On the June 30th podcast, you heard some bad singing. Clearly a lot of people think they can sing—just look at the enormous crowds that show up to audition for American Idol. But how many people can actually stay in key?
Scientists think they have an answer, which they presented at a conference on acoustics in Paris on July 2nd. In the first part of the study, the researchers stopped people at random in a Montreal park and asking them to sing Quebec’s anthem. In that park, turns out 40 out of 42 people sounded as good as the pros. That percentage is surprisingly high. Which makes the two people who couldn’t sing especially interesting—why couldn’t they carry a tune?
The researchers repeated the experiment, this time asking people to sing Jingle Bells. They then tested the bad singers’ ability to listen to some music and identify the sour notes. They found that the off-pitch crooners fall into two classes. Those who simply can not hear that they’re hitting the wrong notes. And those who can tell, but keep singing anyway.
在6月30日的播客中，你聽到了一些唱得糟糕的音樂。很明顯很多人自認為歌唱得不錯——只要看看“美國偶像”大眾歌手選秀賽中的海量參與者你就知道了。但是真正有多少人能找得到調呢?
科學家認為他們找到了答案。他們於7月2日在巴黎的一個學術會議上公佈了這個答案。首先，該研究的'科研人員在蒙特利爾公園裡隨機叫住一些人，然後要求他們唱魁北克省的省歌。結果在這個公園裡參加調查的42人中，有40人唱起來跟職業歌手差不多。這個百分比高得出奇。這個結果讓研究人員對那兩個不會唱歌的人尤其感興趣——他們納悶兒為什麼這兩個人找不到調呢?
研究人員重複了實驗，這一次他們讓參與者唱《鈴兒響叮噹》。隨後，研究人員讓唱得不好的人聽音樂，並讓他們識別出那些跑調的音調。最後的結論是：跑調的歌手分為兩種，第一種是他們根本就聽不出來他們跑調了;第二種是他們雖然知道自己跑調了，但是依然跑著調唱下去。
