Why can people hum certain high/low notes but can’t sing them?
In: Biology
When you hum, your throat isn’t contracted as much as it is to support open mouthed singing. You are able to pitch better humming than singing. This is because of your support muscles… diamond of support… starting from your central pelvic bone, along to your hip bones and up to your diaphragm. When you hum, you engage these muscles naturally, thats how you’ve learnt to support yourself. However, we speak all the time and become lazy, when we talk or sing you do not engage these muscles causing ourselves harm and also the inability to reach our full potential range. Now, by engaging these muscles (essentially pelvic flaw) the throat is supported and held in place causing the vowels or words you produce to be stronger and therefore more supported to extend your upper and lower range.
Source: singing teacher
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.
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.
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