Some observations on everyday singing behaviour based on long-term audio recordings

Abstract

This exploratory study deals with the phenomena of singing behaviour in everyday life. A group of 78 people of both sexes between the ages of 16 to 75 and of different occupations were asked to spend a whole day with a switched on audio recorders to record all their verbal interactions. Participants were asked to lead a normal life and to do what they usually do in order to capture real-life communication. The result was 510 h of audio recordings referring to 1950 episodes of everyday life. Singing behaviour of 23 participants (29 %) was observed in 82 episodes (4.2 %). There are more “everyday singers” among men (33 %) than among women (25 %). The highest percentage of singing participants is observed for the young people under the age of 25 (41 %) and for participants older than 55 (40 %). The paper describes the method for gathering data, outlines the observed types of everyday singing behaviour and gives examples of how and when individual participants use singing in everyday contexts.