About people who sing well (). From cave to joy

28/11/05, Delirious
whatever you say, but beautiful voice, which is combined with excellent singing - it's super! What a pleasure it is to close your eyes and enjoy singing!... And the thought is spinning in your head: “If only this would go on and on and on...”:)

29/11/05, Freya
In order to sing well, there is little natural vocal ability. The voice is an instrument, and very complex instrument because each person's voice is unique. And learning to control your voice is much more difficult than learning to play any musical instrument. Therefore, I respect people who develop their voice. This is a lot of work, and not as easy as it seems.

29/11/05, Kramnikkkk
Well here you go different instruments I don't know! After all, I hope you don’t think that the goal of the piano is simply to learn how to quickly move your fingers on the keyboard? There, too, you need to hear every sound, work on every note. So both singers and pianists in their prime must work 10 (without exaggeration) or even 12 hours a day. Paderewski (a pianist from the early 20th century) used to work 17 hours with short breaks.

27/04/07, scarlett91
I have a girl at work. She looks about 16 years old. You could even call her pretty, she is overly plump for her age, I dare say, overweight. She is a very simple, talkative, a little boorish, but peculiar girl. I didn’t pay attention to her before, but recently I’ve been looking at her more and more often. And this is where it started. At work, the radio is playing almost full blast. All the girls who want to start singing along with him, I don’t join them, because... I know that the bear stepped on my ear. Most people have pleasant voices, but nothing more. And then one day I was standing, working, and suddenly I heard such a gentle, flowing soprano. It was the voice of an Angel. I simply cannot express it any other way. Such a melodious and beautiful voice! I stood there as if struck by thunder... Radio!? No, it doesn't seem like a radio. There usually such nasty voices sound like “wait, wait, where are you going?” I turn my head, and it’s her singing! In my opinion, a really good voice is a rarity... Art makes a person beautiful!

28/08/07, Guitarist
What's wrong with a person being able to sing well? You can sing something together with him!)))

05/12/18, LadyWamp
Saroiha, is it bad if a person is proud of his real merits, even those given by nature? Much worse is the unfounded pride of degenerate drunkenness and poverty with their wretched intellect and absolute mediocrity - you encounter this every day, while proud, vocal artists are extremely rare.

Singing is not only art and entertainment. This is a medicine that has no equal! Psychologists say: people who sing a lot live much longer than others. All health benefits remain the same no matter what type of performance a person practices. Singing alone, with music with or without headphones, singing in a choir, in the company of friends, professional vocal lessons, arias while taking a shower - all are equally useful.

Benefits of Singing

Even elderly people suffering from Alzheimer's disease who constantly forget simple words, sing with pleasure and often remember by heart dear to the heart hits! If you are looking for a hobby, singing in a choir - great way spend time with health benefits.

Singing in the car, at home, humming a melody under your breath on the way to work - cheap therapy for diseases nervous system. Invite your friends to enjoy your favorite dinner and tell them about the undeniable benefits of singing!

This is real creative laboratory! A team of true like-minded people, each an expert in their field, united by a common goal: to help people. We create materials that are truly worth sharing, and our beloved readers serve as a source of inexhaustible inspiration for us!

We do not know exactly when people began to sing and play musical instruments. But we are almost sure: what began to sing and play musical instruments was not yet a person. This confidence appeared quite recently, and fifty years ago the whole scientific world fully adhered to the Marxist-Engels point of view on music: man supposedly invented it in order to synchronize with rhythmic shouts the actions of a team that performs tasks requiring coherence working together. For example, you need to move a mammoth carcass or roll a boulder up a mountain, which would be good to cover the entrance to a cave. In a word, “Oh, cudgel, let’s go!” - the source of the musical tradition of mankind.

Singing was also ideal for rhythmizing monotonous activity: “Rub, skin, rub - your son will be tired. Cook, peas, cook - it will be porridge for my daughter.”

A wonderful positive theory, which, however, completely ignored the fact that around the working person, representatives of species that were not noticed in their hard work and did not hunt for mammoths sang songs all day long. And their cheerful “chik-chirik” and “kva-kva” did not become less rhythmic and musical because of this.

In the end individual citizens began to wonder: if all kinds of titmice sing because they want to reproduce, then why did it necessarily have to be invented for a person to come up with some other motive? Hmm... we also use music for this! The serenades alone are worth it. Let us leave these citizens to think further for now and see what is happening in the meantime behind the fence separating physics from metaphysics.

Music of the Spheres

For idealists and romantics, as always, everything was much more colorful and clearer. Music is a gift from the gods, the initial vibration of the universe, the voice of angels. She pacifies animals, moves stones, creates universes. “Of the pleasures of life, music is second only to love.” The harp was invented by Apollo, the lyre by Hermes, and the pipe by Athena. The Bodhisattva descended from heaven to help Toshikage make seven luten koto from the sacred udumbara branch.

People with good hearing usually more emotional

In general, the idea is clear: music - highest form the existence of information, allowing a person, standing on tiptoe, to look into the world of the unknowable with one eye. That is why it is capable of disturbing the soul so much. The love for music is pure, like the love for the beauty of nature, there is nothing selfish, consumerist, or lustful in it. She is irrational, and everything irrational is highly valued by idealists because there is no benefit from it.

By the way, birds, frogs and cicadas also found a place in this picture. All of them, squeaking, gurgling and whistling, are participants in the choir, which glorifies the Lord with a single song of the Earth. Lovely, isn't it?

However, different animals react to music differently. they clearly recognize it and can even sometimes “sing along.” Horses can prance to marches. Songbirds willingly listen to the radio and sometimes try to repeat a song they like. unless your ear turns displeased to a particularly hoarse howl from the speakers. And if you put Mozart or Manson on any wombat, the answer will be complete ignorance, and the carrot crunch will not become one iota more rhythmic. And in this difference in reactions lies the answer to the question of why music seems so beautiful to us.

People are like birds

In fact, neither the idealists nor the materialists were right, and the latter were even more wrong than the former.

Humans like music for one reason and one reason only: we are a species for which sound signals play an important role in life, and the rhythm of these signals, their tonality has always been a way for us to transmit information from individual to individual. In other words, human language began not with words in their modern sense, but with singing, with the transmission of emotions and meanings by tonality and rhythm. Perhaps the first to guess about this was Charles Darwin, who in 1871 wrote literally the following: “The sounds made by birds are in some respects extremely similar to language... Language can be traced back to singing, which could give rise to words expressing different things.” Today this assumption of Darwin is considered completely correct. Last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) presented extensive research confirming this hypothesis.

Shigeru Migayawa, the lead author of the project, points out that only 70–80 thousand years ago our ancestors began to master the lexical component of speech, introducing this innovation into familiar motifs. Until then, we did not speak, but sang, like angels in heaven. Our vocal cords and speech apparatus are one of the most complex musical instruments in nature - convincingly indicate that man is a singing creature. And to this day the intonations still have meaning for us higher value than the meaning of words (if this were not so, sarcasm would not have the slightest chance of survival).

Surprise, sadness, joy, fear, prayer - a person can convey almost any emotion to another, regardless of what languages ​​they speak. It did not extend to the most ancient form of speech. Moreover, other group animals or synanthropic animals can also convey their experiences to us. With some training, we recognize sadness in the moo of a cow, dissatisfaction in a cat's meow, and delight in a dog's bark. But to understand what is wrong, for example, with a wombat, we will have to feel its nose and shove a thermometer in its butt. Because a wombat, as an animal, frankly, antisocial, will not be able to perform for us an aria about its suffering. Not trained, sir.

Human language began with singing

Here are five more interesting facts related to the fact that we started singing before we spoke.

• We easily remember rhythmic text (we remember songs and poems much better and longer than prose).
• Even a professional audience perceives better than the words spoken by him. Experiments were carried out when an actor performed before professional meetings (medics, philologists, etc.), lively and emotionally pronouncing a generally meaningless text with non-existent terms. Only 5–10% of the audience of participants were able to recognize the fake; the rest, when surveyed, highly rated the performance.
• Stutterers practically do not stutter when they sing.
• 50% of the sounds made by mothers handling their newborns are deprived lexical meaning(all these “usi-pusi”, “nu-nu”, “plut-plut-plut-plut”). But the intonation coloring of these lisps is extremely variable and abundant, because from the point of view of the mother’s evolutionary program, the most important thing for a child is to first learn to recognize the emotions of other members of the group.
• People with a good ear for music are usually more emotional and sensitive than people who have had their ears torn by bears. Famous singers, musicians and poets were much more likely to be neurotic and hysterical than, for example, writers, scientists and military leaders.

You need to get used to music

Studying the songs of starlings, Soviet naturalist Maxim Zverev was amazed at their variability. A young starling, entering the age of reproduction, is own song, focusing on the loudest and most characteristic sounds in the area. Not only does it weave rhythms and sounds popular among other starlings into its mating songs, but it can also meow like a cat, croak like a frog, and imitate herons, swallows and jays. And Zverev himself enriched starling folklore with the sounds of a typewriter - several young birds living under his window admired this wonderful crackling sound and included it in their repertoire, throwing into the dustbin of history all these “peep-peep” and “click-click” that their mother taught them and dad (“peep-peek” and “click-click” do not attract the attention of a teenage bird, do not force him to listen to them, since they are too familiar). But the older the bird gets, the less often it learns fashionable novelties, preferring to sing the same thing that it performed for beautiful ladies in youth.

With a person everything happens about the same. At first, we master the “okays”, which seem to program our musical gene code forever, but, entering puberty, we are ready to rethink these “okays” somewhat. Like starlings among the Zverev lilacs, we look around and listen to what kind of songs the coolest males sing. (The starlings, of course, did not regard Maxim Dmitrievich himself as the alpha male of the entire area - they heard the clicking, incredible in volume and tirelessness, and greatly respected the invisible guy.)

So a certain conventional Vasya, who now greatly values ​​witch house, because only the most cool guys know what it is, clearly follows his father, who once learned to stick his tongue out to his Adam’s apple no worse than Gene Simmons. And together with dad, they are worthy heirs of Vasya’s great-great-grandfather, who tormented Talyanka at a party with factory girls, because a real chic gentleman can certainly play “Marusya got poisoned” so that it brings tears (“Your Grace’s napkin, Akulina Makarovna, what’s up to us Don't you think?").

Stutterers don't stutter when they sing

There is no art world whose styles change so rapidly as in modern music, because every five to ten years new batches of boys come with sparkling eyes, who certainly need to compose their own unique song and wipe the noses of the suckers and old men.

And there is no art in the world that would be so masculine.

Girls, of course, also love music, but in a slightly different way. It’s just that girls most often don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and they can have a blast without thinking about who will think about them and what. Yes, she likes Justin Bieber's bangs, that Finnish song about "lam-tsa-tsa, ariba-dabi-dila", and also Mozart's Fortieth Symphony, because she first kissed a boy in the backyard of a music school, when some unfortunate the child tormented Wolfgang Amadeus. Girls can love a specific song, a specific artist, but be a fan of a specific musical style? No, this is very rare in the world of women.

And in this they are generally lucky, because there is no more simple way feel like outdated trash than start talking about music with citizens five to ten years younger than you. You just allowed yourself to blurt out something about art rock, and they look at you as if you had pulled out a harpsichord and a powdered wig from under the table.

Secret sounds become clear

Just as the starlings before the advent of the Great Typewriter had to stew in their own juice, extremely rarely finding new words for their songs, music before the advent of sound recording for a very long time remained a local, national, sometimes even family affair and very slowly changing. But as soon as these very means of sound recording* appeared, the boundaries were broken immediately.

By the way, the first such means were not gramophones at all, but sheet music. Eleventh century AD

For example, in 9th century Japan musical works It was customary to keep it secret, the techniques of playing string and wind instruments were passed on from father to daughter and from mother to son in the strictest secrecy - to the point that servants who remained in the house during training were ordered to plug their ears with cotton wool. And if one of the aristocratic ladies or gentlemen, succumbing to the emperor’s requests, agreed to play “The Barbarian Pipe” or “A bright dress made of a rainbow, an outfit made of dyed feathers” in the palace garden, then the emperor could at least ask for a few more years, but they kept a pause so that someone would not inadvertently remember the secret searches and would not be able to blasphemously repeat it.

The first, even before the invention of sheet music, were the gypsies who became smugglers, traveling salesmen, and distributors of music. This Indian caste musicians and singers wandered throughout Eurasia and even in some places in Africa, earning street concerts. Keeping their ears open, the gypsies stole, borrowed, distributed and mixed the melodies of the world. And there is practically no national musical culture that would not be influenced by the gypsy, that is, initially an international hodgepodge: China, India, the Mediterranean, the Middle East generously, albeit unwittingly, gifted each other with melodies and rhythms through gypsy guitars and tambourines.

Of course, even today the average Russian, the average American, the average Chinese and the average Arab will love very much different music(still, you shouldn’t discount those same “okays”). But a thousand years ago, the Japanese and, say, the Saxons would hardly have recognized musical culture each other's music basically. So today, the national framework in the perception of music has become very thin and transparent, each of us makes our own playlist, only slightly looking at our gender, nation and age.

And the good news: modern people are much better at hearing music than their peers in the 17th, 18th, or even 19th centuries. According to research from Harvard University, it's already underway for decades: people born in the 90s perceive complex polyphony better than those born in the 80s, and those born in this regard are ahead of the generation of the 70s. Well, that's to be expected. The greater the choice of dishes a listener has, the more varied the music that makes its way to his ears, the more complex and whimsical his tastes. And the advent of records, cassettes, CDs, iPods and iTunes turned the whole world into a truly gigantic gathering of music lovers. Humankind's abilities in terms of musical perception are growing year by year.

So maybe someday we will return to the most natural way of communication for our species and, abandoning words, we will flawlessly whistle precise information to each other.

• More than a dozen species musical ear exists in musical psychology: absolute hearing, rhythmic, internal, harmonic, textured, architectonic, etc. Some of them are exclusively congenital feature, some are laid in the first years of life, some can sometimes be developed even in adulthood. But there are also things like emotional perception music, as the ability to produce dopamine in response to certain sounds in a suitable sequence, personal children's inbreeding ligaments. In general, there are no two people in the world with the same musical tastes.
• An experiment was conducted at the University of Texas in the 1980s. Newborn rat pups were kept in cages for two months, in which music was sometimes played: classical music for one group, atonic for another, and just the noise of a fan for the third. Then the rats were transferred to other cages, where they could press one of three keys themselves and listen to any of the recordings. The rats liked the toy and often played music for themselves. Regardless of which cage the rats were raised in, they listened equally to classical and atonic music, but the key with the fan noise remained unclaimed after several short trials.
• Only 2% of people are able to determine with almost one hundred percent accuracy emotional condition a person based on several spoken phrases (and the text is read out in a calm manner). These percentages were calculated during extensive astronaut training programs at NASA: astronauts were forced to read text after training, while lifting a load, after the loss of their favorite team, during a party, etc. It was from these 2% that people with absolute emotional hearing were then selected observers for psychological state astronauts in flight.
• A recording of the chirping of grasshoppers, staged at a speed to which the human ear is receptive, is perceived by us as a solemn polyphonic chorale. This recording was made by composer Jim Wilson, giving it the name “God’s chorus of crickets”.

Photo: Getty Images; Everett/East News.

Many of us are not even aware of the fact that we love to sing - we simply sing along (to ourselves or out loud) to our favorite tune while driving a car or quietly hum something while washing dishes or other monotonous work. Others enjoy the sound of their voice in full force - in a karaoke bar or with a guitar among friends. “Singing compensates for our technocratic “suffocation,” says Dr. psychological sciences and art historian Dina Kirnarskaya. – Modern man exists under the noise of cars in an anthill city, sits for hours at the computer, and singing returns us to our roots, gives an outlet to primitive musicality. It brings us pleasure and fills us with energy, like relaxing on the ocean. That's why the Japanese invented karaoke - a special way to have fun and relax through singing, to “recharge your batteries.”

Voice of the Ancestors

GETTING INTO RESONANCE WITH YOURSELF, WITH THE SPACE AND ANOTHER PERSON - THIS GIVES GREAT PLEASURE AND BENEFITS

Sound is the most ancient method of communication. "Singing older than speech how emotions are older than reason. People sang before they started talking,” explains Dina Kirnarskaya. The need and ability to express certain semantic accents with our voice is inherent in our nature and deeply natural - once upon a time this was the prototype of articulate speech. "IN primitive times community singing was a way to join collective values, continues Dina Kirnarskaya. “There was simply no such thing as “off-key singing.” In the context of a religious trance that made people sing and dance, it didn't matter whether it was good or bad. Singing has now become an artistic activity: asking a person to sing in public is the same as saying: “Dance like a ballerina, “Dance of the Little Swans.”

But the need to “sound” turns out to be so strong for many of us that some are ready to overcome their embarrassment and go to vocal lessons. “Mostly adults come to learn to sing, all from non-creative professions,” says Anna Maley, a private teacher of jazz and pop vocals. – Some want to realize their childhood dreams, others want to learn how to sing karaoke. When you can do something that others cannot, your self-esteem increases. And this inspires – I want more and more applause.”

(Not) with your own voice

About it

DINA KIRNARSKAYA “MUSICAL ABILITIES” TALENTS – XXI CENTURY, 2004.

VLADIMIR MARTYNOV “HISTORY OF LIURAL SINGING” RUSSIAN LIGHTS, 1994.

In singing, more than the purity of the voice, what is important is its connection with the emotions that affect us deeply. In other words, before trying to produce “beautiful” sounds, it is better to focus on your feelings, abandon the dictates of classical ideas about vocals and find own voice without trying to imitate the timbre of others. Such a moment of discovering the “true self” for the singer and actress Tina Georgievskaya was a meeting with Andrei Kotov, the leader of the ensemble of ancient sacred music “Sirin”, who helped her discover her real voice. “It seemed like a third arm had grown out of my chest. It turns out that something huge fit inside me and always lived, which I had no idea about,” Tina recalls. “I walked around the house and enjoyed the sound, which was still rough, not plastic, but mine, alive.” Now Tina Georgievskaya teaches others how to “sound” using her own psychotherapeutic technique.

And just singing alone with yourself is very useful, says Vladimir Korobko, vocal teacher at Music school named after the Gnessins, teacher of the Star Factory projects. “People get euphoric when they hear Whitney Houston’s “I will always” love you": with its sound it harmonizes our energy - hence the feeling of delight from listening. In professional jargon, this technique is called “pumping up the listener” and has long been used by American producers. By singing along with Houston, you strive to embody harmony and balance the energy,” says Vladimir Korobko. “Each voice is extremely individual, so it’s hardly worth trying to sing exactly like Houston,” says Tina Georgievskaya. – Another thing is resonance with oneself, with space and with another person. This gives enormous pleasure and benefit.”

Nikolai Drozdov, professor at Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosova, TV presenter

“Song is an expression of our humanity”

“I sing everywhere. Just now I was driving home and singing: “Once upon a time there lived a brave captain, he traveled to many countries...” Although there is a radio in the car, I don’t listen to it, but sing. And I feel spiritual joy. A song is an expression of human essence; it conveys our feelings much more accurately than just words. My father, as long as I remember him, sang Russian folk songs and romances. Together with his two brothers, he sang in church with his grandfather, who was a priest. At home they also sang: “Because of the island on the river…”, “There is a cliff on the Volga, overgrown with wild moss...” And of course, “The dark mounds are sleeping” - this is our favorite song.”

Sing with your whole body

“Our body is born with the ability to sing,” says French orthophonist Philippe-Nicolas Melot. He teaches vocals, but prefers to say that “he doesn’t teach singing, but helps voices to be born.” “In the process of singing, energy continuously circulates in us - it is not only spent, but also accumulated,” he explains. “After two hours of singing, I feel as tired as after playing sports and sleep like a baby. This is my personal yoga,” says Christina, a bank worker. Just like the practice of yoga, singing teaches us to control our breathing. And not only. “The process of singing affects literally every cell of the body. The vibrations of the voice spread and capture us from head to toe,” confirms Philippe-Nicolas Melot. This is both a psychological and physiological phenomenon: the sound filling the body spreads through the skeleton, causing the blood vessels to vibrate. We are involved in this process emotionally and physically - this allows us to experience a moment of wholeness of our being. Positive influence singing can be used to improve well-being - for example, the technique of singing during pregnancy and childbirth is based on this. “Sound vibrations at the brain level increase the secretion of endorphins, neurotransmitters that suppress pain and give a feeling of well-being,” explains obstetrician Samira Ben Hadj Yahia, a specialist in prenatal singing. Singing is closely related to breathing, therefore it is used to get rid of snoring and insomnia, to improve metabolism and strengthen the immune system, helps to quit smoking and get rid of excess weight. The cosmetic effect of singing is also known - this is a consequence of articulation exercises that accompany vocal training.

Have a question?

www.vocal.ru Search for teachers, music forum, articles about music.

horist.ru Church and secular website choral singing, sheet music library, educational literature in conducting and choral studies.

www.canto.ru A site for those interested in Old Russian singing.

Express emotions

Social norms force us to be reserved, but when we start singing, we transform ourselves. “I am no longer me, but an artist who can afford to be more relaxed,” is how Tina Georgievskaya explains such a widespread hobby for karaoke. “In most situations, you cannot fully express your true feelings,” notes psychologist Dina Kirnarskaya. – In singing, you express your feelings openly, without embarrassment, sometimes even exaggeratedly. This has a psychotherapeutic effect: we give vent to emotions in conditions of forced restraint and political correctness that civilized society prescribes to us.” In this way, singing is akin to dancing: expressing strong emotions through sound means giving an outlet to the energy that is contained in them. This is one of the most effective ways relieve stress, which is why many singers say that the art of mastering your voice helps you control yourself. In other words, living through your sorrows by singing classic Russian romances, or, conversely, experiencing a moral uplift by singing Verdi’s arias in the shower will be equally beneficial for us.

Albert Filozov, theater and film actor, People's Artist of the Russian Federation

“Singing in the church choir moves me to tears.”

“As a child, in the Sverdlovsk Palace of Pioneers, I sang the solo part in opera performance– we were even recorded on the radio. I remember the feeling of pleasure when a stream of air passes through you and you extract sounds from it. Now I have been singing in a church choir for six years - this is a very special thing. A completely different feeling than opera singing: it can be so beautiful that it moves you to tears. Previously, both in Russia and in Europe there was a tradition of playing music at home - I think even now it would be nice if everyone was taught music from childhood. My daughters, for example, go to music school– not to become musicians, but for the discipline of the soul, the ability to work and overcome difficulties.”

“This is a way of relaxation: the body resonates with emotions”

“I usually sing in the car while driving and listening to music. If at all Bad mood, you can sing very loudly in the car, even shout - and somehow it makes you feel better. This is a way of relaxation: the body resonates with emotions, and the body relaxes. As a child, I sang in Ukrainian because I grew up in Ukraine. And now in both Russian and English. And in French: in connection with the musical Notre Dame de Paris, I learned a lot of French, although I don’t speak French at all.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma

“I’m proud that I got 100 points in karaoke for “Victory Day!”

“I have karaoke in my office, at home and in the country. And there are about ten songs that are especially noted - I sing them when I have time when I am alone. I love those songs that sank into my soul as a child; I relax my soul when I sing. I speak publicly when invited. And I performed the very first song, which was written especially for me, called “Russia,” with a Cossack choir. I really love patriotic songs: in karaoke I got 100 points for “Victory Day!”

Singing has the same effect on the brain as an orgasm or a bar of chocolate. When a person sings, the areas in the brain responsible for pleasure are activated. Hormones of happiness are released - endorphins, and they are so important for overall health.

2. More energy

When a person sings, he becomes more energetic. Lethargy disappears in a second!

3. Free lung training

Singing trains the lungs and helps saturate the blood with oxygen. In addition, the muscles involved in the singing process - the abdominal muscles, diaphragm, intercostal muscles - are significantly strengthened. Singers have strong abs!

4. Stress relief

Singing reduces stress levels. People who sing in a choir or amateur ensemble feel more secure, socially prosperous, and successful. To overcome depression, you should sing!

5. Cleansing the respiratory tract

Singing helps to naturally cleanse the respiratory tract. Diseases of the nose and throat are not scary for singers: the likelihood of developing sinusitis decreases if you love to sing.

6. Natural neurostimulant

Singing is of great value to the central nervous system and brain. Like any creative activity, singing promotes more intensive brain work, strengthening neural connections, as well as intensive “inclusion” of a person in the thought process.

7. Benefits for child development

Children who sing differ from their peers in their positive emotionality, self-sufficiency and high level satisfaction. So let your children sing from the heart and at the top of their voices!