Asked by: Emma Brewer, by email
Singing involves very precise muscle coordination of the diaphragm, larynx and mouth. Like all coordination skills, this precision depends largely on the strength of the neural pathways in the brain that are used during that particular sequence of muscle contractions. As you practise singing, these pathways become strengthened and this will reinforce your technique – good or bad. Singing also depends on feedback from the auditory centre of the brain. People with perfect pitch don’t have better ears, it’s just that their auditory cortex can very accurately convert the memory of a note into the sequence of muscle movements needed to reproduce it.
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