Mastering Listening & Pitching Part 3 of 3 – Co-authored by Hilary Canto & Dena Murray August 7, 2011
Posted by Hilary in Singing Lessons, sound healing, Uncategorized, Voice Health, Voice Lessons.Tags: hilarycanto, instructor, lessons, singer, singing, singing lessons, sound healing, teacher, uncategorized, vocal, voice, voice health, voice lessons
add a comment
This is the final part of our 3-part blog on Listening & Pitching. We discussed the essential skills of listening in part 1, the use of tones and airflow in part 2, and now we will discuss matching pitch.
Pitch means to match a frequency or note…best done with the piano because this is the instrument that sounds most like the voice. You try to sing/tone/pitch the exact frequency of the note without going flat or sharp. Lead singing requires perfect pitch for the melody line. Harmony or backing vocals need to be extra good and strong on pitch…. or everyone will sound out of tune.
The scale and key is really the same thing…a singer’s key is the octave range or scale of notes that the song is being sung in and most suitable for that singer’s voice. You need to know the difference between the major and minor scales. Major scales have a bright, clear happy sound. Minor scales have a softer, sadder sound. Major and minor chords can be brought together in songs to add mood and colour etc. Once you have mastered pitch, it will be easier to move through variations in songs. Good vocal training should extend your range, making it easier to cross over into the different segmented vocal ranges and sing more in the style you like most.
Make sure you are happy with the instrument you use to help in learning how to match vocal pitch. Not everyone can match pitch easily with the piano. Some need strings, e.g., guitar, bass, or harp. The difficulty with matching the pitch of any instrument comes when the instrument is not in tune with your natural frequencies. Each person has a unique resonance and instrument tuning has been standardised into the frequency of A 440hz. This is actually higher than our natural frequencies (F being common) so we have to really listen hard to then match our voice to this pitch. If a singer has a problem with blocked sound memory, he/she won’t be able to hear the correct frequencies needed to vocally reproduce that sound. Remember, “We can only reproduce what we can hear”
Try mastering continuous octaves first, not just scales in keys from C to C. This will help you find your true voice and resonance. Most people get hung up on C to C. An octave is any 8-note scale/key. You need to have at least a good two octave range before you can start extending that range through vocal exercises and the art of breathing. Once you have at least two octaves of matching pitch, play around with intervals. Solfege is good for this exercise. E.g. do mi mi, mi so so, re fa fa, la ti ti. But also, don’t be afraid to get creative. Your own creativity and willingness to play around with exercises will help you gain dexterity, especially with regard to note distances — where matching pitch becomes an art of its own. Songs are not sung in scale-like exercises. Songs are comprised of different note intervals, which create melodies.
If you are really struggling with hitting a pitch straight off, you can slide to a note by using the higher or lower note to hit either. For example, c# to c, or, cь to c. However, it is not a good idea to do this so much that it becomes a habit. If it becomes a habit (because you are now reliant on it) it may have the opposite effect in song. You will become slightly off pitch because you will be scooping up to it.
Singing is supposed to be fun. If you over-think and intellectualize too much, you may only find yourself repeating habits that are keeping you from hitting the correct pitches. It will feel much harder than it is and leave you feeling hopeless.
There are many approaches when it comes to singing and learning how to master pitch. We’ve shared only a little in our series. Good singing requires lessons. To find the right teacher, you may have try two or three before connecting with one you understand. If seeking a teacher, it’ important to not be afraid to tell the teacher you don’t understand something. None of us are mind readers. There is no such thing as a stupid question. If you can’t get a grasp of things intellectually, ask yourself this, “How will I have that AH HA moment when it finally physically manifests?”
We hope we have helped you understand a little more about how to listen and match pitch. Every person is different, so it’s important to discuss whatever is troubling you with your instructor. If you don’t have one and want one, take a look at what VIDLA has to offer!
APPENDIX:
1) Listening – You can listen to other singers and their songs of course. However, if you have a pitch problem, this is not likely to help with your trouble hitting the pitches. A serious problem may require professional expertise such as hearing tests and/or The Tomatis Method, better vocal technique, and the art of learning how to breathe properly for song singing.
2) Hilary Canto’s “Toning for Singing Course” is available and accredited through VIDLA on Skype. For more information on how Hilary teaches go to her VIDLA page – www.vidla.org
Her TRUE VOICE COURSE® is available on mp3 to download from Box.net as a teaching guide for your voice where you can join with her and learn how to produce tones, breathe, listen, and pitch with step-by-step exercises to practise. The course includes written sheets. You can also find her videos on youtube demonstrating tones for singing.
3) Dena Murray teaches in- home and online beginners as well as professionals. She is particularly skilled at straightening out pitch problems. She has also uncovered a little known secret regarding the art of breathing for singers. This can be found in her last book of a 3-book series, “Vocal Strength and Power,” published by the Hal Leonard Corp. (2009). The other two books of the series include, “Vocal Technique: A Guide to Finding your Real Voice” (Hal Leonard Corp. 2002). This is a beginner’s book describes and teaches how it might be necessary to separate the voice in order to create properly placed head and chest registers before bridging (or blending) the voice to become one from the bottom to the top. Her second book of the series “Advanced Vocal Technique: Middle Voice, Placement & Styles” co-authored with Tita Hutchison (Hal Leonard Publishing 2007) focuses strictly on placement and a unique technical approach to bridging the passaggio.
Dena teaches her accredited course (through VIDLA) online via SKYPE
For more information go to her VIDLA profile page, or visit her website a www.denamurray.com.
Mastering Listening & Pitching Part 2 of 3 – Co-authored by Hilary Canto & Dena Murray August 7, 2011
Posted by Hilary in Singing Lessons, sound healing, Uncategorized, Voice Health, Voice Lessons.Tags: hilarycanto, instructor, lessons, singer, singing, singing lessons, sound healing, teacher, vocal, voice, voice lessons
add a comment
The purpose of this blog series is to help singers and voice instructors pay more attention to listening ability. The ability to hit the pitches dead-on make’s the difference between a good singer and a great one.
In part 1 we discussed listening in detail. Listening is so important to helping a singer who are struggling to reproduce vocal sounds on pitch. In order to free the listening capacity we recommend using silence as a tool to free the mind. It allows for more receptivity to sound. Meditation can also help with this…or just taking 10 minutes to shut out all noise and lie quietly, letting thoughts just come and go. Though, in reality, letting go of our thoughts is not an easy task. It does take practice, and there are lots of CD guided meditations available that can assist you with this process.
From silence – tones, overtones and humming are the best sounds we can make to clear our body’s sound memory, to improve listening and accurate pitching. The voice is the ultimate instrument! The most remarkable effect of tones and hums, with constant dedication and practice, is that they can heal and ‘energize’ the body; build resonance in the bones particularly the cranial bones in the head, as well as release blocks in cellular memory allowing the voice to flow freer. Sound actually bypasses the mind creating this release.
People in workshops with longstanding voice issues suddenly find issues go by the wayside when they come together in a room and tone and hum with one another. The added power of a group setting can be extremely powerful and beneficial. However for the modern vocalist, this work also has to be practiced alone daily. We cannot emphasize enough how important tones, overtones, and humming is in assisting with listening and pitching.
How you produce these tones is of critical importance for vocal care, pitch resonance, and breath control. They should be done at a level of loudness that doesn’t make you force your voice out. For those who want to add more weight, strength, power, breath support, and placement of the sound through the vocal tract also needs attention.
If you make a sound loudly, you will notice that the resonance is short-lasting and suddenly stops. Without using your usual force and attempting a softer approach, you will notice the resonance holds much longer. Both these techniques are used when singing. Tones should be practiced with pitching for clearing the sound memory in your body, mind, and to build more resonance in the vocal tract. This can only be done in your natural voice, your ‘real’ voice. Making the breath flow with the tone and using the correct mouth shape for the tones can make all the difference in how the voice and body responds to tone.
Tones translate to vowel sounds. They should be practiced at least 1 hour a day to get some clearing impact. Overtones are the harmonics produced over the fundamental (basic) tone being sung. They are best heard when you make a sound from EE to OOO and back to EE. The resonance from them will alter the cellular vibration of your body and alter your listening capacity. You can hear the ascending harmonics and the descending harmonics if you are in the right tone placement. If you are unsure, we suggest taping it. Once again, listen back with your own ears to see if you have matched the tone/s. The tape never lies.
Humming comes from the closure of the lips and sound pushing against that closure. To change what has been “locked in,” the tones must be able to resonate through the bone mechanism. This carries the resonance into the cells. In effect, this clears distorted vibration from the inside and frees our cellular memory to receive specific frequencies so that our voice can begin to reproduce them. (In the books, Cymatics – Dr Hans Jenny, Messages from Water – Dr Masaru Emoto, Fabien Mamman – The Role of Music in the 21st Century you can read more and see pictures on how our voice creates change )
So how do we produce these tones properly and articulate vowels in singing?
Formation of vowel sounds begins in the oral pharynx. This is the hole between the back of the tongue and the back wall of the throat. It’s part of the tube otherwise known as pharynx, the chief resonator. The pharynx is also known as the echo chamber and second mouth of the singer because of the potential power it can add to the voice with proper breath technique.
There are four known chambers of resonance: the laryngeal, oral, nasal, and upper. You will not be able to shape your vowels in the oral pharynx if you take in too much air. Taking in too much air, because your mind subconsciously tells you you’ll need it, then becomes an instinct. DO this over and over again and it becomes a sense memory. So no matter how hard you try to change it, your body will go to that old muscle sense memory. You will feel resistance in your body. It is now fighting you. What our mind has secretly been telling you is a lie.
Heaps of air to try to reach higher notes will only create too much pressure under the cords. This will prevent them from doing their job and creating proper pitch. Pitch is determined by the stretch of the cord from front to back. For every single note, the cords make a different size stretch ( though this cannot be seen with the naked eye).
Pitches are not produced with a blast and the reach of your air. The cords only need a small amount of air to stretch for the proper pitch and create sound. This being said, it’s very important to learn how to sing without holding your breath or you will end up squeezing and pushing it out. Squeezing holds the tone inside your body. Pushing will have you forcing up the air get sound out because there is no sound unless air passes by the cords.
If you take in too much air, fill up the tank, what do you think might happen? The cords will have to pull further apart than needed for that particular pitch and you will end up falling flat. Remember this: the higher the note, the shorter the stretch of cord, and the smaller of an opening between them. The lower the note, the longer and looser the stretch of cord and the wider of an opening between them. Keeping that in mind, from low to high, the cords must be able to control the flow of air and compress it properly for pitch. They can’t do that if you are overdoing it with your air.
There is an art to learning how use your air properly and before getting into the art of singing songs, you’ve got to learn how to do this so you don’t risk injury to the mechanism. If you don’t learn proper breath technique, you may continue to lose pitch. Managing tone and breath is the foundation for good pitching. It trains your whole body to produce sound correctly. If the listening ability is clear, the sound reproduction from the voice box with correct airflow, and resonance, will give you “absolute pitch.” There should be no more barriers to hitting the pitches.
Please bear in mind that there is no quick magic fix here. None of us can learn how to do all of this in one lesson. It takes the knowledge and guidance of a teacher, and your continued practice.
Part 3 Continues
Mastering Listening & Pitching – Part 1 of 3 Co-authored by Hilary Canto & Dena Murray August 7, 2011
Posted by Hilary in Singing Lessons, sound healing, Uncategorized, Voice Health, Voice Lessons.Tags: instructor, lessons, singer, singing, singing lessons, sound healing, teacher, vocal, voice, voice lessons
add a comment
First of all let us clear up that pitching problems don’t mean you can’t sing. Unless you have hearing loss, there is no such thing as tone deafness. Banging up and down the piano scales with a student who cannot match pitch will do nothing for their voice training and only further deflate their self-esteem. It also will make them feel like they are stupid. Pitching is an EAR skill and is also controlled by the stretch of the vocal cord. The higher you go, the shorter the stretch, and the smaller the opening between the cords. If you take in too much air, the cords may have to open too wide to accommodate that air. The end result? You will be flat because if the cords open too wide, have too long of a stretch, the pitch will land on a different note.
In addition, there is a difference between the act of hearing, and listening. True listening requires emotional, psychological, and social barriers removed/ healed from the way we’ve been trained to listen (or not listen) to our own sound by outside influences. Created by this training, or conditioning, is what is known as sound memory. Hearing is the structural mechanism of the ear. Listening opens you to the frequencies in the ear, nerve, organ, and bone structure. It is like the difference between casual looking and active seeing.
From the moment the foetal ear starts developing, we are bombarded with sound. Our whole cellular makeup is sound vibration. If we have heard sounds that we dislike, are painful to the ear, and/or have learned to block a sound(s) out for any reason…we will no longer be able to hear the frequency of these sounds properly.
Since our cells have developed sound memory, this is where our memory decides whether or not to hear the sound coming into vibration. This damping is manifested physiologically by a relaxation of the tiny muscles of the middle ear. The net result is a diminuation of our ability to hear specific frequency ranges corresponding to the sounds we essentially lock out. This is a survival mechanism that we tend to use unconsciously.
Pitch and tone is also inhibited by the conscious thought that you have to take in heaps of air and blow it out just to hit higher notes — or to have it sound powerful. Going after pitch this way, and repetitively, will only create problems, and not just with pitch, but possible injury to the mechanism. You might also find this method physically exhausting. Getting too tired will also have you trying to force out the sound.
So why should we concentrate on listening when trying to learn how to sing better? Answer: You cannot reproduce a vocal sound accurately unless you can hear it properly. This is why we need to learn, or even re-learn, how to listen. We often think we hear something right but it’s actually clouded by our old sound memory. That memory will affect the learning process of listening to sound and pitch accurately.
In addition, the music/video/marketing industry is so wrapped up with sound and visual imagery together that looking and listening at the same time can confuse our senses. Looking becomes a distraction. If you want to concentrate on good singing we suggest you cut out visual stimulus whilst you really take in the sounds and try to reproduce them. One suggestion would be to try to match the pitch by literally trying to merge with that pitch so as to become one tone, one voice. You should literally try to merge with the pitch until you and that pitch become one tone, one voice.
Something that often helps many is to strike the string of an instrument like a guitar or bass and see if you can match it in resonant vibrations. Tape it and see if you can hear that you have matched or if you hear two different tones. If you hear two different tones, the next step would be to try and pluck out the tone you are actually singing on versus the one you are playing. Once you have identified the pitch you are actually singing on versus the one you need to be singing, you can literally see with your own eyes whether that pitch is higher or lower than the one you were trying to capture.
If you still can’t match it, you might try humming it. Tape this again. Listen using your own ears to discern if there is a difference in tones. Keep this up until you can open your mouth with an AH sound and match the pitch. Recording yourself as you practice is key to this learning process.
Our bodies and voices are our instrument. Your voice needs care and learning how to tune it just like any other instrument. We hope you’ll understand that going into silence every so often can work wonders. It will allow you to open your mind and re-open your capacity to receive. Sometimes you just need to take a break and stop what you are doing, especially if you are getting frustrated. At that point, you will no longer be able to concentrate. We suggest walking away and having a seat somewhere else. Take a rest, a deep breath, and listen to the silence. During this time, things have a way of bypassing the brain to the voice. The silence allows you to hear your own body’s sounds.
After taking some silent time for yourself, you may find that you are now hearing the sounds of your own voice and hitting the pitches dead-on, or at least close. Once you get used to doing things this way, your awareness and sensitivity to pitch and frequency will increase and change. You will begin learning how to reproduce pitches accurately because you will have been practising changing from old sound memory to new.
Part 2 continues
