THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BEING "TONE DEAF".
When I was first starting to work with voice students, many years ago, I had a student who desperately wanted to improve his singing. He
was a phenomenal dancer and had tremendous potential as a performer, but he
felt he was held back by one important thing – he was tone-deaf and therefore,
had difficulty with singing parts. He could not hear and match a pitch if his life
depended on it and he needed my help.
Well, as I stated before, I was new to teaching voice,
though I was a trained singer myself.
But being a well-trained vocalist and being able to train others does
not necessarily go hand in hand. I had never been faced with the difficult task
of teaching someone to match pitch and this student was as far from matching
pitch as any person can get.
As you might have guessed, my inability to help this young
man still haunts me. But perhaps it’s that experience that spurred me on to
develop techniques that can help those who have never learned to match pitch successfully.
IF YOU CAN'T MATCH PITCH, IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE A BAD VOICE.
After years of working with singers - both good and not so
good - I came to understand that just because you can’t match pitch doesn’t mean
you don’t have good vocal quality. The quality of your voice and your ability to
match pitch are two completely different things. Now, it’s true that you need
good pitch to showcase your beautiful vocal quality, but developing good pitch
is totally do-able. Don’t give up singing because you haven’t learned to match
pitch – YET!
What I have discovered is that matching pitch is something
we all do everyday of our lives if we speak our native language to others. Our
speech is FULL of pitch and our intent is conveyed through our tone and pitch
variations. If you couldn’t match pitch, you would speak in a monotone voice and not be able to match or imitate some else's inflections.
SPEAKING AND SINGING GO HAND IN HAND.
I studied speech and vocal acting techniques at the same
time I was studying to be a professional singer, but the two subjects were not
taught simultaneously and very little connection was ever made by my
instructors. But the more I was faced with students needing to learn to match
pitch, the more I saw the important connection between basic speaking skills and good singing techniques.
Basic speech is the first step toward singing well. As
babies, we all learn to match our parent’s vocal patterns and inflections. This
is part of learning our language. It’s basic training for speaking and singing,
just as our first faltering steps are basic training for running a marathon. It’s
that critical first step. If we continue those steps of speech a little
further, we develop the ability to match pitch in singing.
The more we
practice, the more proficient we become and the more natural this ability seems
to us. Just as walking becomes natural. And, in a similar way, once my students
learn to match pitch by taking the steps from speaking to singing, they never
“forget” or “unlearn” this ability. Everyone is meant to have this ability, but
for many it does not get developed at a young age and becomes more difficult to
learn as we grow older. But it’s not impossible, by any means!
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HOW YOU CAN LEARN TO MATCH PITCH.
It is not possible to take you through the process of
learning to match pitch in this short blog post, but if you are interested in
pursuing this process and finding out more about how you can learn to match
pitch, please visit my website at: www.Sing-Naturally.com and find out more.
This process WORKS and I want to help you reach your singing goals!
