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I'm not sure that this is a universal phenomenon but even if it's not - what could be the reason that for many people it's easier to hit a stable pitch in their higher register?

Edit: To be clear, in my personal case I am speaking about the higher part f my chest voice (below the bridge) vs the lower one, as measured by a pitch tracker. The former is much more in tune and stable.

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    Not even sure this is a fact..!
    – Tim
    May 11 at 10:52
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    I would say the opposite is true. Are you speaking from personal experience, or did you read it somewhere?
    – Andy Bonner
    May 11 at 11:20
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    Perhaps the disconnect here is that "in tune" and "stable pitch" are not at all the same thing.
    – phoog
    May 11 at 12:46
  • If it is true, this could be about the fact that it's easier to assess intonation in the middle of our hearing register. If you play two notes, one after the other, a fifth apart, and detune one of them slightly, someone who could easily detect the detuning, and say whether the fifth was too narrow or too wide, might find it harder several octaves below or above middle C.
    – Andy Bonner
    May 11 at 13:22
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    "...but even if it's not..." that's your signal to change the question to "Are high pitches easier to sing?" and also look for some research on the topic.
    – Michael Curtis
    May 11 at 19:22

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Interesting hypothesis. Not, I think, a general rule. But if some people find higher notes easier to stabilise, perhaps it's because they take a little more effort and are therefore sung with more conviction.

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To answer the in tune part: there are some nice sound samples towards in the sample* section of the Wikipedia article Beat. Check for yourself, but the higher the frequency the faster the perceived amplitude change.

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Definitely don't think it's a universal rule, but was certainly true for me. In my case it came down to the clear vs muddy vs flat vs sharp effect.

New singers often mistake tonality for pitch. So they may hear a singer sing with a muddy tone, and then mistakenly sing flat when trying to match pitch because they interpret the note as being sung low. Typically, higher notes will have a clearer tone, and can be less ambiguous.

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