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Comment by meixyz | Hacker News Reader

For all those who think they're not talented and therefore can't learn how to sing, some good news here: Learning to sing is a matter of coordinating and strengthening muscles, so it can be practiced and improved just like anything else. The predisposition is largely the same for everybody (vocal pathologies excluded).

The reason why most people can't just naturally sing well is that singing is not a primary biological function, but a bi-product of a survival mechanism (vocal folds, aka airflow control / airway protection).

The muscles interacting with the vocal folds (thyroarytenoid and cricothyroid) have antagonistic function and work on reflexes rather than control, so the hard part of learning how to sing is to train them to coordinate properly rather than work against each other.

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>For all those who think they're not talented and therefore can't learn how to sing, some good news here: Learning to sing is a matter of coordinating and strengthening muscles, so it can be practiced and improved just like anything else. The predisposition is largely the same for everybody (vocal pathologies excluded).

When I got children I started singing for them almost every night. After doing that for some years now it's incredible how much better my singing has become (for me at least). Before that I didn't dare to sing when other people could hear me, but now I have no problems with that. I really enjoy singing for my kids and look forward to it every evening.

If that's true, why do some multi-person bands have some good looking people that can't sing, even after decades of going? Do they not practice every day? These are famous people but I never seem to have seen any famous bad singer which eventually becomes a good singer.

Ed Sheeran seems to have gone from objectively awful to subjectively passable. There is a clip of him on british TV host Graham Norton’ show playing a recording of some pretty terrible singing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ed+sheeran+graham+norton+bad...

Shouldn't there be many examples though?

There's so many examples of famous fat people that got skinny. I really struggle with this idea that it's all just muscle / muscle control to sing well under the lack of examples.

Huge thanks for your thorough feedback. Do you have some links for this info that I can examine?

Btw. I'm investigating how I can map the traditional Vs CVT without doing too much confusion. I'm leaning towards keeping traditional and adding cvi notes. And a mapping page.

Let's see

I've been taking classes for one year when I was in uni, about 15 years ago. I have always had the problem that I would run out of voice after 1-2 songs. My teacher at the time kept saying my problem was that I had to strengthen and use the diaphragm, which I did but only made little progress. Eventually, since every class felt like defeat, I gave up. Did I just not train enough? Likely. Do you have any advice to share?

Just like any physical activity it's a balance of technical efficiency and strength/endurance.

I'd argue efficiency is far more important for singing because the vocal system is very delicate and injury prone

I just would get a different teacher. Not every teacher is a good fit for every student.

To me it sounds like you were not using the proper technique or didn't warm up enough and your teacher wasn't able to guide into the right direction.

Thanks for posting this. I hate (frequently) hearing people conclude that because they haven't previously learned to sing or play an instrument, that they're simply "not musical," as if this weren't a normal capacity that simply takes practice.

I like the message but I think it's worth tempering people's expectations. I spent years working with a few different voice teachers and the amount of practice and dedication you need is substantial. Even after the best part of a decade I am unable to belt.

Was looking for this comment. You articulate it well. Many people claim they "can't sing" but when they try it's clear to me they just have an underdeveloped muscle control

Some people can't tell if the note they're singing is the same as the note they just heard. This is also learnable but it's not as simple as just muscle control

> they just have an underdeveloped muscle control

I'm perfectly willing to grant that this is the usual case, but since I'm not interested enough in being able to sing well to dedicate a lot of effort to it, it doesn't matter. I probably wouldn't sing if I had the voice of an angel.

If God gave you some incredible talent I would hope you use it well, not spoil the world with a rotten attitude and keeping it hidden

Totally!! I mean, like everything else in life there are people with more innate skills for it and people with less, but again like everything in life if you put the right amount of effort you can go from zero to "hey you are not bad!".

In my case, I've always had good musical hear but I always struggled with anything passing (I think) B4. Now, 3 years ago I joined a totally amateur choir and our (wonderful) teacher makes us do every week 15 minutes of breathing/belt exercises. Not a lot, and it was pretty hard getting the right coordination in the beginning but eventually stuck. And now I can reach D5 and even E5 when pushing out all the air I can. It's still a bit complicated to control the volume at that pitch but I would never ever imagined I could do it 3 years ago!

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