We all know people that sing well (i.e. can carry a tune or stay in key and/or have range) and probably a lot of people that really, really don’t sing well at all (like, say, me). While all musical skill has a certain degree of ability prereqs, I’ve never been clear on whether you can go from “bad to passable” with singing.
Is it something that someone can go take some lessons and go from “ZOMG STOP THAT NOISE!” to “You’re not totally irritating when you sing”?
Of course you can learn how to sing. Now, if you are talking about timbre and such, that’s innate. But actually holding the pitch and such can absolutely be learned. That’s not to say that everyone can learn it (there are lots of things people can’t learn) but only that most people can.
So yeah, go get some lessons.
It’s just like any physical ability. There’s a continuum from:
AWFUL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BRILLIANT
Natural ability provides your starting point and maximum capacity, while training will enable you to progress from your starting point towards your capacity. Some people will have a maximum capacity far below the starting points of others.
More specifically to singing, I’ve found that even the most tone-deaf can be trained (with hard work) to at least become a bearable campfire singer, but certainly not good enough to get on stage.
Training helps with sight-reading and proper breathing, but I’m not sure it can compensate for lousy vocals. Which is sad.
I once knew a fellow who was a die-hard singer, loved everything about it, was in every choir that would have him, and received training for years. He sucked. Couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and had no intonation, inflection, or timbre whatsoever. He was flat and off-key, but enthusiastic as all get-out. But his enthusiasm alone couldn’t carry him.
Then there are people like me, who’ve got “it,” but just can’t be bothered. I only did one year of music in high school, and only because my neighbor dared me, and got into the select, audition-only chorale and also made the All-State choir. If my neighbor hadn’t dared me, though, I probably wouldn’t have done any of it.
That said, I don’t mean to sound like a huge jerk. Taking lessons and learning to breathe properly will help everything else quite a bit. That’s probably the greatest hindrance to singing well.
Timbre, breath support, range, aural skills (pitch-matching, music reading, etc.), artistic interpretation…all of these areas can be improved greatly with some vocal training.
One of the courses I teach here at school is a group voice class for absolute beginners and I am always struck by the fact that even though there is certainly such a thing as having strong musical aptitude and/or having some help from genes (unusually thick or flexible vocal folds, large lung capacity, etc.), everyone in that class takes a leap forward from their starting position.
Certainly, being “tone-deaf” is a bigger obstacle than most (and, as has been pointed out, takes a long time to correct), but it can be overcome. In fact, most of the time, the inability to match pitch is less a function of how one’s brain is wired and more a function of not being aware of the sort of breath support and manipulation of the vocal tract that is needed to sing in a range outside one’s speaking range (chest register). Once folks get a handle on that, pitch-matching can improve significantly.
The only comment above that I wish to challenge is the notion that timbre is “innate.” I have experienced staggering changes in timbre from my students that came about only after a considerable amount of training (and, far more important, practice!). Vocal development really is just another form of physical training and, as in weightlifting or jogging, significant physiological changes can result from lengthy, careful, consistent work.
It’s some of both.
Rhythm, you have it or you don’t. That’s a fallacy.
Fair enough. I assumed timbre couldn’t be changed because your vocal cords just are. But mouth shape, proper use of air, etc. probably could change the timbre. I was being hasty, it seems.
Not as hasty as you might think! Put another way, you are in very good company. One of the things that I find most gratifying as a teacher is to see the face of a voice student light up in shock and delight when they hear new sounds coming out of them after working on breath support, placement, raising the ol’ soft palate and modifying their vowels. It really can be a huge change in timbre.
Now, to swing things back your way…I’m hardly here to say that anyone can accomplish these changes in timbre easily. And, truly, there are those few who cannot significantly change their stripes, so to speak, even after a lot of work. But if there is one thing I could tell anyone who is interested in singing (but who fears they maybe shouldn’t bother), it is this: you’d be amazed in the changes in your voice that can come about by spending some time focusing on things like breathing and manipulation of the vocal tract…which is, in most cases, something folks rarely ever think about as they go about their daily lives.
Spacemonkey, I’ve been toying with getting voice lessons for a long time. I am fairly musically inclined, so I’m not tone-deaf, but I really don’t have much control over my voice. I’m guessing lessons would help someone in my situation?
Jerri,
Absolutely. As I said a few posts up, a musical facility (while not a total dealbreaker if you don’t possess boodles of it) like yours certainly puts you in a great starting position for voice training.
(egad…listen to me. I sound like a commercial for voice lessons. REPORTED!!!)
Anyway, the lack of control that you mentioned is something that pretty much everyone (except for the annoyingly, preternaturally gifted) has to deal with in voice study. Most of it is work on breath support and how to negotiate register changes (a fancier word for those spots in your range where your voice breaks and is unwilling to cooperate).
Have you investigated possible instructors in your area?
I hope to God it’s learned. I’m planning to play our wedding song for our anniversary and I can’t sing a note. I’ve got the guitar down, but my wife tells me to shut up when I try to sing along with the radio.
Lessons, here I come.
Not seriously yet, but I’m in Nashville. The trick will be to figure out which ones are qualified vocal coaches and which ones are just out-of-work country songwriters who happen to know how to sing. :)
You could check with local universities/colleges with music departments and see if anyone gives private lessons, or could refer you to someone who does.
This seems to be geared toward aspiring performers, and $300 is probably high if you can’t afford a Mac, but there’s this workshop coming up in Nashville April 19.
Private lessons with her are $220(!) for a 55 minute session. She also has her class on DVD for $60 as well as a $20 DVD for vocal warm-ups. She does have a contact email, so you might try emailing her and ask if she could recommend anyone who’s good for someone who wants to improve their singing, but at a necessarily professional level (read: is cheaper).
But listen to spacemonkey because I am about as far away from a singing instructor as you could get.
Breathing, yes, absolutely. But “manipulation of the vocal tract” has some dangerous connotations to me. It implies direct control over a process that is almost entirely subconscious. Depending on the sort of manipulation to which you’re referring, that can be a inadvertent gateway to tension, which is just as serious an obstacle to matching pitch as poor breathing.
You could check with local universities/colleges with music departments and see if anyone gives private lessons, or could refer you to someone who does.
Do this. The more (classically) legit the voice program the more likely you are to get referred to someone who’ll give you good technical instruction. I don’t know what the going rate is in Nashville, but in the Seattle area an hour with a highly qualified pro sets you back $50-60.
[QUOTE=Podunk;1311606]Breathing, yes, absolutely. But “manipulation of the vocal tract” has some dangerous connotations to me. It implies direct control over a process that is almost entirely subconscious. Depending on the sort of manipulation to which you’re referring, that can be a inadvertent gateway to tension, which is just as serious an obstacle to matching pitch as poor breathing.
Indeed.
And therein lies the rub.
Manipulation of the vocal tract (a blanket term that refers to a bunch of things), if done improperly, can most certainly lead to excess vocal tension (having your larynx in a consistently high position would be one of many examples). However, manipulation of the vocal tract, if done properly, is essential to free, resonant and healthy tone (a consistently raised soft palate would be a prime example of “good” manipulation of the vocal tract).
Your reservations are very well founded, though, as release of tension is pretty much job one in voice training. I have long felt that vocal instructors should have to take the Hippocratic Oath (I mean, if plumbers need a license to practice their trade, shouldn’t we need at LEAST that? Well, we don’t). Speaking of segues, this is a pretty good way to ascertain if a voice teacher is worth their salt. If they have you do anything that makes you overly tense (certainly if their language has lots of “reach” and “punch it” and “louder!”), you should take your one and only voice elsewhere.
This makes me disinclined to recommend folks like the instructor of the workshop mentioned above (they might be awesome, by the way…it’s just that my suspicions always turn on when someone asks a lot of money for very little time). Even though it betrays a whopping bias on my part, I would second the recommendation to find someone at the local university who teaches privately–faculty, if you can get 'em–but even a graduate student, in addition to being much cheaper, can give you a lot of good direction.
I think the reason for the high fees is because she usually works with professional performers, which was of why I thought jerri might try emailing her and asking for some lower level recommendations, especially since she’s there in Nashville.
Like I said, though, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing and you obviously do.
This is probably just a difference in pedagogical approach, but I think even raising the soft palate is too much to ask of beginning students. Once they begin attempting to consciously manipulate the mechanism like that it’s just too easy to accidentally translate into throat tension–the student may believe that he or she is raising the soft palate but something else is actually going on. This seems especially risky to me in a class setting, where the individual might not have the one-on-one time with the instructor to identify and correct the issue.
Don’t get me wrong, I basically agree with everything you are saying, and I certainly am not trying to tell you how to do your job. I’m just a bit sensitive to this issue, having at one point been on the wrong end of the equation with a university prof who really ought to have known better. Plus, how often to you get to discuss vocal pedagogy on QT3?
You raise a good point, Podunk, but as I feel that awareness of the disposition of the soft palate is one of the areas of which students are dangerously unaware (right up there with breathing and laryngeal position) when they come in off the street, I don’t shy away from it…especially not in group instruction. Let’s face it, pretty much the only time most folks do anything at all with their soft palate is when they yawn or smell something they quite like and in both cases they are more than likely completely unaware that they are doing so. I believe it is just too important to put off.
Put another way, the sad fact is that I am hard pressed (get it?) to think of any area of focus in voice study that does not run the risk of adding tension. That is simply an unhappy dividend of increased awareness. I mean, let’s look a partial list:
Alignment (I’m trying to get the word “posture” out of my teaching vocabulary. The word alone seems to make folks tense up)
Breathing
Onset of phonation
Lowering of the larynx
Sufficient release of the jaw
Tongue position that is not too high (nor too exaggerated for the various vowel shapes)
Vowel modification
raised soft palate
Tone placement
Negotiating registration changes (minimizing “breaks”)
Memorization and interpretation of text.
…this is, of course, a theatrically long yet still incomplete list. If you ask me, every item above is an example of something that, when a student builds their awareness of it and focuses on it, can lead to tension. It is one of the ironies of any performing discipline that instructor and student alike must be constantly vigilant about staying pretty darn chilled-out about about 20 - 30 different things at once.