create these tones, especially higher tones. Doing this while singing requires much more training and practice with breath control and vocal placement.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Certain vowel sounds stress or tighten the vocal cords more than others. For example, singing a high pitched “ee” sound is harder than a high pitched “oh” sound. When you hum, your vocal cords don’t need to differentiate vowel sounds and instead produce sound in a more relaxed state.

Anonymous 0 Comments

surely if you can hum a note you just open your mouth and then you are singing it? or am I missing something

Anonymous 0 Comments

I don’t know if in my 35 year lifespan I have ever noticed a disparity between humming and singing notes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s also easier if you use your support muscles so if you do a long ‘sigh’, so to speak, whilst humming.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I can sing all notes I can hum. And I got REALLY good falsetto. I’m really thinking about finding a proper teacher who knows more about it.
Because being a broad shouldered, strong, and a welder, being able to sing from really high register with a nice voice is a good party trick. No but really I also like it.

But I assume by hum you mean actual sustained tone, and not low gurgling or high nose noise.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Each different ‘voice’ has a different vocal range. For example for males, it’s easy to hit very high notes in falsetto (think justin timberlake/Barry gibb) but it sounds a bit weak and it’s difficult to hit low pitches that way. They most likely couldn’t hit the same notes using their ‘head voice’ or ‘stomach voice’. Head voice is a level lower, stomach one is lower again.

Source – Studied music at degree level

Anonymous 0 Comments

When you hum you’re engaging different resonators, specifically your nose (which is why you can’t hum while holding your nose closed). You can actually engage this resonator with your mouth open too, if people sound “nasally” while singing they might be resonating more from their nose than their chest/mouth/mask/etc.

Ideally when you sing in “bel canto”, you want to resonate from your “mask”, which, from my understanding, is kind of like your sinus cavity along your cheeks to your ears. Resonating in your nose might give you that ease of “bel canto” without the difficulty of placing the sound in your “mask”.

It also produces a quieter sound that’s basically impossible to force/push. Less tension=easier singing=wider range.

I, however, find it harder to hum the very very bottom of my range because that part of your voice wants to resonate lower (in your chest, hence “chest voice”).

I think the easiest way to sing high notes is actually to think about the sound resonating in the crown of your head (think about imitating a whimper or a puppy crying), although that’s more similar to a hum.

Humming generally is the best tool to unleash the middle part of your range, particularly when you’re dealing with tension. Use a nasalized sound like NG to lead into an open vowel.

If you can hum a note, you should be able to sing it with a little practice.

I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but hopefully it helps you understand some of the mechanics of singing vs. humming!

Source: I’m not an expert but have a BFA in music and have taken 8+ years of voice lessons.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If they can hum the notes they should be able to sing them too. What happens is that they start doing something differently when singing, like tightening their throat or changing the volume.