https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Humans aren't the only living beings who find a singing voice attractive in the opposite sex—songbirds do too. For about a third of the approximately 4,000 songbird species that sing only one song, the features that make these tunes alluring to a potential mate have been a long-standing mystery. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-female-zebra-finches-song.html Plants & Animals Thu, 11 Apr 2024 10:06:50 EDT news632048805 Humpback whale singing dominates the marine soundscape during winter months off Maui. However, despite decades of research, many questions regarding humpback whale behavior and song remain unanswered. New research has revealed a daily pattern wherein whales move their singing away from shore throughout the day and return to the nearshore in the evening. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-humpback-whales-daytime-offshore-reveals.html Plants & Animals Wed, 24 Jan 2024 15:42:03 EST news625333321 Researchers have been looking for ways to decompose sound into its basic ingredients for more than 200 years. In the 1820s, French scientist Joseph Fourier proposed that any signal, including sounds, can be built using a sufficient number of sine waves. These waves sound like whistles, each have their own frequency, level and start time, and are the basic building blocks of sound. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-acoustics-decompose-accurately-basic-components.html General Physics Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:48:18 EDT news608482095 A behavioral study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has linked reproductive success in male rock hyraxes to their ability to maintain rhythm during courtship songs. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-linked-reproductive-success-male-hyraxes.html Plants & Animals Tue, 13 Sep 2022 00:00:03 EDT news582210827 In the past several decades, a mutation has spread among male Pacific field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) in Hawaii that leads to wing structures that are unable to produce the crickets' signature chirping. While the mutation has kept crickets safe from a parasitic fly that uses cricket song to find its hosts, it also means the crickets are unable to sing to attract females. The fly's larvae burrow into the cricket, eating it from the inside out, and emerge once the cricket dies. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-male-crickets-ability-reproductive-advantage.html Plants & Animals Tue, 02 Jul 2019 09:12:14 EDT news481277404 Both sexes of a songbird called the blue-capped cordon-bleu intensify courtship performances that involve singing and dancing in the presence of an audience, especially if it is a member of the opposite sex, an international team of researchers has discovered. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-couples-songbirds-passionate-front-audience.html Plants & Animals Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:00:13 EDT news457778990 Do you have a pair of vocal folds that can produce sound? Can you tell the difference between a higher note and a lower note? Good news! You and about 98.5% of the population absolutely can be taught how to sing. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-can-anyone-learn-to-sing.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 May 2018 07:37:37 EDT news445502244 Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have determined that birds near Berlin's Tegel airport, one of Europe's largest, start singing significantly earlier in the morning than their counterparts at quieter locations. What's more, they discovered that chaffinches stop singing when the noise from air traffic exceeds a threshold of 78 decibels (A). https://phys.org/news/2016-09-birds-adjust-airport-noise.html Ecology Thu, 08 Sep 2016 07:20:28 EDT news392538018 Birdsong has long been associated with courtship or competitive behaviour. And males were often considered to be a more active singing partner than females. A team of researchers from the Vetmeduni Vienna now shows that female singing behaviour is in fact much more common than had been previously assumed. The researchers have for the first time demonstrated a connection between the song of female blue tits and the presence of a predator. This singing appears to be about their own defence and not that of their nest. The study was published in the Journal of Ornithology. https://phys.org/news/2016-06-female-blue-tits-danger.html Plants & Animals Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:30:02 EDT news385979211 Whether you give it your best effort or your worst, voice synthesis software developed at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) will make you sound like the melodious singer you've always wanted to be. Called I2R Speech2Singing, this software is the first to deliver high-quality singing automatically, while still preserving the original character of your natural voice. https://phys.org/news/2016-06-song-singalong-software-sweet-melody.html Software Fri, 17 Jun 2016 06:24:29 EDT news385363459 "How to get noticed as a singer?" isn't only a concern for young people aspiring to a career in the music industry. Young indris, critically endangered lemurs from Madagascar, sing in antiphony with their choirmates to increase their chances of getting noticed by rival groups, according to a new study in Frontiers in Neuroscience. https://phys.org/news/2016-06-antiphonal-indris.html Plants & Animals Tue, 14 Jun 2016 16:00:01 EDT news385117495 Freddie Mercury, lead singer of legendary rock band, Queen, gave the world one of the most famous and recognisable singing voices in music history. But how did he manage to achieve such vocal range? https://phys.org/news/2016-04-acoustic-analysis-freddie-mercury-voice.html Other Mon, 18 Apr 2016 07:47:07 EDT news380184417 Finnish engineering firm, Wärtsilä, has successfully collaborated with marine engineering researchers at City University London to identify the specific design parameters creating the risk of 'singing propellers'. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-silencing-noisy-ship-propellers.html Engineering Mon, 14 Mar 2016 08:24:23 EDT news377162653 The first notes of bird song signal the arrival of spring as well as the beginning of mate attraction season, and for many songbird species males with the most elaborate songs do best when it comes to attracting females. But why do many migratory songbirds sing during the winter, when they are thousands of kilometers away from their breeding grounds and the prospect of attracting a mate? This was the long-unanswered question tackled by Marjorie Sorensen, Susanne Jenni-Eiermann, and Claire Spottiswoode. https://phys.org/news/2016-02-migratory-birds-tropical-wintering-grounds.html Plants & Animals Fri, 05 Feb 2016 07:36:12 EST news373880165 A Himalayan singing bowl operates much in the same way as a wine glass—slide your fingertip, or a wooden stick called a puja, around its rim to hear its soothing tones. The bowls, which originated in the Tibetan mountain region and are made of metal alloys, have been used for meditation and worship since around 500 BCE, but have found recently new audiences in contemporary music. While the complex stick-slip motions responsible for "chatter," or rapid knocking sounds, have been extensively studied in other instruments, few studies have investigated this action in the Himalayan singing bowl. https://phys.org/news/2015-11-chatter-himalayan-bowl.html General Physics Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:23:40 EST news365945003 We have long known the power of a good sing-along. Now, research from the University of Oxford has shown that singing is a great ice-breaker and can get groups of people to bond together more quickly than other activities can. https://phys.org/news/2015-10-secret-power-ice-breaker-effect.html Social Sciences Tue, 27 Oct 2015 20:00:01 EDT news365169330 Whether you give it your best—or worst—effort, I2R Speech2Singing technology will make you sound like the melodious singer you've always wanted to be. The voice synthesis software developed by A*STAR researchers is the first to deliver high-quality singing automatically, while still preserving the original character of your natural voice. https://phys.org/news/2015-05-voice-synthesis-software-high-quality-automatically.html Software Wed, 27 May 2015 07:58:30 EDT news351932292 Two species of tawny brown singing mice that live deep in the mountain cloud forests of Costa Rica and Panama set their boundaries by emitting high-pitched trills, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered. https://phys.org/news/2013-09-mice-turf-high-pitched-tunes.html Plants & Animals Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:57:14 EDT news299408223 If you hear an owl hooting at dusk, don't expect to catch the flute-like song of a Veery nearby. This North American thrush has probably also heard the hoots, and is singing much less to ensure that it does not become an owl's next meal. https://phys.org/news/2013-07-veeries-quiet-owls.html Plants & Animals Tue, 30 Jul 2013 11:01:07 EDT news294400849 Male bats appear to be the sexy singers of the animal world: they have learned to vocalize in a specific way to attract females, but once they have their attention, they change their tune – literally. They then produce a more creative array of sounds to entertain and keep the females interested, according to new research conducted at Texas A&M University. https://phys.org/news/2013-07-romantic-singers-male.html Plants & Animals Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:30:01 EDT news293437095 Enormously popular reality TV singing competitions attract plenty of male contestants, but getting school-age boys involved in singing remains a serious challenge for music educators. https://phys.org/news/2013-07-boys.html Social Sciences Mon, 08 Jul 2013 08:07:06 EDT news292489614 Singing mice (Scotinomys teguina) are not your average lab rats. Their fur is tawny brown instead of the common white albino strain; they hail from the tropical cloud forests in the mountains of Costa Rica; and, as their name hints, they use song to communicate. https://phys.org/news/2012-08-mice-melodies-language-gene-uncover.html Plants & Animals Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:39:45 EDT news263835574 Think back to the last birthday party you attended. When the candles were lit, did you join everyone else in belting out the "Happy Birthday" song -- or were you too self-conscious to do more than mouth the words? Our everyday lives are full of situations where we are expected to sing: parties, worship services, and even sporting events, where the national anthem is often played. (The Star Spangled Banner is notoriously difficult to sing, with a range of one and a half octaves.) https://phys.org/news/2012-07-probing-taught.html Social Sciences Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:20:02 EDT news262505238 Would you dance to a synthetic song? A new approach to making computer-generated vocals more "human" is reported this month in the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms. https://phys.org/news/2011-05-tune.html Computer Sciences Fri, 06 May 2011 10:03:07 EDT news223894956 Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had produced a mouse that tweets like a bird in a genetically engineered "evolution" which they hope will shed light on the origins of human language. https://phys.org/news/2010-12-japan-bio-scientists-mouse.html Biotechnology Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:21:17 EST news212127648 Hindustani singing, a North Indian traditional style of singing, and classical singing, such as the music of Puccini, Mozart and Wagner, vary greatly in technique and sound. Now, speech-language pathology researchers at the University of Missouri are comparing the two styles in hopes of finding a treatment for laryngeal tremors, a vocal disorder associated with many neurological disorders that can result in severe communication difficulties. https://phys.org/news/2010-10-sing-song-speech-disorder.html Other Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:20:01 EDT news205431908 (PhysOrg.com) -- In more than 30 locations around the world, the phenomenon of singing sand dunes has intrigued explorers, tourists, and scientists. When an avalanche occurs or even when the sand is pushed by hand, it emits a powerful, monotonous sound that can last up to several minutes and be heard more than a mile away. Sometimes observers mistake the noise for a loud, low-flying aircraft. Although scientists have spent many years investigating the sound, the cause remains a mystery. Studies have suggested that the singing dunes phenomenon is a completely new way of generating sound. https://phys.org/news/2009-12-scientists-dunes.html General Physics Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:30:01 EST news180086325