I get a lot of clients come to me because they’ve been told they sing out of tune, or are not especially tuneful. Many of these believe they 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 actually see/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 to 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 catch or co-ordinate their bodies (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 the voice can be controlled and operated, the better the voice sounds and the more accurate their pitching tends to 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 un-coordinated 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 in the first instance. 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.
Let me explain…
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
The reverse is true when there is too little contraction in the vocal folds. 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?
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.