Meet Dr. Eric Hanson, the Mind Behind a New Solution to Tone-Deaf Singing
By Tyler Murdock and Carter Gorham
Imagine a world without Auto-Tune, where those that once considered themselves tone-deaf sing with complete confidence.
This is the vision of Dr. Eric Hanson, Music Department Chair and choral professor at Southern Virginia University.
Hanson is the co-inventor of an app specially developed with the intent to eradicate tone-deafness and aid singers at all levels of experience improve vocal pitch and maximize musical performance.
“When we sing a pitch or play [one] on the piano, the pitch we hear is the fundamental frequency, which is what most people would hear — you play a C, they would hear a C,” explained Hanson. “But there’s a whole series of other pitches, called overtones, that are playing at the same time: the octave above, two octaves above that, then there’s a fifth, a third, and it sort of stacks on top of each other.”
Still in the developing stages of branding and alpha testing, the app’s official name is pending.
When paired with headphones, it allows users to listen to their own voice with specially designed filtering technology. The “overtones” (the pitches that often accompany the melody) are removed, leaving the user’s voice isolated. The app uses complex mathematical equations to block out the sound that, according to Hanson, is the most common cause for pitch problems in singing.
The idea that led to the app first occurred to Hanson as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. During a lecture, Hanson learned about a theory of the origin of western music. Attributing the development of harmony in music to tone-deaf monks that couldn’t match the melody sung by the rest of the chorus. These ancient singers would often unintentionally sing harmony to the melodies heard by the rest of the choir.
“It’s fun yet anecdotal to think that western music started because somebody was tone deaf. But this [idea] intrigued me to think that some people just hear differently,” Hanson said. “Then I started thinking about my experiences with friends and others who are tone-deaf… and the pitches they sing are almost always in harmony.”
Hanson’s theory was validated during his graduate work at the University of Southern California. He observed a mentor and professor who used his own voice to deafen and block out harmonic overtones to help students to sing on pitch.
Inspired, Hanson first put his theory to the test after meeting Dr. Eric Freudenthal while both were teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso. Freudenthal was a computer science professor who, despite his musical difficulty, wanted to sing lullabies to his young child. The two worked together to develop the technology behind the application.
At Southern Virginia, both Hanson and associate music professor Kyle Nielsen have begun utilizing this technology in their choirs and vocal lessons. It doesn’t just help with pitch — but also to refine other important musical skills like vowel matching.
According to Hanson’s marketing consultants at UTEP, the number of choral students in the United States exceed 35 million. “The potential scale of the people that can benefit from this technology is far greater than I originally thought,” Hanson said.
Hanson sees this technology as an alternative to Auto-Tune. “If we can stick this in someone’s ear then it’s like auto-tune before you have to process it,” he said.
Dr. Hanson recently presented Intone to The Utah Music Educators Association.
Those interested in participating in alpha testing may email him directly at Eric.hanson@svu.edu
