Is there a neurological difference between singing and talking?

[Skhandelwal]

Technically and philosophically speaking, where do we really draw a line weather a person is singing or talking?

 

[yamini]

a tune will b there in singing but in talking those r just words

 

[Math Is Hard]

Is there a lack of "melody" in speech? Not completely. As people speak, pitch rises and falls. Diana Deutsch researches auditory perception and illusions, and she has an interesting example of a piece of a sentence, that when looped, seems very much like it is being "sung".

http://philomel.com/phantom_words/description.html#sometimes

In our final demonstration, speech is made to be heard as song, and this is achieved without transforming the sounds in any way, or by adding any musical context, but simply by repeating a phrase several times over. The demonstration is based on a sentence at the beginning of the CD Musical Illusions and Paradoxes. When you listen to this sentence in the usual way, it appears to be spoken normally - as indeed it is. However, when you play the phrase that is embedded in it: 'sometimes behave so strangely' over and over again, a curious thing happens. At some point, instead of appearing to be spoken, the words appear to be sung, rather as in the figure below

You can play the audio clip on the website link. It really does sound like singing (to me, anyway), even more so after a few repetitions.

 

[DaveC426913]

Both singing and speech do use pitch but they put it toward different goals.

In speech, the pitch is used to impart structure to the meaning of the content. Try saying a complex phrase with no inflection. This is easily demonstrated if you read out of a book or newspaper to a friend. Without the correct inflection, the sentences (if they're complex enough) may run together and meaning can be completely lost.

In song, the pitch is used more or less independent of the meaning of the words, concentrating instead on the melody. The key here is that it would still sound just as nice if the words weren't there - i.e. hummed.


As an aside, I find myself unique among everyone I know in that, to me, lyrics of a song are irrelevant. I hear the vocals of a song as if they are a musical instrument (albeit a very complex one);

I am almost unable to understand the meaning of a song's words unless I take some time to extract and dispose of the melodic component, hearing the words as speech.

My current theory is that my left and right brains communicate poorly when listening to music. I can listen with either my left (speech) brain, or my right (music) brain - but not both.

 

[daveb]

You could probably also say that singing uses specific sound frequencies, along with tempo, depending on the scale used (many non-Western musical scales have other than half/whole steps), whereas talking does not have specific pitch frequency and/or tempo. However, this creates a grey area. Some people would certainly consider rap and other forms of spoken word recordings (Henry Rollins, etc.) as music.

 

[ank_gl]

no line in between, either i talk or i sing, people get irritated

 

[FulhamFan3]

From personal experience I can say that there is a big difference between singing and talking and I am not just talking about pitch or rhythm.

I have a moderate stutter and there are times when I speak that I am unable to get any words across. However I have NEVER stuttered while singing. I am not unique either. I remember reading about someone who could sing opera but it was nearly impossible for her to speak to anyone due to her severe stutter. Neurologically speaking there must be a difference between the two.