Sounds of creativity: musical, creative, and language factors associated with singing and creative singing

Singing integrates musical, linguistic, and creative abilities. This study examined how musical aptitude, linguistic skills, and domain-general creativity jointly predict both standard and creative forms of singing. One hundred and eleven adults completed a standardized battery assessing beat perception (CA-BAT), melodic discrimination (MDT), mistuning perception (MPT), musical self-assessment scales, musical engagement, musical socialisation, and creative task-solving competence. Linguistic expressivity was measured through expressive reading of the fable The North Wind and the Sun, and linguistic adaptability through spontaneous speech imitation in Tagalog and Mandarin, both rated by native speakers. Participants performed two singing tasks-standard and creative renditions of Happy Birthday-evaluated by expert musicians for accuracy and creativity. Stepwise multiple regressions revealed two distinct predictor constellations. Standard singing was best explained by musical engagement, expressive reading, and composite musical ability. Creative singing, by contrast, was predicted by spontaneous speech imitation, expressive reading, and creative problem-solving competence when musical predictors were excluded. These findings indicate that vocal creativity relies on flexible auditory-motor coupling, prosodic expressivity, and cognitive flexibility, rather than musical skill alone. The results highlight the integrative nature of singing as a multimodal form of vocal creativity emerging from interactions among musical, linguistic, and cognitive systems.