TONE DEAF?

I keep hearing singers on American Idol who are singing flat. For those who do not know what that means, they are singing under or below the note they are trying to sing OR SHOULD BE TRYING TO SING!!!!! For some reason it is even more irritating to hear a singer sing sharp (above the pitch) and this is, fortunately, more rare. Back to the flat-ness. Why are they singing flat? Can they not hear themselves? Can they not hear, in the musical sense, the relationship between the accompaniment and their own voices? Are they staying under the pitch to avoid the passaggio, where the untrained voice will crack? Some trained, or should I say mis-trained voices crack. I have been cursed with a condition called "perfect pitch" and knowing that a person will sing flat, to avoid cracking, doesn't help the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard affect that this has on me. I can sympathize, but the feeling of sympathy does not ameliorate the frustration of knowing how they could be better with just one little PHYSICAL adjustment. That adjustment is NOT using more air, or "pushing" or flexing the abdominal muscles. Then there are those with, shall we say, under-developed musicianship. In teaching a few thousand singers, I have discovered that there are those who can match pitch with a voice but NOT with an instrument, such as a piano. Some of them can match pitch with a saxophone, however. This gets into the ability, or lack thereof, of being able to differentiate one pitch from another. Some people would say such a person is tone deaf. I've discovered, through experience, that it "Ain't Necessarily So". (That is a song, for the uninitiated) There is a condition called atonality. It ranges from absolute inability to match pitch at all to being able to get very close, but not on the pitch. Some people have called atonal singers "tone deaf". Although the term tone deaf is descriptive as to the singer's response to a pitch generated outside of him/herself, being atonal is not the same as being truly tone deaf. A study from Harvard gets into this. There have been several studies at other universities regarding atonality and tone deafness. One done at Stanford University suggested that the truly tone deaf are those who have had brain damage. This may be further substantiated by the conclusion of the Harvard study on the subject. http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/08/18/neural.pathway.missing.tone.deaf.people In the meantime, American Idol is on my TV, I hear the intonation, the judges praise the singers (most of them) and I get exhausted from cringing and running out of the room to regurgitate. Neural pathway missing in tone-deaf people | e! Science News esciencenews.com Nerve fibers that link perception and motor regions of the brain are disconnected in tone-deaf people, according to new research in the August 19 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Experts estimate that at least 10 percent of the population may be tone deaf – unable to sing in tune. The… Neural pathway missing in tone-deaf people | e! Science News esciencenews.com Nerve fibers that link perception and motor regions of the brain are disconnected in tone-deaf people, according to new research in the August 19 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Experts estimate that at least 10 percent of the population may be tone deaf – unable to sing in tune. The…