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“Prayed For You,” a country crossover hit for newcomer Matt Stell, was recognized as one of the most performed songs of the year. The 2021 ASCAP Pop Music Awards are rolling out virtually this week, with live acceptance speeches and performances across the PRO’s social media pages. The award marks the 14 th time the publisher has received top honors. Top music publisher of the year went to Warner Chappell for multiple top tracks, including Dan + Shay’s “10,000 Hours,” The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me,” Da Baby’s “ROCKSTAR” and more. Other winners of note include songwriters Louis Bell, Kaan Güneşberk and Billy Walsh winning Song of the Year for Post Malone’s “Circles,” Dua Lipa and Emily Warren for “Don’t Start Now” and Amy Allen for co-writing the Harry Styles hit “Adore You.” “This equalization of gender we have a lot of in our culture right now does affect how people use their voices pitch-wise.The Weeknd takes home the coveted Songwriter of the Year award at the 2021 ASCAP Pop Music Awards for his double platinum After Hours and the infectious hits “Blinding Lights” and “Heartless.” The honor marks the 13 th ASCAP award overall for Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye and his first win as Songwriter of the Year. “You speak at a pitch that is modeled to you,” Titze says, noting that genders are becoming more equal across the board.
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In fact, embrace your progressive vocal cords - pitch is as much cultural as it is physiological. Otherwise, there’s not much to do except embrace that Grandma and Grandpa are starting to sound alike. Adjusting some of these unhealthy habits can help with pitch, and exercise can help ensure that you maintain vocal muscle in your old age. Lifestyle decisions and environmental toxins, such as cigarette smoke, can also play a role in vocal changes. “But there are many diseases and injuries that can happen in our larynx that can cause our overall pitch to change.” “These days, people have a lot of reflux and those acids go onto vocal folds and change the tissue properties,” Titze says. But don’t worry too much-the most common vocal disease Titze has seen has been acid reflux.
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Men might also experience pitch changes as a result of injury to the vocal folds or disease and, if your voice suddenly changes pitch, it’s important to have your vocal cords checked out by a specialist. (Titze assures us that the temporary testosterone decline from fatherhood won’t impact vocal pitch). That’s why men speak at about 130 Hz, and women at around 190 to 200 Hz, and why pitch fluctuates with age as the concentration of sex hormones in the body rise and fall. On top of that, there’s a part of the vocal folds that vibrate and a part that does not, and the part that vibrates is about 60 percent longer, on average, in men. During puberty, a surge of sex hormones causes vocal folds to lengthen and build up muscle, more so for boys who experience a spike in testosterone at this time.
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Substantial vocal folds also explain why men tend to have deeper voices than women. “The larynx is a sexual organ, because it’s very different between one sex to the other and that has to do with how much testosterone there is compared to other hormones that balance it out,” Titze told Fatherly, adding that testosterone levels shape the length and musculature of the vocal folds, which vibrate to produce sound and ultimately dictate pitch.