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Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

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Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#51

I wish there was a good way to sing together over videochat. The lag makes it impossible--if you've tried singing Happy birthday to someone over Zoom, you've probably noticed that it's the worst! Everyone tries to adjust to everyone else's lag and it just makes everyone even more and more out of time with each other.

It is incredible how even minuscule delays can be heard. I first laughed about calibrating sound systems with microphones to compensate for different cable lengths until a sound engineer let me listen to the differences. He could hear if a box had a delay about 2-3ms. Quite hard requirements.

Absolutely minuscule delays due to the distance between your ears are a guide to your stereo perception.

Human hearing is quite extraordinary.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#52
post #17

Ask HN: any hackerlike ways to train your singing when alone with no feedback? I will try to search algolia and come back to you with my research

Unfortunately, singing is pretty hard to learn alone. Correct technique is somewhat unintuitive and it's hard to actually see what other singers are doing (internally, with their muscles, throat, larynx) and compare it to what you're doing.

When taking lessons is not an option, I've seen this course get recommended at /r/singing a lot: https://singingsuccess.com/

Don't have first hand experience with it, though.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#53

I wish there was a good way to sing together over videochat. The lag makes it impossible--if you've tried singing Happy birthday to someone over Zoom, you've probably noticed that it's the worst! Everyone tries to adjust to everyone else's lag and it just makes everyone even more and more out of time with each other.

I haven't tried it, but maybe singing a round would work? The whole point there is the delay.

In a round, the delay is under your control. If you start singing the first line when you hear me sing the second one, you're actually starting to sing at (second line ts + $latency). And then I hear it another $latency later. A round could work if your call software compensates for this and delays your singing for me until the next round "entry point".

That is, you hear my "Gently" and join in with "Row," but it's not played back for me until I start singing "Merrily." This could work, but as you can see, it would need some clever delay management.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#54
post #30

Terrence McKenna believed stress relief is the reason that so many shamanic rituals include singing and steady drum beats. The anxiety surrounding communication with the dead or the gods is released through the music. He also pointed out rightly that singing requires deep, slow breathing, which prevents hyperventilation and its attendant stress. More practically, his recommendation for bad drug trips is to sing or hu…

"He also pointed out rightly that singing requires deep, slow breathing" I would generalize that "breathing is the most accessible stress reliever". Breathing consciously is the single thing you can do always to relieve stress and get your hormons in balance again. Singing and chanting and drumming can be even more powerful obviously, but you cannot always do that, but you can (and should) always breathe the right wa…

Agreed, I believe in the absence of a scientific explanation in terms of increased blood flow or nitric oxide breaching the blood brain barrier, the solution had simply been codified in pre-scientific cultures as "one weird trick" for combating anxiety.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#55
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe it's just familiarity but even that feels too simple an explanation" I think it is. Because it has always been like this for anyone since he played the first time. You press the key and (a bit later) music comes. I doubt anyone consciously notice that it is not instant, but your mind notices and adjusts to it.

But I could play either Jerry Lee Lewis style, arms length from the keyboard with my head back, or Glenn Gould style, hunched over the keyboard and my head moves a metre between the two. So that's around the 3ms threshold where I (and the sound engineer above) claim to be able to detect delays, and yet I don't think I'd notice a delay between those two playing positions

Your brain is very good at compensating for noise and delay in a feedback loop it controls so it's hard to say one way or another. Maybe it feels like a difference in expression instead of a change in delay? A better experiment would be to, like, hm...

let's say you're standing a few meters from a metronome and a musician playing to it. If the musician is close to the metronome, you will hear their playing on beat. The further the musician plays from the metronome, the more delay between you hearing the metronome and their playing, unless the musician stands between you and the metronome. When would you notice the delay?

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#56
post #26

> Singing is the most accessible stress reliever Not where I live in an apartment in a crowded city where the culture is to not bother others. Neighbors would not be happy to hear me sing no matter how good am, any more then they are happy to hear my stereo. When I commuted to work in a car I had 30 to 60 minutes of singing time each way. Now I have karaoke box 3 - 4 times a year.

I don't consider it reasonable to expect such level of silence from neighbors that normal singing volume levels would exceed it.

Singing is loud - about the same as a trumpet (80 db).

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#57
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for singings your way out of a bad trip. To paraphrase McKenna, If you find yourself in hell start singing. It will take you all the way to heaven.

what happens in a bad drug trip?

It feels like a combination of a visceral nightmare and a panic attack, if you've had one of those.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider it reasonable to expect such level of silence from neighbors that normal singing volume levels would exceed it.

Singing is loud - about the same as a trumpet (80 db).

Some singing is loud. Do you consider this too loud for apartment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKGJyVWRdJM

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#59
post #17

Ask HN: any hackerlike ways to train your singing when alone with no feedback? I will try to search algolia and come back to you with my research

Well, after singing for a while with a teacher I kinda understood how to produce a good steady voice. However, it's a bit difficult to explain in text.

But okay, this at least was the revelation for me: try to blow air like blowing out a candle. Meaning a directed, focused blowing that comes with a good strength. This is basically how you want your breathing to be when singing. A steady air flow, without muscular tensions. Then, you just slowly add voice to that air flow. With a humming voice first, trying to utilize as much of your vocal cords as possible. Then you can try singing louder, and seeing if you can keep the same steadiness. What you are trying to get the hang of, is a certain "bite" where your voice resonates with a good clarity and has strength to it, without really trying too hard. (Go watch John Denver singing to know what I mean)

An issue I, and probably many others, face is an inefficient breathing that generates friction in your vocal cords, causing your voice to quickly fall apart becoming weak and crackly.

So avoid "pushing" your voice as much as necessary. It will just cause bad muscle memory, like doing deadlifts with a bad technique. You have to build up the nervous system and the muscle memory slowly, never extending it too far. It might feel annoying singing with "half-volume", when all you want to do is to sing along with your favourite singer with full power. Yet once you build up the technique the whole thing becomes significantly easier. Hard to explain, but you shouldn't be feeling like you have to expend a lot of effort to get a strong voice.

Well, I hope that's something. I would be curious to know if it helped.

Re: Singing is the most accessible stress reliever

#60

I wish there was a good way to sing together over videochat. The lag makes it impossible--if you've tried singing Happy birthday to someone over Zoom, you've probably noticed that it's the worst! Everyone tries to adjust to everyone else's lag and it just makes everyone even more and more out of time with each other.

I saw someone on a facebook group for choral directors who got 10ms latency over 30km. It can be done but requires somewhat specialized hardware (ethernet cable to the router, external audio interface and mic), network setup and software
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