What's up with people not being able to sing Happy Birthday?

[kayaker]

If I could sing I’d be busy with groupies right now. But I can’t, nor do I enjoy feebly attempting. To be a good sport I join in when everyone else is singing, but I’d just as soon skip it.

[pulykamell]

@Lucas_Jackson

Same here. I love to sing but no matter how I try or practice I suck at it. It’s a talent you are born with.

Even though I can’t sing for shit, I suspect that the vast majority of people can eke out a reasonable tune with practice. I’m just basing this on observations of people I knew who were shit singers to start but ended up joining a church choir or whatnot and, over time, actually could reasonably hold a tune. And if I practice my scales along with the piano or guitar, I can briefly hold a tune (though my timbre is awful). But a minority of people really do seem to be tone deaf.

[pulykamell]

@AHunter3

But a randomly chosen cluster of four years olds does a much better job. A party-full of 10 year olds nails it.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. From attending kids parties, it sounds cacophonous to me even with 4 and 10 year olds.

[Derleth]

@pulykamell

You’re talking about the duration of notes, not the pitch. And while the note lengths you mention are the basic ones, you can have triplets, quintuplets, etc. so the length don’t necessarily have to correspond to a power of two. For example, an eighth note triplet would be 1/3 the duration of a quarter note. You might be also be thinking of time signatures, which 99.99% of the time are over a power of two, but there are twentieth century and beyond exceptions to this.

If someone just confused the radio for the cruise control, bringing up fuel injection and ignition timing isn’t going to clarify things.

The music experts obviously know it’s a simple song. Everyone agrees with that much. What we don’t agree with is this:

@AHunter3

Umm, you don’t know have to know “this is where I go up a fifth” or “we’re doing this in C” in order to be on the note and go up where it goes up. People learn how to sing by imitation. And everyone knows the damn tune. Everyone in the western hemisphere knows how the song goes.

Humans learn words and stress patterns by imitation. We know that much because language relies on it pretty universally. Humans can learn tonality by imitation as well, but no human tonal language has a tonality so nitpicky it ascribes semantic distinctions to going up a fifth or talking in C as opposed to ending a syllable with a rising or falling tone. You can pretty well notate human language tonality with diacritics on vowels, as in Pinyin, and you do not need the full machinery of musical notation or anything approaching it.

@AHunter3

But a randomly chosen cluster of four years olds does a much better job. A party-full of 10 year olds nails it. That’s despite the handful of people who have a tin ear or the person who can’t get up to the high note and does something screechy and flat.

I’m talking about adults doing a massively worse job on the song than kids do when they sing it.

I didn’t know what I was doing then. I don’t know what I’m doing now. If I’m doing it worse, it’s incipient senility or some other tariff of age.

And that’s granting your underlying point, which isn’t something I’ve observed. People of all ages sound just as good, or bad, on average to me.

@Lucas_Jackson

Same here. I love to sing but no matter how I try or practice I suck at it. It’s a talent you are born with.

Example: art ability. I spent a large part of my life as a professional artist. I’ve been a commercial illustrator, I’ve been a logo designer and I’ve sold a respectable amount of fine art. I’ve also taught art at a private school. To me, reproducing what you are looking at with a pad and pencil is as natural as breathing. Yet there are people that no matter how much they want to be artists, no matter how they practice or how well they are taught will never be that good at it. At least with Happy Birthday it’s always for fun and casual.

ETA: Everyone in the western hemisphere knows what the Mona Lisa looks like too, that doesn’t mean they can paint one.

I agree with all of this, and I’ll add one more thing:

Everyone can learn to program, but it might well take a special mindset to debug, by which I mean finding and fixing problems in a systematic fashion. Debugging is the most scientific part of programming, in that it’s logical thinking with hypothesis testing aimed at the rejection of theories. Anyone can copy-paste-modify programs to get new code which does something, but if you throw up your hands and quit when the code does something you don’t expect, you can’t debug, and I have no idea how you’d teach that debugging mindset.

[K364]

Tried starting on what I thought was the “normal” note. Went to the piano: it was a D and in the key of G.

The work “to” is up a 4th, not a 5th.

[pulykamell]

@Derleth

If someone just confused the radio for the cruise control, bringing up fuel injection and ignition timing isn’t going to clarify things.

Hey, I hardly even went into detail! Quarter notes = length of note; “fifths” and “thirds,” etc is pitch relationship between the notes. I had to add the bit about triplets because it’s not quite true that the lengths of notes are powers of two. And the time signature stuff is in case they’re confusing it with another concept. I refrained from explaining how a fifth is seven semi-tones between two notes, and what a semitone is, and all that stuff. Or end that a fifth is the space between the do and sol in do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do solfiege.

But, to summarize and simplify:

Quarter notes, eighth notes = rhythm (duration)
Fifths, octaves = pitch (or, more exactly, the relationship between two pitches.)

[EmilyG]

I think it’s a matter of people in a group not all having similar voice ranges.

[pulykamell]

@K364

Tried starting on what I thought was the “normal” note. Went to the piano: it was a D and in the key of G.

The work “to” is up a 4th, not a 5th.

Heh. Nice catch, but it does depend which “to” he’s talking about. It’s a fourth the first time, and a fifth the second time (although you’d think the OP would mention it, given that’s they’re two different intervals and the fifth is the “to” the second time around, not the first.)

[DrFidelius]

My singing always sounds great and right to me, but folks not using my ears disagree.

[John_Mace]

The beauty of the group Happy Birthday is that it’s an awful mess. If it sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you’d think something was wrong.

[BigT]

@pulykamell

Heh. Nice catch, but it does depend which “to” he’s talking about. It’s a fourth the first time, and a fifth the second time (although you’d think the OP would mention it, given that’s they’re two different intervals and the fifth is the “to” the second time around, not the first.)

In the video I linked, I’m pretty sure the kid sings the same interval for both. I think that’s what he’s describing–it’s as if the kid didn’t even know the two times are different.

BTW, I still agree that what the OP describes sounds especially bad, beyond what normally happens. It’s not that it’s normally good, but people do know the song.

I still think it’s just normal people singing with one person who is loud but completely off, and everyone naturally accommodating them, since it’s actually hard to sing in two different keys at once. We naturally try to sing in unison if we are listening at all.

[AHunter3]

@pulykamell

@K364

Tried starting on what I thought was the “normal” note. Went to the piano: it was a D and in the key of G.

The work “to” is up a 4th, not a 5th.

Heh. Nice catch, but it does depend which “to” he’s talking about. It’s a fourth the first time, and a fifth the second time (although you’d think the OP would mention it, given that’s they’re two different intervals and the fifth is the “to” the second time around, not the first.)

I sort of did, but I wasn’t as overt about it as I could have been. Here’s the relevant section of the OP:

“Happy birthday to you” let’s say they did this much more or less in the key of C

“Happy birthday to you” this was badly mangled, with several people apparently unable to figure out how to get to the right pitch on “to” – it goes up a 5th. This isn’t difficult. WTF??

Note that I list two consecutive lines as “Happy birthday to you”. Then I follow each musical line with snide comments. I assumed it was self-evident that the second mention meant the second occurrence which is indeed a fifth.

I’m off work and finished dinner so I’m gonna YouTube something.

[AHunter3]

[del]I’m off work and finished dinner so I’m gonna YouTube something.[/del] too much trouble

[aceplace57]

I’ve seen restaurant staff use a pitch pipe before singing to the lucky birthday customer.

They sound pretty good. I guess singing it several times a week helps.

[Alley_Dweller]

@aceplace57

I’ve seen restaurant staff use a pitch pipe before singing to the lucky birthday customer.

They sound pretty good. I guess singing it several times a week helps.

But most restaurant staff were performing arts majors in college.

[pulykamell]

@AHunter3

Note that I list two consecutive lines as “Happy birthday to you”. Then I follow each musical line with snide comments. I assumed it was self-evident that the second mention meant the second occurrence which is indeed a fifth.

Ah, it wasn’t clear to me, but I see how you meant it now.

[Spiderman]

@Alley_Dweller

But most restaurant staff were performing arts majors in college.

Then just where do all of those performing arts majors get jobs?
As for me, I couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles & the only way I could sing on key is if I dropped one on the floor & stepped on it. :o
I am fully aware of this, so I don’t do karaoke. You’re welcome!

[Kent_Clark]

When I opened this thread, I thought I knew how to sing Happy Birthday. After just 37 posts I’m afraid to even open my mouth!

[Alley_Dweller]

@Spiderman

Then just where do all of those performing arts majors get jobs?

At restaurants.

They fill out applications just like anybody else. I’m not sure I understand your question.

[running_coach]

@Spiderman

Then just where do all of those performing arts majors get jobs?
As for me, I couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles & the only way I could sing on key is if I dropped one on the floor & stepped on it. :o
I am fully aware of this, so I don’t do karaoke. You’re welcome!

I can carry a tune in a bucket. Makes everyone around me want to kick the bucket.