Is Joe Public really a flop when it comes to singing? Simone Dalla Bella et al. (J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 1182–1189; 2006) went looking for the answer. They persuaded 42 passers-by in a Montreal park to sing Gens du pays — an anthem of the Quebec sovereignty movement, commonly sung at festive occasions in the province — on the pretext that it was one of the experimenters' birthday. They then subjected the recordings, together with those of a further 20 non-musicians and 5 professional singers recorded in the laboratory, to an acoustic analysis.

Credit: N. CLEMENTS/TAXI/GETTY

This quantified errors in timing and in pitch interval (misjudging the jumps between notes) and contour (going the wrong way on the scale). Pitch and timing consistency were assessed by comparing variations in pitch and deviations from the prescribed tempo (rubato) in a repeated phrase in the song's chorus.

Unsurprisingly, the professional participants — among them Gilles Vigneault, the composer and original vocalist of Gens du pays — scored better. But they also tended to sing less hurriedly. When, in a second test, the non-musicians were told to slow down, most sang just as accurately as the paid singers.

You could conclude that the ability to sing in tune is a universal human trait. Well, almost — the study uncovered two subjects who, even when singing at the slow tempo, went wildly out of tune. They should perhaps confine their singing to the bathroom.