Category: Learning to Sing

I was having a conversation with a client this week about finding songs that sound good in their voice, and making them sound good. While we targeting songs specific to them, I wanted to try and collate my general thoughts on this into one article for them and others.

The Harsh Reality

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.

Most people pick songs that are initially too hard for them.

What does ‘too hard’ mean? It’s much like someone trying to lift a weight that is too heavy for them. Sure, they might be able to force their body to lift the weight once or twice, or maybe make it feel OK once in each session. But in the long run it generally feels highly variable. Progress may also seem inconsistent, with a lot of two steps forward, three steps back moments.

In the same way, every song places it’s own unique demands on your voice. When those demands exceed your vocal capacity (i.e. what your voice can actually handle for sustained periods), you will encounter disappointment and frustration. Not every time, but often enough you can’t trust your voice.

This is generally a sign that the songs you are picking are outside of your capacity, at least at present. Continue reading “Making Songs Sound Good”

I had a discussion with a singer recently, regarding some issues they struggle with in their voice, and what they were looking to achieve.

In particular, this singer was struggling with the very basics of their voice. Yet they were frustrated that, after only a few months of vocal training, they weren’t just able to launch into Whitney Houston songs, without even warming up their voice beforehand – THAT’S an unrealistic expectation.

Many singers have these obscenely unrealistic expectations. These chiefly centre around:
a) what they think voices in general should be able to do
b) what they expect THEIR voice to be able to do
c) how much work it should take / how quickly they think they should be able to achieve such skill

Now, the obvious question that arises could well be “what makes their expectations so outlandish?“. Well, let me give you a look behind the scenes. If I give you a brief rundown on how voices actually function, what it takes to build a voice, and we are trying to do in sessions with clients, I think you’ll understand.

How the voice works (Abridged)

Basics
Your vocal folds are two flaps of muscle, mucus and ligament in your larynx (Adam’s apple). They generate all the sound you hear. To sing low notes they contract and thicken, to sing high notes they stretch and thin. At the base level, the ability to move smoothly from a shorter, more contracted state to a longer, more stretched state determines how smoothly one can traverse their range.

Next, the sound your vocal folds generate travels into your vocal tract. This is the portion of the throat between your larynx and your mouth, and is responsible for focusing and shaping all the generated sound into vowels. The more precisely one can shape the vocal tract into respective vowels, and the more smoothly that behaviour can be handled between vowels, the smoother one is able to sing across one’s range. Continue reading “Singers and Unrealistic Expectations”

Many people who come to me for sessions, often come with a very clearly defined self-given label for what kind of singer they are.

“I’m a weighty contralto with a light top”

“I’m a super-light tenor with an airy flip”

“I’m a hard-rock singer with high-octane vocals”

And 99% of the time, they are not any of those things. Let me explain why, and start with a simple caution that every singer eventually has to learn for themselves.

Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions

It’s all too common to want to know “but what AM I?!“. We all want a handle, something that makes the intangible seem more tangible, and to get a grip on what we should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s an understandable desire.

In turn, when one knows they’ve got a long way to go, it only seems logical to start with whatever we presently have. We look at what we can presently do, and what we can’t, and extrapolate from there. But here’s the problem: what each of us has at the start of our vocal journeys is so fledgling, so minute, it often doesn’t give anywhere near enough of an indication as to what the voice will be with even a modicum of training.

Sadly, singers (including my own past self!) hyper-fixate on what they think they have, and construct some internal definition of what their voice is/isn’t when they’ve not actually built anything yet. This is entirely entirely, but it also where those unhelpful, overly restrictive self-labels come in.

Those of you who have studied with me will have noticed how rapidly your voice changes within the first few months, such that the voice you have after just a little bit of study is not even close to the same feeling instrument as it was at the start. However much people think you can change your voice yourself in self-guided training, it really doesn’t change all that much compared to what can actually be done.

So firstly, don’t rush to definitions. They mis-lead and paint you into a corner by setting typically inaccurate parameters as to what you should/shouldn’t do.

Rule 2: Your voice will change with training

When we first start working with someone’s voice, we have to build the fundamentals (obviously). This can mean that range, power, control, even-ness will increase in exercises, but songs will still feel tricky to execute with the same facility.

Why would this be?

It’s not just that it takes time to build the beginning of facility, but it also takes time to figure out songs that your newly built voice will respond well to. I’ve listed three songs I often prescribe to singers as beginner building songs, but people often tend to fixate on songs they like, even if such songs are working against building a voice well.

After a short while, a few songs will become apparent as more favourable for your voice mechanically, but they may not feel that artistic or performance-worthy just yet. Some of that is because the training process initially addresses the problem of great singing mainly through a mechanical lens. This means that at the start, we are not yet focused on the artistic. Even as we become more facile with our voices, the artistic can only be considered when the technical is not proving to be an obstacle.

Some of the lack of artistry is also because you are only just learning to “hold the paint brush” musically speaking, and it will take a little while before you can “paint artistically” with your voice. It takes time.

Rule 3: Some songs will suit you more than others

Not long after this process begins, in very short order in fact, some songs will seem to leap ahead and sound incredible in your voice. You’ll start to hear things you’ve never heard before. More bottom, more top, more dynamic range and excitement, and great control. Your voice will sound and feel smoother than it ever has before.

You’ll then go down a rabbit hole trying to find more songs that feel the same. You’ll want to try and deploy that same feeling of vocal quality in every song you try. Some will be more successful, and some will be less successful. That may not make a lot of sense at the time, but it really is something you learn to make peace with.

You’ll try to figure out why some feel better than others, and you’ll derive some intuition that helps guide your song choice better. And you’ll spend some time consolidating at this level. You’ll think you’ve figured your voice out, that you understand it now, and FINALLY you might even start to think about labels for yourself… but wait…

Remember Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions… because…

Rule 4: Your voice will keep levelling up

With all the work you’re putting in, you’ll find that suddenly a new song that you previously thought was way beyond your ability, feels accessible. You won’t know how it happened. You’ll remember trying it in the last phase, and the song just fell apart. But something has shifted in your voice. You’ll be tackling more range than before, and trying to smooth out the transitions across your growing range.

Suddenly, all the songs that you thought were your A-game, suddenly feel like B- or even C-grade. What happened? You’re not doing them any worse… but rather, you’ve levelled up. Your voice has not ascended not just in range, but in quality and function.

What then? Well, you’ll wash, rinse, and repeat the same process of figuring out what songs fit and what songs don’t. You’ll try to iron out the wrinkles and figure out how to deploy that next level of quality in as many songs as possible.

And then? You’ll try to figure out the next label/definition… but with each levelling up occurs, you’ll start to grasp that these labels are so temporary that they almost don’t matter. They are not definitions, but merely reflections on your voice as you ascend to greater singing ability.

Don’t worry about the labels.

The great thing is, you’ll still be unmistakeably you throughout all this training, but as soon as you start to consolidate at one level, you’ll shed any previously meaningful label and be ascending to the next level, which you’ll consolidate at, and move forward again. Ever moving forward!

Conclusion: Voices reveal themselves

The take-home message is not that you can’t derive any meaningful sense of your voice with training. But labels are only so helpful, and labels turned into self-definitions or declarations generally impede progress over time.

Instead, voices are completely unique, and each reveals themselves as we train. It’s a lot like bodybuilding or going to the gym – you can’t tell exactly what someone is going to look like with training, but the physique will develop at its own pace and as the pounds shed themselves, the underlying physique is revealed. And the better someone trains, the more nuanced that revelation becomes.

So don’t worry about labels, or what kind of voice you’re going to be. Even I can’t predict with perfect accuracy what kind of voice someone is going to be, I can only give generalities. But the longer someone trains for, the more obvious it becomes what kind of singer they are, and what kind of songs they should be singing. It just takes putting in the time to reveal that sensibility.

Want to experience this for yourself?

If this is a process you’d like to experience for yourself, I’d love to help you discover your own voice for yourself. You can book yourself in for your initial consultation via my booking form right here.

Can you learn to sing if you are tone deaf?

I get a lot of clients come to me because they’ve been told they sing out of tune, or that they are not especially tuneful. Many of these believe they are “tone deaf”, and cannot sing in tune. But is this true? Can you learn to sing if you are tone deaf?

What is tone deafness?

True tone-deafness means a total inability to distinguish whether two notes are the same or different. I often test this with clients by playing two notes on the piano and asking if they can tell that they sound different. In 99.99% of cases, people respond they can obviously hear they are different. If you can tell that some notes are higher or lower than others — even if you can’t actually hit them — then you are not tone-deaf.

True tone-deafness is the aural equivalent of colour blindness. This means someone’s brain or body lacks the actual ability to see or hear certain things — it’s literally a physical or neurological issue that isn’t something that can be overcome with training.

Fortunately, for most people, that isn’t the case.

So if I’m not tone-deaf, what is the issue?

If someone’s inability to hear the difference between certain notes is like colour blindness, then the ability to hit certain notes is more like dyspraxia.

This is a condition where someone’s ability to finely control their body in space, throw or catch a ball, or judge spatial distance accurately, etc, is not especially good or well co-ordinated.

The important thing is that this is a co-ordination issue, NOT a functional obstruction. People with dyspraxia start off with less inherent fine motor control. As co-ordination is a learnable skill, this is good news! Such skills are improved through specific, targeted practice.

Exercises designed to breed better neurological and motor control of their bodies are prescribed, and they become much like anyone else. In many cases, they become more skilled than people who always found it easy to co-ordinate (and who never had to learn), because now the ex-dyspraxics are equipped with the tools to improve, and they know how to dial in increasing amounts of fine motor control in their bodies.

So, it’s down to motor control?

For the most part, yes. Good singing, good tone, fine control over pitch, stamina in singing are all traits of a voice that is functioning well and correctly. Good singing (and pitching) is a by-product of well co-ordinated vocal function.

The more precisely you can control and operate your voice, the better you will sound. Also, the more accurate your pitching will be. This then removes “how to hit the notes well” as a barrier to singing, and singers can focus on learning to “play their instrument well” within songs.

Then why am I often sharp or flat?

With less co-ordinated voices, there’s often a problem with the singer (essentially) randomly flinging their voice at whatever they are trying to sing rather than intentionally picking notes out. Of course, per the above, often such singers need to have their function improved before they’ll be able to do this, but nevertheless, there’s an operator error at play. There’s a lack of intentionality in selecting the notes to sing and executing them.

Now, assuming that a singer is not just randomly flinging their voice at notes, generally singers will either tend to lean towards always being sharp or always being flat. It’s rare that singers are sometimes flat AND sometimes sharp.

Too much contraction = Flat

To sing low notes the vocal folds need to contract and thicken — i.e. they need to get shorter. To sing high notes the vocal folds need to stretch and thin — i.e. they need to get longer.

If someone has an excessive amount of contraction, this functional issue means the vocal folds tend to remain too short as the singer tries to ascend to higher notes. This means the vocal folds never quite reach the correct longer length, and therefore end up pitching flat (under the note). This tends to be more of an issue with male singers or weightier-voiced female singers.

Too much stretch = Sharp

When there is too little contraction in the vocal folds we have the opposite problem. This means the stretching component over-lengthens the vocal folds, and singers tend to find themselves too sharp as the vocal folds can’t contract/shorten enough to reach the lowest notes. This tends to be more of an issue with female singers or lighter-voiced male singers.

Similarly at the very top end, the lengthening can get excessive and singers often end up hitting random notes which are much, much higher than intended. They may be happy they can hit those notes, but they generally sound very light and weak, and find they have very little control over that pitch change.

The more in-balance and functionally correct a voice is — i.e. not too much contraction/stretch, nor too little — the more these tuning issues tend to decrease in magnitude, eventually disappearing as a noticeable trait.

Remember, we all hit bum notes from time to time

I hope this satisfies you as to why some people find themselves flat/sharp, and how this is remedied. This is generally why people tend to think they are tone-deaf, but often are not. It’s also why we all tend to be sharp or flat as a tendency, and how training to improve our voices can address these issues.

Despite all this, I want to remind all of you reading this that it’s fairly normal to hit bum notes from time to time. We should obviously work to eliminate as many wrong notes, and such that any wrong notes are minimally out. But we do need to recognise the voice is an organic instrument, and as such can never be 100% perfect, 100% of the time.

Do you feel you struggle with these pitching issues? Want to learn to sing if you are tone-deaf?

If anything we’ve discussed above makes you feel like “YES! That’s me, I really struggle with being off pitch”, then this is something we can help with in sessions. It really is as simple as assessing your voice, identifying the functional issues that are affecting you, then prescribing appropriate exercises to address that functional imbalance. You should notice a difference within the first session, and even within the first week.

All my clients report dramatic changes in their voices between each session, but especially in relation to vocal tone and pitch control arising from the first few sessions.

To experience these benefits for yourself, please do book yourself in via my booking form right here. I look forward to helping you with your voice soon.