There are many aspects to having a “good” or “nice-sounding” singing voice, but without a doubt, the first thing to figure out is whether you have problems with pitch and tuning.
As discussed above in the section on tone deafness, we know your ears can fundamentally judge pitch because you enjoy listening to music. This means you can use your ears to evaluate and train your own voice. Ultimately this is how you’ll sing in tune: by relying on your ears (including your inner hearing i.e. Audiation) to keep your voice on target.
In time this will become automatic and subconscious for you, and you will easily sing in tune naturally. At first, though, you will need a helping hand and to pay careful attention.
In this section we’re going to:
- Find “Your Note”: a single note you’ll know you can sing well.
- Explore to find “Your Range”: the highest and lowest notes you can comfortably sing.
- Learn a simple process for practicing matching pitch.
- Get tips on keeping your pitch steady when you sing.
Find “Your Note”
I once interviewed a fascinating chap for the Musicality Now podcast, George Bevan, who was head of music at Monkton school in the U.K. He had started a choir in the school specifically for students who thought they couldn’t sing. It was named, aptly enough, “The choir who can’t sing”! And, through his diligent efforts to help them match pitch and learn vocal control, it emerged that actually, they could sing pretty darn well :)
The exercise you’re about to try is one I learned from him. This was one of the things he did to help people who think they can’t sing to take their first steps towards becoming a capable and confident singer. If you’ve ever worried that you can’t sing at all, this exercise will be particularly useful for you.
It is simple but powerful. How do I know? In the past few years, almost half a million people have used a similar exercise in our SingTrue app to find their note and take their first step to singing, not to mention countless members inside Musical U where we have a training module which walks you through it interactively.
The idea is this: the first step to matching pitch is to sing and sustain one single note. And if you find a note which is particularly comfortable for you, that will be a whole lot easier.
Most people who try singing jump ahead several steps without even realising it. They immediately try to sing a song, maybe in the car or at karaoke night—and then they’re surprised and disappointed when all the pitches don’t come out right!
That’s kind of crazy when you think about it.
When we learn to write we don’t begin by trying to copy out a whole section of a book. Instead we begin with just writing a single letter and getting the shape correct, clear and consistent. From there we can build up to words, sentences, and eventually whole passages.
It’s the same with singing: first you need to be able to sing one note. Then you can learn how to sing other notes and control your voice well as you move between them. Then you can start thinking about verses, choruses and lyrics and everything else.
The “Find Your Note” exercise is built on a key insight: we actually all have some degree of vocal control already, whether we know it or not.
As you listen to people talk, their voices go up and down in pitch as part of how they convey meaning with their words. Their voices move through part of their vocal range, producing the different pitches that the brain intends.
So clearly we all do have a foundation for singing—otherwise, we would all talk in a monotone like robots.
Flipping the Dreaded Singing Test
Unfortunately, too many of us have experienced the sort of “singing test” where a music teacher, perhaps during your childhood, played a note on the piano, and you were asked to sing it back. That seems simple and reasonable enough, but even that is actually skipping a couple of steps!
Let’s flip it around. Instead of hearing a specific note and trying to sing it, we’ll start with you singing—and then discover what that note is.
Find “Your Note”
The goal of this exercise is to find just one pitch that you can comfortably sing. We’re going to call this “Your Note”, and you’ll know that whatever happens, singing Your Note will always feel easy and comfortable.
For this exercise you will need an electronic tuner, like you use to tune a guitar or wind instrument, which shows the name of the note it detects using a microphone. You can also use a web-based tuner (you can do a web search for “online instrument tuner”) or any tuner app on a mobile device. Choose one which shows a dial, not just each individual note. That way you can see exactly where your current pitch falls, even when it’s between notes.
EXERCISE: Find Your NoteStart by singing “ahhhh”—on whatever pitch comes out. We know you can do it because you can speak! It’s just like being at the dentist when they tell you “say ahh”. Just relax. Take a breath. And sing a pitch, whatever comes out. If even that feels a bit intimidating, you can instead try talking in a monotone voice (like a stereotypical “robot voice”) and say “Hi, my name is Jeff” (or whatever your name is) but hold the last word: “HI MY NAME IS JEEEEEEF”. That last sound you made was a note! The “My name is…” approach is also useful because it helps avoid one of the common beginner mistakes, which is to assume your singing voice is “up there” somewhere, when in fact (not coincidentally) the pitches you normally speak at tend to fall nicely within your comfortable singing range. So trying to sing at around the pitch you’d automatically speak at is a great place to start. Now turn on your tuner and again sing “Your Note” on “aaahh” (or do the robot sentence with your name). What’s Your Note? Jot down what the tuner shows. |
Your note has both a letter name, such as “C” or “F♯”, and an octave number, such as “3” or “5”. Most tuners will show both. If you aren’t familiar with the idea of an “octave” you can think of it as being an indication of the overall pitch range the note is in. For example there are several “C” notes on a piano keyboard, from a very low “C” up to a very high “C”. So a male person with a low voice might do this exercise and get a “C3” note while a female person could do it and get a “C5” note.
That’s it, you’ve found your note!
What’s next?
From there, you can try singing another note, a bit higher or lower. And then you can start to build on that, developing your ability to match pitch and have vocal control.
As we go through other exercises below, you’ll have the opportunity to practice, beginning with Your Note and extending to other note pitches.
You might wonder “Will my note be the same every day?” and sometimes people get a bit hung up on this, so to clarify: “Your Note” isn’t set in stone! We name it like that to encourage your confidence that you can confidently and reliably sing a note, but it’s entirely possible that if you do the exercise again tomorrow you’ll get a slightly different note.
For example today it might be “C3” and tomorrow you find it’s “D3”, just a little bit higher. But it’s unlikely to suddenly jump to “C4” which would be a whole octave higher in pitch.
So this idea of “Your Note” is useful because we have now put a pin in the range of all possible pitches and found that yes, you can sing a note that’s around this pitch. It’s not a defining characteristic of you forever more! Just a helpful starting point to remember.
You have sung one note—so there’s no reason you can’t sing many more, all in tune.
As you proceed with practicing singing, you will build on this, to produce a clear and steady pitch. Then you can begin to match the pitch that you sing to a specific pitch that you hear or aim for.
From here it’s a matter of building up your ability step-by-step. Remember that singing isn’t all-or-nothing! Just because you can’t yet sing a whole song totally in tune it doesn’t mean you can’t sing.
If you’ve just gone through this “Find Your Note” exercise, then you know you can sing one note. And many more can follow!
Find Your Range
Now that you’ve found “Your Note”, let’s expand out to see what other notes will be easy for you to sing. This is important because one of the biggest causes of beginner singers singing out of tune is that they’re trying to sing outside their comfortable vocal range.
Your vocal range
Every singer has a range of notes their voice is physically capable of producing. Generally, the middle of this range feels “easy” and you can sing well there. We might call it your “sweet spot”.
There are advanced techniques and long-term training which can extend both your full range and your “easy” range, but as a beginner, you want to make sure you stay comfortably within your “easy” range. As soon as you start stretching your voice too high or too low your pitching will suffer. I’ll remind you that singing need never feel like you’re physically straining—that can be an indicator that you’re pushing yourself too far beyond your comfortable range.
EXERCISE: Determining Your Vocal RangeWe know that “Your Note” is inside your comfortable singing range, so you can treat it as an “anchor note”: a starting point to explore your range. Step 1: Explore the limits Warm up by singing Your Note (whatever comes out) and then from this note, try slowly sweeping up and down in pitch with your voice, like a siren. Practice extending your up-sweeps and down-sweeps gradually and see how far you can go before your voice starts to feel strained. Step 2: Determine Your Range Knowing the precise notes that are at the upper and lower limits of your comfortable range will be very useful for making sure that your voice is at its best as you continue practicing, and later for choosing the best songs and keys to fit your voice. Turn on your tuner and do an up-sweep from “Your Note”. When you arrive at the upper note, hold it out for a moment or two and notice the note name shown. Then sweep down to the lowest note in your comfortable range and notice the note name shown there too. You might like to jot down the notes that define your range, like this: My Note: F3 My sweet spot: E3 – B3 My approximate range: C3 – F4 |
Keep in mind that technology is not fool-proof, so a bit of common sense will be needed here! Most singers have a comfortable range of half an octave up to 1.5 or 2 octaves in their “normal” singing voice.
Male singers may be able to find extra high notes with “falsetto” (think of a man doing an impression of a woman and using an artificially-high speaking voice) which stretch them beyond that. But if you are a beginner singer sweeping up and down from “Your Note” you can expect to find your “sweet spot” in this exercise is about an octave, and your full range a bit beyond that. For example “C3 to C4” is one octave, “C3 to E4” is a bit more than an octave.
Now you have one big aid to singing in tune: as you do exercises and start singing songs, try to stay in this range. You’ll save yourself a lot of pain and frustration and find that singing (and accurate pitching) comes much more easily.
Practice Matching Pitch
So far we’ve been taking important steps to get acquainted with how our voices produce pitch. The next phase in learning to sing in tune is learning to match pitch.
Matching pitch means simply that you hear a note and then you can sing that note.
We will practice with exercises in which you literally hear the target note, but in the future, you will internalise this skill so that the note you “hear” is actually just imagined in your head. So “matching pitch” can also mean “you know what note you want to sing and then you can sing it”.
It doesn’t matter for now if you have a nice tone or strong-sounding voice, all we’re interested in is: can you sing back a note you hear?
We’re going to look at the basic process of how to match pitch and then three exercises you can use to practice.
How to match pitch
Matching pitch is easy to practice. The process is to:
- Listen to a note.
- Try to sing it.
- Judge whether you got it right (i.e. were you “in tune”) or not.
- Try again, either with the same note or a different note.
These look like simple steps, but it’s worth breaking them down a little further:
1. Listen to the note
Play a note from your range using an instrument or single-note sound clips such as those in the Additional Resources.
Rather than jump into singing right away, really give yourself some time to listen to the note and take it in. When I interviewed Nashville hit songwriter, singer, and vocal coach Judy Rodman she suggested that before singing, you “mime” the note while you are listening. Pretend that you are singing it yourself, on the syllable “yaaaa” or “laaa”. When you do this, your imagination prepares the vocal mechanism for a much greater accuracy.
If you are an instrumentalist then another idea from Jeremy Fisher (co-founder of Vocal Process, one of the most impressive and useful singing websites) recommends that you “air-play” the note on your instrument for much the same reason: all your experience playing that instrument will engage your imagination (i.e. Audiation) and prepare your body to sing that note’s pitch.
Even without doing either of those things, taking a moment to Audiate (hear in your head) the note you’re about to sing before you open your mouth will make an enormous difference to your chance of hitting the note dead-on right away.
Over time you won’t need to actually take a moment to do this, it will happen implicitly and naturally, but at first give yourself that chance to “take aim” before you “fire”.
2. Try to sing it
As you start trying to match pitch (and especially if you’re watching a digital tuner) you may notice that you’re constantly making little corrections to slide back onto pitch. If your first attempt is way off, or if your voice seems to “stick” a bit too low or high, loosen up by sliding into the note from below and above, as we did in the warmup exercises earlier in the chapter. Then mime the note, as described above, and aim to hit it right on.
3. Judge whether you were “in tune” or not
Using your digital tuner is one way to do this. The tuner’s accuracy and visual real-time feedback are extremely valuable. One risk with the tuner though is that it’s possible to be so focused on the visual display that you stop listening to yourself, and don’t feel what’s going on with your voice. So when using the tuner, remember not to “turn your ears off”. Keep listening, keep feeling, so that you can produce the results without visual feedback.
You can also grab an instrument and check against that, or you can record yourself and listen back.
You will make fastest progress and develop a robust and versatile ability if you alternate your practice among these different methods.
4. Try again, either with the same note or a different note
To practice hitting notes right away without audibly sliding, think of your exercise as “target practice”: “ready, mime, fire!” at your target note. You can make a real game out of it by recording your accuracy (for example, a tuner may show how many cents A “cent” is 1% of a Half Step. Each Half Step has 100 cents. flat or sharp you were). You may find that certain notes, or certain areas in your range are easier or harder, so you can see what to focus on in practice.
This exercise should be a daily habit until you are confident in your ability to match pitch across your range.
Remember that watching a digital tuner is just one way to “calibrate” your voice. Include the other methods mentioned above in your practice too for best results.
Keep it Steady
One problem you might encounter as you start to practice matching pitch is that your singing pitch wobbles or slides when you try to sing a note. This can be frustrating when you’re trying to hear whether you have the note right or not.
Producing a steady pitch is an important part of being an able singer, so if you are able to match pitch with your voice but find it hard to hold a steady note here are a few tips which can help:
1. Check Your Range
Go through the steps above to find your range and then make sure you’re not singing outside those limits. Start with using notes from your “sweet spot” easy range.
2. Adjust Your Volume
The volume you sing with can greatly affect how easily you can keep a steady tone. If you’re singing quietly, you may find that singing louder makes it easier to hold a steady pitch. On the other hand, if you’re pushing your voice to be too loud, that can put strain on it. If you sing a bit quieter you may find the pitch control easier.
Remember that breath support is vital to comfortable singing, so be sure you’re taking a decent breath in before singing.
Experiment with a range of volumes to find the level that’s easiest to hold a note steady with. For most people this will be around their normal speaking volume.
3. Listen Carefully
Make sure you are listening and paying attention as you sing. It’s easy to “turn off” your ears when you start to sing and this makes it harder to auto-adjust your pitch.
| TIP: Forgetting to listen as you sing is one of the biggest mistakes untrained singers make which makes them sound bad to other people! Until you are practiced, singing without thinking or listening puts you at risk of singing very out-of-tune without even realising it. Make it a habit to listen to yourself as you sing and you can easily avoid this mistake. |
For practicing, try putting aside the tuner if you’re using one. Then try just singing some long notes and listening as you sing. Try to judge for yourself whether the pitch is steady. This increased awareness should help you improve pitch consistency and in time it will become a subconscious process, happening automatically every time you sing.
Try each of these three suggestions and you should be able to pinpoint the source of your singing pitch problem and fix it.
You are now equipped to learn to match pitch easily, accurately and reliably!
Remember that this skill is not something you’ll master instantly. The exercises described above should be done daily and it will typically take a week or two of practice before you feel like you can reliably match pitch without needing to slide around too much.
However, put in that practice and soon you’ll find you have equipped yourself with a skill for life—and one that will serve you very well throughout your musical journey!