Why can people hum certain high/low notes but can’t sing them?
In: Biology
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.
surely if you can hum a note you just open your mouth and then you are singing it? or am I missing something
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.
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.
I don’t know if in my 35 year lifespan I have ever noticed a disparity between humming and singing notes.
It’s also easier if you use your support muscles so if you do a long ‘sigh’, so to speak, whilst humming.
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
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.
Vowels and consonants stress your vocal cords and cause them to constrict or relax. When you’re humming, your vocal cords aren’t constricting whatsoever which allows them to relax, giving you a fair bit more range when humming.
Be honest: how many people just tried humming really high pitched as the first thing they did upon entering this thread?
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