Original photo by PeopleImages/ iStock
Many vocal coaches divide the human voice into three main registers, or ranges of tones — chest, middle, and head. The most familiar of these is the chest register, also known as the speaking voice (at least for men; women tend to speak a bit higher). The head register comes to life when singers are trying to hit the high notes, and the middle register falls somewhere in between. But there are two other registers at the extreme ends of the singing spectrum. First, there’s vocal fry, the sound vocal cords make when they’re struggling to hit low notes, which creates an almost growling, popping sound. And then there’s the whistle register — the highest vocal register a singer can produce.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibEverything has a resonant frequency (the frequency at which it vibrates). If a singer can find the right resonance and deliver that note with a lot of power, it’ll break glass. It’s not nearly as easy as Hollywood suggests, but it’s not impossible either.
This register is a bit of a mystery, primarily because the epiglottis (a flap of cartilage in the throat) closes over the larynx when it happens, blocking the view of the vocal cords and making it impossible to record the anatomical structures that create the register. The undisputed current master of the whistle register is Mariah Carey, who’s been wow-ing audiences with it since 1990. (Exhibit A: Her trills at the conclusion of 1991’s “Emotions.”) In 2020, Carey and fellow pop vocal acrobat Ariana Grande harmonized their whistle registers during an awe-inducing performance of “Oh Santa.” But the whistle register comes with a “don’t try this at home” warning. Because people rarely access it, using the whistle register extensively can cause damage. So to sing like Mimi, find a coach.
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The animal that can hear the highest known frequency (300 kilohertz) is the ______.
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The animal that can hear the highest known frequency (300 kilohertz) is the greater wax moth.
Around 70 cultures speak in whistles.
Whistled languages are perhaps as old as civilization. In the fifth century BCE, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described an Ethiopian language similar to the squeaking of bats. Fast-forward 2,500 years, and there are about 70 cultures around the world that still use whistled languages. The advantages are pretty clear: Whistles can be heard several miles away and are an extremely useful tool in cultures that must be heard across deep ravines and towering mountains. Some form of whistled language has been found on nearly every continent, from the Arctic-dwelling Inuit to the forest hunters of the Amazon. And like spoken languages, they can have major differences. Asian whistled languages tend to replicate the melodies of sentences, while Turkish and Spanish whistled languages replicate vowel sounds as whistles and then create consonants through abrupt note shifts. (Whistled languages are always based on the local spoken language, at least these days.)
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
