If you have ever tried singing your favourite songs, you’ve probably recognised that some are harder than others. You may have even found that some have near identical range, and yet some feel utterly unachievable. Why should this be?
I regularly speak with clients at my Nottingham vocal coaching studio about such songs they find difficult to sing. Comments come up like:
“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”
These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing. This is entirely normal – I’d be worried if someone wasn’t noticing this when trying different songs.
As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.
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Characteristics of difficult songs
I’ve got ten traits in mind. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.
I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.
0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue. Continue reading “What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing”