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“I know only two tunes: one of them is ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the other isn’t,” quipped Ulysses S. Grant. Grant famously disdained military music and many speculate that the 18th President of the United States suffered from tone-deafness or amusia.

“Amusia is a general term that applies to a group of musical deficits,” says Daniel J. Levitin, James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. 

Tone-deafness and amusia remain misunderstood. Bad singers could be one of four types—people unable to hear pitch; people who can’t capture rhythm; people who sing in a monotone; and people with voices that others don’t prefer, says Levitin. He peppers his explanation with song, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” monotonically then performing it as if he is Bob Dylan (he does a pretty passable impression!).   

 “[Dylan] actually hits all the pitches, he is very precise; he has an unusual voice,” Levitin says. Critics call Dylan tone deaf simply because they dislike his voice.

Being a bad vocalist does not mean one is truly amusic. Being amusic means a person lacks musical ability; she might not be able to distinguish pitch or create different sounds.

“Normal people have some musical ability—if I play you a piece of music and I miss a note, you would know something wrong with that. Amusics can’t [tell],” says Psyche Loui, a neurology instructor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The main compliant is that they cannot sing in tune.”

Anywhere from 4 to 9 percent of the population suffers from amusia. It’s difficult to obtain solid estimates because people dubbed tone-deaf earn the distinction because of terrible singing, not because they have been tested for amusia. (And these are real tests, including this one from the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory, where Loui works http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest/).

Loui says experts remain unsure about what causes amusia, but most believe a combination of environmental and genetic factors lead to disruptions in the brain, contributing to “unawareness and poor memory for sounds, especially pitches.”

Being amusic makes life tricky (and not just for those who suffer through a screeching rendition of “Call Me Maybe” at karaoke).

Many Asian and African languages are tonal and one word possesses different meanings based on how it’s pronounced. Loui, whose native language is Cantonese, provides an example. If she says ‘ma’ one way it means mother, if she says it with different inflection it means horse. Amusics who speak tonal languages are often unfairly pegged as having learning disabilities.

“If you cannot perceive tone, you can’t produce it,” says Loui.

In most languages, being unable to understand inflection or pitch can lead to misunderstandings, says Levitin. “A lot of emotion and intention is conveyed by tone,” he says.

People understand sarcasm because they hear the tone. For a person unable to discern such nuances, a conversation can be confusing.  

“[Amusia] is definitely a real phenomena and has neural underpinnings,” says Loui.

Related:

• Elvis song may reveal clues to genetic disorder
• Sounds delicious! New study shows link between pitch and flavor
• 4 reasons a song gets stuck in your head

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Redferns via Getty Images

Whitney Houston was known as "The Voice" at the peak of her career, but her vocal range had deteriorated over the years.

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• A capella awe: How are their voices doing that?
• Teen has tongue surgery to speak Korean. Huh?!
• How one teen girl can say any word backward

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Lewis Jacobs / Lewis Jacobs/NBC

How do a capella singers, like those on the NBC show "The Sing Off," manage those vocal gymnastics, anyway?

When watching the NBC reality show "The Sing-Off," a singing competition featuring a cappella groups, it's incredible to hear how full a sound the singers can produce with just their pure voices and no musical accompaniment. The human voice is the only "instrument" used. 

With a cappella singing "you're putting everything out in the open with nothing else but the voice box, lips, teeth, and tongue to shape the music being made," says Dr. Thomas Carroll, a voice specialist and director of the center for voice and swallowing at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Carroll should know. Before attending medical school, he majored in music and sang high tenor in the Oberlin Obertones, an all-male collegiate a cappella group.

According to Carroll, a cappella singing is not necessarily more demanding on the voice than singing with musical accompaniment. But, he says, it may take more athleticism from a vocal standpoint, especially to beat box, also known as vocal percussion, or mimicking the sounds of drum beats, rhythms, and other percussion instruments.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Making those explosive drum set sounds is a unique skill, explains Carroll. You have to breathe more often than other kinds of singing and support the breath for a two- to three-minute song. "It's almost like running a marathon," he points out.

Endurance is one of the unique challenges of a cappella singing and another is top-notch technique, says Jodi Jenkins, an associate professor in the voice department of the Berklee School of Music in Boston, who has sung soprano in the a cappella quintet Vox One for two decades. Since singers are not supported by music, she explains, you need really good ears to keep everybody on key and together rhythmically.

And you need a good understanding of musical instruments to figure out how to mimic them without sounding cheesy, Jenkins suggests. She considers the electric guitar one of the harder instruments to imitate because making the sounds is rough on the voice.

A cappella, meaning "in the church style" in Italian, originated when musical instruments were not allowed at religious services. It has since evolved to include barbershop quartets and doo-wop groups, and the genre, which now includes everything from rock to jazz to gospel, has been enthusiastically embraced at the collegiate level and in some high schools.

"The Sing-Off" introduces the musical form to an even larger audience. But of the 16 groups competing this season, would coed groups have any physiological edge over single-sex groups?

Both Carroll and Jenkins believe that an all-female group might be at a slight disadvantage because they would not have a deep bass voice so they could be limited in lower vocal ranges. An all-male group without a falsetto voice might run into similar difficulties in the higher octaves.

Although a coed group gives you all the voice options, ultimately it comes down to talent, sound, and performance. During the show's first two seasons both winners have been all-male groups with six people.

While larger groups have more energy from more participants, Jenkins says they may also have too much going on and lose the music. She favors smaller groups with at least five people for all the vocal parts, which she considers more intimate so audiences can get to know the performers better.

Readers, have you tuned in and become a new fan of a cappella music? And a cappella singers, tell us how you make those instrumental sounds seem so authentic.

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Fox

"X Factor" judges L.A. Reid, Nicole Scherzinger, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell are so judging your subpar singing skills.

Despite a glut of TV singing shows from "American Idol" to "The Voice" to "The X Factor" to "The Sing Off" and even "Glee," 10 to 20 percent of the population fails to sing in tune, according to an often-cited expert estimate. But a new study suggests the number of horrible singers is actually much higher than that, and it explains the reasons why many folks are vocally challenged when it comes to music.

Truth be told, having a great set of pipes is no simple matter.

"Singing is a complex act," says Sean Hutchins, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research at the University of Montreal. Singing is complicated because you need to match a note with your voice and perceive it accurately, you need to figure out the right way to configure your vocal muscles, and you need to control those muscles well enough to belt out a tune, he explains.

That leaves a slew of places for a rock star wannabe or car-radio crooner to mess up. Hutchins' research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, attempts to identify where awful singers go wrong in the process.

In a series of five experiments, researchers compared small groups of people with or without musical training. They tested participants' accuracy at matching their voices to various pitches, to a target vocal or musical tone, or to other singers.

The study found that anywhere from 40 to 62 percent of non-musicians were poor singers, a rate much higher than shown in previous research.

It also found that roughly 20 percent of people can't sing accurately because they don't have good control of their vocal muscles. Another 35 percent of poor singers have trouble matching the pitch of their own voice to the same sound heard in other timbres, such as when it's coming from a trumpet, piano, or a person of the opposite sex. And 5 percent of lousy singers lack the ability to hear differences in pitch or discriminate between two different sounds.

To be sure, some aspects of singing are influenced by genetics. "There are certainly people who are more natural singers, and the physiological shape of their vocal tracts can give a more or less pleasing natural sound to the voice," Hutchins points out. But he says, the best singers just like the best athletes will be those who are blessed with natural talent and have devoted a large amount of practice to their craft.

However, it's the poor singers of the world who are the least likely to practice. And that's what's necessary to get better at it.

To improve, Hutchins suggests that "pitch -- hitting the right notes -- is the most important part of singing well."

If you need motivation to cultivate your vocal chops no matter how hideous you sound, there's what Hutchins calls the "vocal generosity effect."

He says listeners are quite forgiving of singing errors, more so than for other types of music. "Singers actually can be quite out-of-tune before listeners will notice the flubs, but they would pick up on a musician's subtle mistakes sooner in say, someone playing the violin."

What about you? Can you carry a tune?

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Kevin Winter/tonight Show / Getty Images for The Tonight Sho

Singer Jackie Evancho performs on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at the NBC Studios on June 21. How does such a little thing have such a BIG voice?

Unlike “American Idol,” “America’s Got Talent” has no age minimum, so sometimes viewers and judges are blown away by huge voices coming from little girls.

Last season, it was angelic 10-year-old Jackie Evancho, whose performance of a Puccini aria left many thinking she had to be lip-synching. But in June she released her first full-length album -- on former “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell’s label.

This “AGT” season, 11-year-old Anna Graceman floored the judges with her powerful rendition of Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You.” “I think decibels per inch, that is the loudest sound we’ve ever heard on the show,” Piers Morgan told her. Anna is all of 4 feet, 3 inches tall.

Now, I have a 12-year-old daughter who likes to sing, but she can be a little breathy. Her chorus teacher has assured her she’ll have a fuller voice with age. So why is it that Jackie and Anna could drown out a typical elementary school chorus?

Around puberty, girls’ voice boxes develop rapidly, expanding side to side as well as front to back. Often, there’s a disconnect between their child-like way of singing and their maturing vocal organ, explains Bing-Yi Pan, a researcher with a project called Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing, or AIRS.

Once the voice box is almost fully developed, professional training can help girls speed through the transition from a breathy singing voice to a clearer, stronger sound.

Musically-gifted girls might learn to belt out a song simply by listening to a pro, adds Annabel Cohen, a psychology professor at the University of Prince Edward Island who leads the AIRS project. “With so much recorded music available, a young person might listen intently to a favorite chosen artist and then model her own voice to match it. Very good ear-voice coordination would be required, and not every child would have the anatomy or the mind to do it.”

Whatever you do, don’t ever tell your kids they can’t sing, says Graham Welch of the University of London, because adults’ negative comments could prevent them from ever reaching their musical potential.

And don’t gag if your young daughter likes to sing along with Lady Gaga ad nauseam.  You never know. Perhaps she’s on her way to stardom. Or at least an “America’s Got Talent” audition.

Related links:

Video: Hear Jackie Evancho wow the crowd

Anna Graceman's vocals amaze 'Talent' judges

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By Karen Blum

Nervous about an upcoming medical procedure? Try singing your troubles away.

Singing comforting songs helped significantly lower the blood pressure of a 76-year-old woman awaiting knee replacement surgery in the Dominican Republic, Harvard researchers report. The woman, who had a 15-year history of osteoarthritis in both knees, had been accepted into Operation Walk Boston, a philanthropic program providing total joint replacement to Dominican patients. She was admitted to Hospital General de la Plaza in Santo Domingo for total replacement of both knee joints last March.

The patient’s blood pressure on admission was 160/90 mmHg, controlled by her usual medication regimen. But two days later, on the morning of surgery, her blood pressure skyrocketed to 240/120 mmHg while she waited in the preoperative holding area. The anesthesiology team sent her back to the floor for additional blood pressure management and postponed her surgery until the following morning. Though doctors started her immediately on additional doses of anti-hypertensive medicines, her systolic pressure stayed at 200 mmHg.

With a tense atmosphere in the patient’s room and time running out before the outreach team would leave the country, the worried patient asked if she could sing.

“Softly at first, and then with increasing volume and passion, the patient sang six religious songs invoking Jesus, God and her Savior to protect the innocent and ill, bring peace, spread truth and heal souls,” the authors wrote in the April issue of Arthritis Care & Research. The patient was a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist church and sang while attending services several times a week.

After two songs, the team found her blood pressure had dropped to 180/90 mmHg. A few songs later, her systolic pressure lowered further. The lower pressures persisted throughout 20 minutes of singing and for several hours after.

“When she started singing, I noticed immediately that she looked a lot calmer – her facial expressions and body language (relaxed), which was reflected in the blood pressure measurements,” says study author Nina Niu, a second-year medical student who was part of the woman’s treatment team.

That night, doctors gave her medical orders to sing as necessary, which she did at various times throughout the night. The next morning she was cleared for surgery and underwent a successful operation with no complications or difficulty with postoperative blood pressure management.

It’s not the first look at music’s impact on health, the authors note. At least nine other studies demonstrated the positive health effects of music therapy on preoperative anxiety and blood pressure management, one of which found that listening to music was as effective as the prescription drug benzodiazepine for reducing blood pressure before surgery.

Crooning may not work for everyone, but it’s worth a try, Niu says: “It’s safe, cost-free and toxicity-free, so it’s a pretty ideal intervention.”

Does a certain song always calm you down? Tell us about it.

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