We apply the modal distribution, a high-resolution time-frequency distribution, to the study of sung musical passages. Evidence is presented comparing the modal distribution with the spectrogram for a set of synthetic signals which emulate human singing. We then compare the two techniques for sung passages from four student sopranos with respect to measures of the instantaneous frequency and amplitude of the partials. In general, the modal distribution appears to be a more sensitive measure of individual differences in vocal production than the spectrogram.