This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Oh! Happy birthday to Molly.

Happy birthday. Every noticed how when a big group sings happy birthday the beginning is a

jumbled mess with everyone singing a slightly different pitch but then near the end it all sort of comes together?

That's because we tend to adjust our own singing pitch to accommodate others, and now scientists

in the UK have found that even trained choral singers will follow their fellow choir members,

but not necessarily in the right direction.

The researchers asked eight pairs of musically trained amateur singers, all women for this study, to sing Acapella the melody of either

silent night, or another classic choir tune, Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded.

Individual volunteers all sang in their own separate studios under four different scenarios.

Each singer was completely isolated, hearing only themselves,

or singer one got to hear singer two,

or singer two got to hear singer one or a singer two got to hear singer one or finally

both singers could hear each other. T-t-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah.

Then the researchers used software to extract pitch information from the recordings.

And what they found was that singers stayed more on tune with the pitch written in the musical

score when singing solo versus singing with a partner.

And when one partner veered off pitch, the other singer followed her, perhaps to compensate for the error,

meaning even though they weren't singing the pitch as written, the resulting duet was more harmonious.

The findings are in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

And the results support a common practice in choirs,

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