Professional singers can be astonishingly wrong when judging their own performance.
This is shown by a study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, New York University and the University of Hamburg.
The scientists had trained sopranos sing the song "Happy Birthday" individually in the studio.
Then the participants listened to their own recordings as well as those of their colleagues and assessed how precisely the individual notes were hit.
Sascha Zoske
Journalist in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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From this information, the researchers derived a statistical model: It showed that more than half of the test subjects overestimated their pitch accuracy.
Only one participant was correct with her self-assessment - it was the singer who actually hit the notes best.
Further analysis showed that sopranos who underestimated their accuracy were in fact the better singers.
Links to the study