Singing In Tune
So in this post we established that most people have the capacity to learn music, now if you are still having issues with singing in tune it could be from a number of different sources. The first thing to check seems the most obvious, but is worth mentioning, do you actually know what notes you are singing? This could be either through identifying the note names through our western tradition (CDEFG etc), through a solfege system (Do Re Mi, or Sa Gah Pah etc,) or through recognizing with your ear the pitch without necessarily knowing the exact note. A lot of the time, singing out of tune can be solved by simply strengthening the understanding of the relationship between pitches, and really listening to both your voice and the melody. A really good way to approach this is to hum, or sing on an “ng,” this way you hear your voice immediately through a mostly internal perspective, while listening to the notes or melody you are learning, rather than singing out where you will hear your voice as it bounces off something and is returned back to you.
Okay, so you know the notes and yet when you sing the melody something still isn’t quite fitting in. Now we get to a much more ambiguous stage for the voice. Because there are so many moving parts to the voice, that we have almost no visual indicators for, it is a tricky instrument to properly shape and maintain. The lack of visual cues plays a larger role than you might think, because most of the workings of the instrument are happening inside, we have to look down other avenues to build an awareness of the voice. Achieving this is much easier, and safer to do under the guidance of a teacher. I say this from the perspective of both a lifelong student and teacher of singing.
I obviously cannot go through every aspect of the voice in one post, but I can at least start the conversation. A really big part of singing is breath, but it is not the one and only solution. Breath is the force that is really fueling our voice, to get our folds (chords) vibrating and our voices to actually make sounds, so having a strong control over the use of your breath is essential. There could also be extra unnecessary muscle tension getting involved at any point in your instrument, or in your body. This could be anything from tensing your jaw so it stays rigid, to your shoulders shrugging when you breath. The issue could also lie in the shape of the vowel you are singing through, and how that shape is moving your tongue. The list of possibilities is a long one, but one that can be navigated and learned.
DISCLAIMER
I am not a medical doctor. These posts are all anecdotal, based on experiences through my own learning, understanding and teaching. My musical knowledge is based primarily in the Western classical tradition, which by no means defines the only perspective to learn and understand music.
