Voices as instruments?

[wildeabandon]

I don't think there's necessarily a 'correct' answer to this question, but I'm curious about what is common usage. I'd also be interested in your reasons, and whether you'd be surprised or confused by someone who did the opposite.

Poll #27477

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

View Respondents

If someone asked you what instruments you play, would you include voice?

View Answers

Yes
9 (27.3%)

No
18 (54.5%)

No, but only because I don't sing
4 (12.1%)

SEWIWEIC
2 (6.1%)

Comments

[zz]

i wouldn't answer the question like that, but i do consider voice an instrument when listening to music, as i listen more for tune and rhythm, and rarely parse lyrics.

[zotz]

Some years ago people used to use the phrase "voice as an instrument" to refer to specifically liking sung music without any lyrics they found intelligible.

[atreic]

The first time I heard that someone was doing music exam grades in voice, I had a very strong ‘but that isn’t a thing, voice isn’t an instrument’ response. Nowadays I’ve mellowed and I think it’s entirely fair usage. But even though I now think it’s a totally ok answer to ‘what instruments do you study’ I still think it’s a slightly weird answer to ‘what do you play’, I think there needs to be something external to be played. I’d probably go for ‘I play piano, and I also sing a bit’ to dodge the question.

[wildeabandon]

The fact that one can take the same exams in voice as you do in other instruments was definitely one of the things that caused me to start thinking of it as one. Another was my singing teacher observing that piano had been their primary instrument when they were younger, but that after they developed RSI they switched to voice.

[simont]

In a group of friends I once asked the question "What instrument makes it easiest to transpose music on the fly?", thinking of awkwardnesses like having to totally change your fingerings.

After two minutes of general thinking, someone said "Voice!", and I thought "oh yes, obviously that is the answer, what a silly question I asked".

It did occur to me to try disqualifying it on the grounds that it didn't count as an instrument, but only for long enough for me to think "don't be silly, obviously it counts".

[wildeabandon]

Heh. I think that fretted string instruments are almost as easy if you've got access to a capo and want to transpose up, but yeah, voice is definitely more flexible there.

I can see why people would think it doesn't count - it's clearly a slightly non-central definition. The other day I described the 'cello as the sexiest instrument, and in the light of this discussion I would relegate it to second-sexiest. But earlier today I talked about having practiced on four different instruments without thinking about it, so clearly there are different parts of my brain which have different instinctive approaches.

[simont]

I think the key thing that makes voice the easiest instrument to transpose is that it's not only possible but commonplace to do it by accident – it's so easy to sing something a third or a fifth off the pitch it's supposed to be at, and not even realise until you press a key on your piano and go "oops" :-)

[simont]

the key thing

(Pun not intended, but I wish I had intended it)

[hjdoom]

I say yes, but with the proviso that I refer to it as 'vocals' rather than 'singing'.

[ludy]

I would not include it in a list of instruments (in my case the list of instruments I’ve failed to learn because dyspraxia/dyslexia*) but would them immediately say “but I (used to) sing”



*I’ve never been able to read music in real time while also playing/singing even though I can theoretically read music. Which means I have to memorise everything and that’s a lot easier with singing than it is with the sorts of movement sequences you need to play an instrument.

[yiskah]

Yes, same. I get asked this a lot at the moment, having just published a novel in which music is very central, and I have the vague sense that singing doesn't "count" in terms of skill in the same way as other instruments, but it does in terms of ... musical appreciation, I guess.

[shreena]

No because I have the view that everyone has a voice, everyone can sing, I grew up with Indian singing traditions without sheet music, more of a folk tradition, I guess. I don't think I am explaining this well.

[ludy]

*Nods* I grew up in a flavour of Christianity (the Reformed Congregational/Presbyterian tradition) that has a strong emphasis of congregational singing and also think of singing (usually with words in a hymnbook but not necessarily written music) as something everything can do, and will usually be comfortable doing in public even if they are “not a musician”

[andrewducker]

My internal definition of "instrument" is "tool". So unless, when someone asked me what programming tools I used I'd answer "my brain" I wouldn't tend to answer "What instruments do you play" to include voice.

Oddly, if people used their voice to do really unusual things (beat boxing, etc) then I'd feel differently about it. Possibly because I'd feel that they were using their voice to imitate a tool!

[vyvyanx]

I wouldn't call the human voice an instrument, but that's only because my notion of the term "[musical] instrument" is something like "an object deliberately created to produce music". The human vocal apparatus was not deliberately created (IMO), and certainly not by us; I would say it evolved primarily to facilitate spoken communication, but that music making is a happy additional affordance of it. I also would not describe the hands as an instrument, even though they can be used to make music in various ways e.g. clapping, clicking, drumming etc.

This is not to say that the voice cannot be used *like* a musical instrument, that it cannot be trained over years and used with immense skill, or that it is not fit for musical compositions or grade examinations.

[ludy]

There’s actually an argument (see the work of child development expert/psychologist Colwyn Trevarthan very brief video introduction here) that tonality and rhythm which create inter subjectivity in communication are the main purpose of the human voice and all the extra things voices and language can do are the happy additional affordances….

[vyvyanx]

It's a nice piece you've linked to - I liked the anecdote about the baby conducting the song. But as a former historical linguistics researcher, I'm hardly going to agree with him that linguists have it all wrong about language!

Also he didn't seem to be speaking about human vocal capabilities so much as general rhythmical and pitch awareness, expressible through various modalities. My earlier comment was about the evolution of the *human* vocal apparatus specifically (and I was really thinking about the vocal tract, since we're talking about singing), as opposed to more ancient, fundamental communicative abilities which we largely share with other mammals, and especially closely-related primates. Many of the distinctive speech sounds used in human spoken languages worldwide are impossible for, say, a chimpanzee to pronounce, as the first researchers to try to teach human language to chimps quickly discovered (and then had much better success with symbols on a board or manual signs). However, during the evolution of hominids, our vocal tracts (especially the mouth cavity and tongue) changed in ways which facilitated the pronunciation of different vowels, say. The main proponent of this line of argument, when I was still in the field, was Philip Lieberman; a glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech#Evolution_of_the_speech_organs suggests it's still largely accepted, although there are of course some who disagree on particular aspects of his theory.

[ludy]

Yeah, I’m coming from a Child Development perspective and know I’m missing a lot on the linguistics front - and I found it very hard to find a useful quick summary of Tevarthan’s work to link to this book is excellent but it’s very much written for Early Years practitioners and is £26). He does definitely consider the unique nature of human vocalisations and how that relates to the complexities of human social interactions and theory-of-mind.

(And as someone who sometimes uses SSE to support my spoken communication I have to add that while chimps are much better at signing and gestural communication than they are attempting to use human-like speech their Sign is similarly restricted by differences in hand structure - and lacks much the nuance and complex grammar of human Sign Languages)

[smhwpf]

Put yes, but I might say something like "I play piano, recorder a bit, and I sing".

[shermarama]

It might be only the phrasing of 'things you play' causing me to say no there. If someone said 'I play the voice' in English it would sound awkward, or I'd be looking for context to do with a game, role or TV show :D

(I can't easily think of a phrasing that would include the voice in the set of things someone has skill in making music with, though.)

[sfred]

"Are you a musician?"
?

[sfred]

I wouldn't be surprised if other people didn't, but I sing so much more/better than I play anything, that I would say "I am learning the fiddle, but I also sing". So my answer is a "sort of" rather than an unambiguous yes.

[palmer1984]

If I could sing, it would depend on who I was speaking to - with someone very musical I'd include it, with an average person I wouldn't.

[bunnypip]

I think I just got used to singing teachers/ vocal coaches/ musical directors etc referring to the voice as an instrument so I tend to think of it as such in terms of something that needs to be learned and taken care of and treated with respect etc because those are the sorts of phrasings I grew up with. I also think many of them (especially singing teachers) did it to counter the slight snobbishness from certain types of instrumentalists (and I note I am using that here to mean non-vocal instrumentalists, which is interesting) that 'anyone can sing' and that it doesn't really 'count'.

Then again, I do think that everyone can sing and that singing that isn't of the 'studying voice' type totally counts and that far too many people get told they can't sing and that is inexcusable and (even if that's correct, which is rarely if ever is) everyone should be allowed to make their joyful noise.

[shewhostaples]

I would, because I'm much more competent as a singer than in any instrument I might nominally play, and use exactly the same sight-reading, tuning, listening and ensemble skills that I first learned with the cello. But the conversation would probably go:

"Do you play any instruments?"

"I sing."

(Also, hello! I followed you here from ewt's place and you seem like a good person to read.)