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Vocalizations are an essential medium for social and sexual signaling in mammals and birds. Whereas most animals only produce innate vocalizations, songbirds learn to sing in a process with many parallels to human speech learning. I will discuss recent advances from our lab highlighting the neural mechanisms that enable birdsong learning, including basal ganglia-dependent vocal exploration and reinforcement. How the learned song is integrated with innate vocalizations will also be considered, with reference to recent studies that genetically map neural circuits for innate vocalizations in mice.