• Question: Why are some people born with good singing voices and intelligent minds?

    Asked by gekogeorgie to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      I was always told by my music teacher that anyone can sing. It’s just a matter of training your ears and you diaphraghm, as well as finding what range suits your voice best. A singing teacher would be able to help with all of that.

      In terms of intelligence, there is still no effective way of actually testing intelligence. Many people have criticised exams for just being tests of memory and not intelligence. You could look up AQ, IQ and EQ as some currrent ways of measuring intelligence. Or ask another question about it.

      In terms of intilligent minds nobody, is born intelligent just with the potential. During our development we have things called critical windows. This means if we don’t learn something by that time it will be more difficult for our brains to process things. Sight is a pretty good example. If a baby is born with cateracts in their eyes they have blurred vision until they are removed. If they are left too late their vision can become permanently blurry. The same can be said for other parts of brain development.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      Part of this can be down to genetics, but I think most of it is down to learning, education and applying yourself.

      We can learn to have a “good ear” for music, or indeed about anything we want to, if we are taught in the right way and try hard enough, the sky is the limit!

    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      I think something like 40% of the variation in human intelligence (as measured by standard intelligence tests) is accounted for by heritable factors.

      The rest is down to environment.

      As for singing, I have no idea. I doubt you can be ‘born’ with a good singing voice. Some people seem to understand music much better than other people though.

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