Why do people who stutter, don’t stutter when singing?
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Roger Daltry stuttered while recording a take of “my generation” due to amphetamine use, and he liked it so much he included the stutter as part of the song.
I stutter, and I think I can ELI5 this:
Stuttering is caused by the “change words into sounds” part of your brain not processing the words into sounds fast enough to keep up real-time, so your audio output will sometimes “skip” or “hang.” When you sing, you’re actually not using that same path. Instead, you’re using your “play known sounds” processor, and that process doesn’t take place in real time in the same way, so it doesn’t bog down the processor the same way to “play” an audio clip as it would to create it from scratch.
I have actually beat my own stuttering (mostly) by using this. I plan my sentence like a line in a movie or play, including tone and inflection, and “play the clip,” then pause for a moment if needed to allow the next “clip” to “load” before I “play” it out.
If you stutter, you can test if this will work for you by mimicking a line in a movie or singsonging your words. You’ll probably be surprised how much smoother it comes out!
Interesting fact: Bruce Willis actually has a stutter, but it disappears when he acts, presumably for this same reason.
Not just neurological but also psychological. The more a stutterer pays attention to the stutter, the worse it gets.
This is also along the same lines of why people with foreign accents don’t have them when they sing
Most people who stutter do not stutter when they sing. This is because when you sing, the rhythm of the music helps to control the rhythm of your speech. This makes it easier to speak without stuttering.
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