How can I improve my pitch when I sing?

Pitch problems are really common for singers. Here are some simple tips on how to improve your pitch.

While it is true that some people are more innately tuneful than others, I think there is strong evidence that just about everyone can improve their ability to sing in tune quite significantly.

I've gathered these tips from experts who have taught me over the years, from friends who have gone on to professional careers in the music industry, and from just plain old common-sense (not that common!).

I hope they're useful.

• Stand up, or sit up, straight when you sing. Posture makes a massive difference to the way you sing.
  
  I know, because I'm a tall woman (nearly six feet tall) and have terrible posture. I can really hear the difference in my own voice when I stand up straight. Pay special attention to your shoulders, checking that they're not hunched forward.
  
  If you're rehearsing sitting down, make sure your back is straight, your head level, and you knees are down and uncrossed.
  
  All of this will help you breathe better, and give you better sound and pitch.
  
  
• Smile! You wouldn't believe the difference that smiling when you sing makes both to the way you appear to your audience, but also to your pitch.
  
  One of my first jobs as a teenager was as a receptionist. I remember being told to smile when I answered the phones, so that clients could hear "the smile in my voice".
  
  This is true - by smiling, my whole voice lifted, and raised in pitch and volume. Smiling also helps raise pitch, helping you avoid flatness and stay on key.
  
  
• Listen while you sing! Listen to yourself when you sing. Pay attention to the notes coming out of your mouth. Don't just assume that everything is correct, because it may not be.
  
  Are you on the same pitch as the person next to you, if you're singing in choir, or can you hear a difference in the note? If there is a difference, are you absolutely certain that you're correct?
  
  
• Think! Don't be a lazy singer. Good singing requires thought, attention and concentration. Think about what you're singing, where the next note is coming from in your voice, and where problem areas are likely to be.
  
  Once you know your voice a little, you'll get to understand that certain notes, or break points in your voice, might present problems for you.
  
  
• Record yourself. Even the cheapest, scungiest tape recorder from the Dawne Of Tyme can be an invaluable tool in learning to control pitch problems.
  
  It is a well-known fact that what we hear in our heads when we sing is quite different to what others hear when we sing.
  
  What I hear in my own head is a lot lower to how I sound when I hear myself on recordings. When I hear recordings of myself, it's like I'm listening to Minnie Mouse! I hate it!
  
  People with pitch problems often don't hear the problems inside their heads, and can only hear them when they listen to a recording of themselves.
  
  So recording yourself is an invaluable way to hear reality, then correct it.
  
  By recording yourself, you'll be able to hear yourself as the outside world does - warts and all!
  
  
• Use clever technology. Software like Garage Band can record your voice, and tell you precisely what note you're singing - and if you're flat, sharp, or completely off the field!
  
  Then there are little gizmos like this tuning doodad on Amazon.
  
  For ten bucks you can have a portable tuning tell-all, letting you know when you need to correct. After a while, you'll get to know where the notes are in your voice. I'm ordering one for Christmas!
  
  
• Sing within your range. Most people have tuning problems at the ends of their range. The voice is harder to control, things wobble, and pitch is difficult.
  
  By choosing repertoire within your range - when you have a choice, that is! - you'll reduce the likelihood of off-notes making your audience wince in agony.
  
  
• Sing in the right key and pitch for your voice. Even if you can manage the notes well, there is this little thing called tessitura. Tessitura refers to the pitch range of a voice or of a piece of music. Not the extreme notes of a piece, or of a voice, but where the main body of it lies.
  
  Some pieces of music might be workable for a mezzo-soprano, for example, but are really written for a soprano voice. So although a mezzo can sing them, overall they are pitched just a little too high to show off the mezzo voice to its best advantage.
  
  Alternately, a soprano usually can sing most music written for altos, but they don't make sopranos sound great, and work the soprano range to the best advantage.
  
  In both cases, the singers will struggle for notes, may end up sounding shrill, husky, or inaudible, and are more likely to have pitching problems.
  
  By choosing the right music and range for your voice, you'll pitch better.
  
  
• Sing in the right choir section. You might be able to hit those high tenor and soprano notes, but does anyone else want to hear them?
  
  Part of pitching well is facing reality, and accepting the limits of your own voice.
  
  Yes, I do have a top E (the E two and a bit octaves above middle C), but you really, really don't want to hear it!
  
  In fact, you don't even want to hear my top C (two octaves above middle C). I'm a mezzo-soprano, and my voice sounds a lot better an octave down from that stratosphere.
  
  Learning your range isn't just about understanding which notes you can sing - it's also about understanding which notes you sing well.
  
  
• Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice - with good guidance - will help you not only strengthen and improve your voice in all areas of production, it will also help you learn what singing in tune feels like.
  
  When I'm in singing in my big choir (City of Dunedin Choir, about 130 members), even if I can't hear myself particularly well, I can tell whether I'm in tune or not because I've learned what the production of notes in tune feels like.
  
  Likewise, even though I don't have absolute pitch, I can tell when the choir has dropped pitch, because I have trouble finding the notes in my own voice. Everything feels wrong, and is increasingly difficult to sing.
  
  
• Prevent pitch "drift" with experience. Theoretically, there should be no more difficulty singing one pitch than another, but when you've been singing one musical temperament for a long time, you get used to how things should feel and sound.
  
  In this way, practice and experience can help you improve your own pitch. Afer a while, you get to know when pitch is drifting, and can auto-correct without a piano or tuning mechanism. You can also stop pitch drift happening in the first place.
  
  
• Rehearse the song you're performing - a LOT! If you are going to perform a piece of music for an audience, or are going to perform a solo, rehearse it as much as possible beforehand - in front of an audience, if possible.
  
  The more familiar you are with the music, the better your performance. Not just pitch-wise, but in all aspects of interpretation and polish. Remember to ask for feedback from your practice "victims"!
  
  
• Sit or stand next to the tuneful singers! If you sing in a choir or group situation, try to position yourself next to the tuneful singers.
  
  If you're not sure who in the choir (in your section) is the most tuneful, ask your choir director to help you. Just explain that you are working on your pitch, and you believe that being next to the most tuneful singers will help you improve.
  
  
• Perform for others - and get feedback! If you have siblings who are willing to listen and give useful feedback, great! Partners can be useful too.
  
  Choose people with a good ear for music, and ask for honest criticism. There's no point in asking someone who will tell you you're wonderful - even when you're not!
  
  Performing for others can also help to steady problems with nerves and stage fright.
  
  
• Get lessons. Pitch problems are often to do with vocal production problems that can only be solved by one-on-one tuition with a teacher.
  
  I've heard big improvements from one particular person I know (who I won't name, as I don't want to offend), who has a lovely voice, but used to sing very flat.
  
  Only a handful of lessons later, the improvement in pitch was striking. Clearly, the issue was something very easily corrected, and this person has since gone on to get numerous solos and to sing increasingly well.
  
  However! If selecting a teacher for pitch issues, you may wish to ask the teacher for a demo of their own singing - and run it through a pitch analysis, before signing on for lessons.
  
  The internet is full of adverts for singing teachers who cannot sing in tune themselves, and are unlikely to be able to help solve your own problems if they cannot solve their own!
  
  Also be wary - as far as I am aware, just about anyone can set up shop as a singing teacher! As the demand is so great, there are a lot of dodgy practitioners with little to recommend them except their advertising. It pays to ask for qualifications and recommendations before laying down your money.
  
  
• Choose the right parents! This is a bit facetious, but music runs in families. If your parents are musical, you're more likely to be. Musical parents will also understand your love of music, and support you as you learn, maybe even helping pay the big bucks needed for lessons and tuition.
  

I've met a lot of singers of all different levels of ability. My friends range from hacks like me, through to leads in national opera companies and internationally-known professional conductors.

And I've never met anyone who couldn't improve their pitch, no matter how great or how poor it seemed to be.

We're all just travellers on the path of music, no matter what our natural ability. It is up to us to make the most of the talent we've been given, with hard work, dedication, and love.

Then, when we fluff that top note, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. And nothing to do but sit back - and laugh!

And nail it hard the next time!

---

Chris Rowbury also has some useful information on singing in tune at his blog From the front of the choir: How to sing in tune.

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Hallelujah! The royal flush of song!

WHEN a tenor-singing pensioner got stuck with his Zimmer Frame in a hospital toilet he used an unusual weapon to attract the nurse's attention – Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

It might seem like a far-fetched comedy sketch but it's what actually happened to 80-year-old George Hudson at Kent and Sussex Hospital.

Read the full story here.

I guess pulling the Handel helped him flush his problem, hey?

(OK, I found it funny)

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Examples and discussion: Soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass...

The following post provides example clips and discussion of these voice parts: whistle register soprano, soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, basso profondo and oktavist.

A lot of people find it hard to work out which voice part they should sing. Soprano or alto? Tenor or bass?

These samples may help you. They're all of well-known singers, starting from the top to the bottom, who can be classified into the various voice parts.

If you're not sure where you fit in, try singing along with the clips. They might just help you put yourself in place!

I've used popular music clips in this post, and kept away from opera-style vocal stuff, because that is what most people are familiar with, and that is how most of us sing as choristers - I hope!

Correctly classified? Maybe!

Some of these singers are easily classified, others not. Mariah Carey is obviously a soprano, and John Denver is obviously a tenor.

Other singers, such as Charlotte Church, claim to be one thing when the evidence suggests otherwise - to the best of my knowledge, she is still claiming to be a soprano, but my ears tell me I'm hearing a very definite mezzo.

And some have debated whether Elvis was a tenor, but I'm hearing baritone, and Elvisologists (yes, they exist!) now agree he was a baritone.

I hope these clips are useful as well as interesting. What they show me, as a chorister, is that human voices - like people ourselves - are not easily classified into little boxes where we can be categorised and labelled.

Voices follow a spectrum from high to low, and there are a number of us who can sing a variety of voice parts. Flexibility can be incredibly useful, both in the amateur and in the professional world.

Enjoy!

Whistle Register - Soprano

Mariah Carey is a soprano, who can also sing in the highest part of the voice, the whistle register. In classical music, the whistle register is famously used in Mozart's Queen Of The Night aria.

Here's a clip of Carey.


Mariah Carey using whistle register.

Common, or garden variety, soprano

Chloe Agnew is a fairly typical clear-voiced soprano, although a bloody good one. Listen to the way her voice pops out at the top of her range, and disappears as she moves lower down in her range.


Chloe Agnew, Soprano, sings Panis Angelicus

Mezzo-soprano

Charlotte Church is a well-known child star, who rose to fame as a child soprano, but who is now, if you listen, clearly a mezzo-soprano. She also clearly has tuning problems in this clip, but that is not the point of using it.

Listen to the richness and lower tone to her voice, compared to Carey ad Agnew (both sopranos). Sure, she sings high, but her voice lacks that bell-like clarity, and is richer and more solid in its lower notes than in its higher pitches.


Charlotte Church, mezzo-soprano, sings Ave Maria

Contralto

Karen Carpenter would have been welcomed in any alto section! Listen to the richness and depth to her voice, and the ease with which she manages lower notes!

Carpenter is an absolute delight to listen to, and made lower voiced singing for women an art form. Women aren't just lovely when we sing high - we can be damn sexy in our lower notes too!


Karen Carpenter, alto, sings We've Only Just Begun.

Tenor

John Denver is absolutely a tenor, and wouldn't have sung anywhere but the tenor section in a typical choir. Listen to the easy, higher tone of his voice - it echoes with warmth and lightness.

Denver's repertoire, focusing on natural beauty, home pleasures and country joys matched his voice perfectly, resulting in massive commercial success.


John Denver singing "Calypso". Clearly a tenor.

Baritone

Elvis was a baritone who had great command over his upper register and incredible soul to his voice. When people first heard him sing on the radio, they found it hard to believe that he was a white man.

Because Elvis' higher notes were so solid, people have wondered whether he was a tenor, but his lower notes place him firmly as a baritone.

Never say that baritones are boring in my presence, or I'll hit you with a big whacky stick!


Elvis, the one and only, singing "Amazing Grace". A baritone, who often sang tenor-range songs. Pure bliss to listen to.

Bass

Leonard Cohen is a well-known bass. Those lovely deep notes are something only a true bass can pull off.

Only about 10% of men in western societies are true basses, according to a well-respected voice and music expert I am friends with back in Australia.

If you're a bass, and have good pitch, you'll be welcome in just about any choir!


Leonard Cohen singing "Hallelujah". A bass.

Basso profondo

At the bottom of the vocal range is the basso profondo and the oktavist.

Paul Robeson was probably the best basso profondo in the history of the world, for ever and ever, amen. Here he is, singing "Old Man River" from the movie musical "Showboat".


Paul Robeson, basso profondo, singing "Old Man River".

Oktavist

Finally, here's an interesting clip from a famous oktavist named J D Sumner. He's in the Guinness Book Of Records for singing the lowest note on record (C1, three octaves below middle C).

Oktavists are named such because of their ability to sing a full octave below the bass part in Russian Church music. Now that's impressive!


J D Sumner, oktavist, performing Wayfaring Stranger.

So there you go, from high to low, a few examples of the human voice, what it can sound like, with examples from popular music.

Interesting, huh?

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Christmas times two, the saga begins...

People are starting to get ready for Christmas.

At St. Paul's, we've been given the first of the Advent music to look at. Our next door neighbours have their (plastic) tree up.

I'm starting to think it is time to get out the bunting I made last year and hang it ready, and start looking for trees. I'll have to start making decorations too, as we have precious few.

This year, we're having two Christmasses - one in Dunedin, New Zealand (home) on the 12th, with my husband, and the other in Adelaide, Australia with my parents and extended family.

My kids will think they're extra lucky, as Father Christmas will come twice! And when you're a preschooler, like it or not, Christmas is all about presents.

I'm not that thrilled about being in Australia for Christmas. I was hoping and planning to be in Dunedin this year for Christmas. But my mother emotionally encouraged (I won't say "blackmailed") me to come to Adelaide with the kids for Christmas and, if your mother is anything like mine, you would know that I had little choice in the matter once she'd decided we were coming over.

However, next year I will definitely be in Dunedin. Because if Mum tries to get me to go to Adelaide, I'm saying NO.

I'm sad, because I was hoping to be here in Dunedin for Christmas at the Cathedral. The music will be beautiful, the celebrations lovely, and the Cathedral is a place I feel at home in now.

Adelaide, on the other hand, is a place where I am treated as not quite an adult, and things are always just the tiniest bit awkward, even though my parents are wonderful people and love me and my kids a great deal. They seem to forget that Adelaide is their home now, and no longer mine.

Fish and visitors stink after three days - and I'll be staying over a month! Life will be interesting - to say the least - in my parents' home, for weeks on end!

Anyway, Christmas is on its way. The cupboard has a few presents in it for the kids, and I've done my own shopping for my own presents in the lingerie department, as I would rather select my own gifts than have a hit-or-miss from my other (some say better) half.

I guess I'd better get baking now, and start planning our Dunedin Christmas dinner!

As for music, I have a Messiah to look forward to at City Of Dunedin Choir, ad I'll be following it up with a repeat performance in Adelaide with the very first choir I ever sang with, Flinders University Choral Society!

It figures - I've never done Messiah before, and now I get to do two performances within a few days of each other! I'll also be carolling for FUCS while I'm in Adelaide before Christmas. I'd better bring my Santa hat!

Finally, I'd like to post some Christmas music to get the mood happening. This YouTube is Celtic Woman singing "Carol of the Bells", and doing it wonderfully. Have a listen.

You'll enjoy it, I think.

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Facing our voices - and our fears

Have you ever noticed the difference in the way people talk about bad violinists, compared with bad singers?

If someone plays the violin badly, people say, "She is a bad violinist".

But if a person sings badly, people say, "She was bad."

It's the same with all instruments, versus singing. In the one case, we judge the ability. In the other, it is almost as if we are judging the person themselves.

That's pretty harsh to deal with, when you're the singer in question. Especially if you're judged to be "bad"!

Words can be powerful, and audience reception can be powerful, and both have the potential to give a singer an emotional high, or absolutely crush their sense of self-worth.

Singing as a deeply personal art form

Of all the arts, singing is perhaps the most deeply personal art form. No other has the potential to strip bare our souls, leaving us open to absolute emotional ruin.

I'm a writer by profession, and while I've occasionally been upset by people's poor reactions to various bits of rubbish I've written over the years, audience reaction doesn't affect me in anything like the same way their reaction to my singing does.

Perhaps this is because I can blame my failure on the inadequacies of the English language, rather than on my own inadequate self?

With writing, as with the case of a violinist, there are tools to be selected and wielded with care and consideration.

But with the human voice singing aloud, there is nothing but our own body and voice and the appreciation - or lack thereof - of our listener.

Pain runs deep and long

I remember the first time I asked my parents to come to a choir concert of mine. It was a Christmas concert, and we were doing some of the most beautiful music I'd ever experienced.

Singing in four part harmony was a new passion for me, and I wanted to share it with my family. I thought they'd love it.

The concert went well, and the music was beautiful. But afterwards all my mother could say, upon my asking her if she had enjoyed the concert, was that she didn't know any of the music.

I think she had been hoping for "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph" and "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree"!

That was the first and last choral concert my parents ever attended of mine, nearly seventeen years ago. They've never been to a concert since, and they have never heard me sing. I'm assuming they never will.

I'm an adult now, and I suppose I should say that it doesn't matter any more about my family not supporting my love of singing.

But it does. I still get a bitter taste and a tightness in my throat thinking about it. It still upsets me.

Singing is, for me, a deeply personal and joyful art form. I don't think I'll ever quite get over the fact that my passion was stamped on and spoiled by my parents in this small but significant way.

Maybe that is one of the reasons I still don't think I'm worth listening to, even now?

I've stopped telling my parents much about my life, my interests, and my passions. I don't share much of depth with them at all, to be honest.

But I know that, no matter how odd my kids' interests may be to me, I'll be that embarrassing parent cheering them on and valuing their hobbies - and attending any and all concerts or bowls meets or art shows or model train shows or knitting parades or fishing competitions or whatever - when they're fifty and more.

When we support our children in what they do, no matter how old they are or how strange their interests seem to us, we are sending a strong message of love and acceptance. Which is the most vital message any parent can give.

Time to shed our masks

When we sing, we expose one of the deepest facets of ourselves to criticism, and to the possibility of ridicule and contempt.

Will our audience cringe at us? Will they laugh at our bad notes? Or will they not even bother to show up, despite the fact that we've begged them for years to come listen?

One story I heard recently involved a chorister who was leaving a choir, and who asked her friends and workmates to attend her last Evensong.

None came. Not one. They may as well have spat in her face and finished the job off.

When we sing, we can't help but feel exposed. Or that's how I feel, anyway.

They say that a good remedy for nerves is to imagine your audience naked - but I'm still trying to deal with not feeling naked myself when I sing!

When we sing, we shed our masks. The only way to sing well is to give of ourselves completely to the music. That means throwing out the pretenses with which we adorn ourselves in daily lives.

We might be, as is one woman I know, a vampy gothic all dressed in corsetry and long skirts, but when we sing the true self comes out - and surprise! It's a colaratura soprano, pure and sweet! Not so scary after all.

Or we've been a sports star all our life, lining up our trophies and challenged by none, and the image of "alto" fits best in our mind. Surprise! Our true voice is a pure, warm, vibrato-free mezzo-soprano.

Or maybe we'd like to be the tenor every choir desires, but we're a lovely, husky baritone. Or we want to be the baritone, but we're the bass with our deep, luscious, rumbly low notes.

The masks fall away, and this is part of why singing is so frightening to us. It shows the world who we really are.

Finding our voice, and facing the fear

This is the magic of singing. Our voice is answerable to no-one. We might want to be one thing, one type of singing - one style, one genre. But we cannot conquer what our body and our voice is destined to be.

This truth has a power all its own, if only we're strong enough and fearless enough to take it. Accepting our voice, its weaknesses and its strengths, is an incredibly liberating act. It is akin to standing in front of the full-length mirror completely naked, and embracing who we are, here and now - not what we might choose to be, if we were thinner, younger, blonder, more muscular.

As a singer new to her soprano voice, I'm not sure I'm strong enough yet to accept my voice with all its characteristics, just as it is. But I hope to gather my inner strength and face my demons.

Perhaps this reality, this truth - more than lessons or knowledge or talent - is where real singing comes from. Throwing the masks and the dreams in the dustbin, and facing the honesty of who we are, and who we can be. Not as "good" or "bad" or even "average".

But as ourselves, which is something no other singer can be.

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Women in art

Not much to do with choir at all, except in being a celebration of beauty in art.

Enjoy. I thought this was absolutely lovely and fascinating.



Originally viewed this at one of my favourite blogs, Touchatou.

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A bit of Shania, for the classical music lovers

Just some music education for people like my husband, who only listen to classical music!



A little bit of video hits trivia: This video is a piss take on Robert Palmer's 1985 hit, Addicted To Love. You can watch that here (if you want to).

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It's not Byrd, it's a duck!

The internet is full of neat tips on how to deal with nerves when you have to sing solos. And I'm here to tell you that none of them work.

This is going to be another one of those "honesty" posts, so if you're looking to read a blog from an expert singer who never mucks things up or has problems with their voice, you're going to have to look elsewhere. But I'm not much into lying.

I had to do my first solo last night (a line in Byrd's Second Service) - both with St. Paul's Cathedral Choir, and as a soprano.

Prior to that I've done solos as an alto, and in quartets and semichoruses and stuff, but soprano is new to me. I've only been singing soprano for 3-4 years.

And I hate doing the solo thing.

I'll admit it - I get scared. I get really, really bad nerves. I'd have to say I'm actually more comfortable in the dentist's chair than I am doing solos, even taking the dentist's bill into account.

My husband, and all my friends - most of whom are far better singers than me - say you get used to it. How could you ever, ever get used to it? That's nuts! Maybe when you have a lovely voice, and you know you're good, it's easy. But for the likes of me, with very average amounts of talent, it's really, really gut-wrenching, vomit-hauling stuff. And not just for my audience.

I don't understand how you could ever get used to wondering whether the shade of green your face has turned is a perfect match for the stained glass windows. Or if you're really as awful-sounding to other people as you are to yourself.

I don't like listening to myself on recordings, despite people saying this is excellent advice. It's like an aural slap in the face - the whole nasty truth about how I sound, laid up for me to hear and not appreciate. Whereas in a choir, I can sit back and enjoy being a part of something bigger, and so much better.

And I don't understand how anyone could get used to the whole heart-thumping holy-crap-what-words-was-I-supposed-to-sing-again? moment just before you open your mouth in a solo.

Or the terrifying fear that when you open your mouth nothing will come out at all.

I know some people love doing solos. I think they must be from a different planet to where I come from. I respect them, but I don't understand them one bit. And they're welcome to any solo that's around, any time.

How it fell out

Anyway, here's how it went.

I was fine until we started the piece, and then my brain decided to stop working, and my voice went all shakey (Elvis would have loved it!), and I just wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else! Jupiter is supposed to be nice this time of year.

I don't know how I sounded. Probably awful. Certainly nothing like how I normally sing, all confident and happy and loving it. The bit I had to do was literally one line, but it felt like every note lasted f.o.r.e.v.e.r., and each bit of that forever was a crap-sounding disaster area for me.

It didn't help that some fluff-brained editor had transposed the whole piece up a major third (WTF?), and the piece sounded unbalanced and off-kilter, like transposed nasties always do.

After Evensong, people were very, very quiet about my bit. No-one said anything.

Yeah, well I know I was awful, but you don't have to rub it in with a deathly hush.

So that was it. You all now know the real reason this blog is called "The Chorister" and not "The Soloist"! I don't have a solo voice, and I did warn my Music Director and choir that I'm not a soloist. But when I'm pretty much forced to do it, people get what they deserve, aural-torture-wise. I think I probably won't be asked again in a big hurry. It's just the kick in the guts that I expected. Which is why I didn't want to do it.

And that's the difference between singing in a choir, and singing solos. I think soloists really must have come from a different planet. I don't get how anyone could enjoy feeling like they are about to throw up, while knowing they have to sing. Which of the two is going to come out? Who knows!

Or maybe solos are a form of masochism?

But I will continue to love to sing in choir, with others who love to sing in choir too. It really is the ultimate team sport. I've had my time in the limelight, in the sporting world and in other areas of my life. I think it's probably wise to now leave the limelight of music to other singers who will make people smile in pleasure, instead of leave them reaching for their ear-plugs.

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