When Access Hollywood interviewed 104-year-old Edythe Kirchmaier, we were impressed by her vigor and dedication to Direct Relief International, but we also noticed something else. Kirchmaier, who seems young and vibrant despite her age, had a wavering, breathy voice. This caused us to wonder: What happens to our voices as we age?

“Voice can depend on general health. In general, we start seeing aging problems at age 65,” says Claudio Milstein, associate professor of surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. “The typical change as we get older, is that we get thin, breathy voices … [and] those are the characteristics that make it sound like a person has an old voice.”

Evidence confirms that voices do change with age. The vocal chords should vibrate between 90 and 230 times per minute, with young people experiencing the most movement and older people experiencing the least, explains Amee Shah, associate professor and director of the Research Laboratory in Speech Acoustics and Perception at Cleveland State University.

“In my lab we look at acoustic data because perception can be misleading and the hard numbers confirm it. It is true that as we age our voices change,” says Shah.

When we age our vocal chords weaken and become drier. Our respiratory systems and torsos change, too, with our lungs and chest cavities becoming more rigid, while our spines curve, causing us to stoop over (for some a little, others a lot). Weakened and dry vocal chords become stringy, which prevent normal vibration, causing higher pitched voices that sound thin. And the transformations in the respiratory system and chest mean we have less power behind our voices. Even the joints in our vocal chords can become arthritic, contributing to problems. 

“The vocal folds are made up of muscle and collagen among other things. Just like other muscles thin out or atrophy, the vocal folds do as well,” says Gina Vess, a speech pathologist and director of the Clinical Voice Programs at Duke University Medical Center.

Not everyone suffers from wavering voices as they age. People who are physically and socially active possess stronger voices and those who sing maintain robust voices throughout their lives. 

People who suffer from weakened, breathy voices often become ashamed of how they sound and cringe when asked to repeat themselves over and over. These people then avoid socialization, leading to less vocal exercising. And, they feel more isolated, which leads to depression and a lessened quality of life. 

“It doesn’t mean there is no hope if they notice a weakening. A lot of times nonsurgical treatments [improve voices],” says Vess.

Those suffering from wavering voices should visit an ear, noses, and throat doctor and seek help at a voice clinic. Experts recommend speech therapy first, with more serious treatments such as injections or surgery if therapy fails.  

“Voices carry something about the emotional state and health of the body,” says Milstein. “There are a lot of things we can do to rejuvenate a voice even though it may be part of the normal aging process.”

Related:

Why 'Idol' contestant's stutter goes away when he sings

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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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"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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