another long post from me...
Firstly, staying in key is not just about the vocal cords. Three components: vocal chords, breath(diaphragm) and brain.
The brain is the memory and crap, it tells what note to sing. You have know be focused enough mentally to keep the note. For young singers it's very hard to keep that part right. In my choir, the sec 1s and 2s are always straying off cuz they only thing they can think of is the basketball game they played an hour ago and the rematch after choir practice. You must not be distracted, it's like a memorising lyrics, you can't memorise if you have another song playing in your head am I right?
That part I can't help you, you have be more focused on your own. If you're tone death then that's harder, cuz I've never been tone death. A good idea will be to listen to yourself more. I've heard a couple of tone death people and they just don't seem to be listening to themselves. You have to be conscious of three things simultaneously.
1: The pitch you are trying to sing(if you're singing with a piano, listen for the piano)
2: The pitch that's actually from your voice, if you can't hear yourself that well, press one ear with your hand. Use your inner hearing to check for the pitch. Keep the other ear on the pitch you're trying to sing.
3: The body, if you find that you're not singing the same note as the piano, then you'd have to change. you must move your vocal chords and diaphragm together to change your note while listening consciously for the wanted pitch and your real pitch.
If you keep your mind on all those 3 for a 100% then you should be able to hit it right.
For your vocal cords, you can try running scales, like a chromatic or a solfege(do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do) scale. Use a piano to help, just run all the white keys from the C. Start slowly and listen for the piano's pitch and yours. Check and move to the next note and keep going and speed up gradually. It'd improve with time.
For the breath, it's important to learn proper breathing(some of my old stuff: http://www.soft.com.sg/new/modules....c&t=7059&sid=db7ac60a6ece3e89fe306b367f8a312b). I don't want to say too much here, but you must make sure you learn proper diaphragmatic breathing from someone, cuz it's important that you're not breathing with your chest or the airflow will not be constant enough to stay on pitch. Your breathing should feel like a yawn, a very lazy feel. You shouldn't feel like you're sucking air, but instead more like just relaxing your lungs and letting the air fill it up. Not all vocalist do it the right way, but if you need help then there it is.
About tone deathness:
Tone deathness is not a hardware problem. All vocal cords can sing pitch and we all can do it. It's just consciousness of the thing called "pitch". Tone death people can hear pitch, just that they don't understand what's a hi or whats a lo. Tone death people are unable to understand that different pitches are different musically. It's like choosing paint colours, some of us don't understand why artists get so picky about colours, we just pick one and start colouring and don't even care when their brush is dirty with alot of funny colours after painting for a long time. Doing that is like being tone death when you sing, just any note will be the same to you. Be sensitive, make sure you are singing what you hear, even if there is the slightest difference between the piano and you, it is still a difference and is NOT acceptable.
A good way of understanding pitching problems will be to run from your highest note to your lowest. Start by screeching the highest note you can sing(without hurting youself) and you go all the way down. Like a sigh, you just slide from the highest possible pitch and go down to the lowest possible. Make the whole thing smooth, just slide down and go lower and lower till you cannot reach any lower. Then you should have heard every single pitch you can sing in your range, now divide that into a hundred different pitches and make sure that you take only right 1 out of the 100 at one time and not singing any note. While you are sliding, you can also mark each pitch with the piano play it down as you sing, it will help.
The point of getting the right key is just to be conscious of it, and be conscious of the instrument which is your body. You must know the strokes and the colour of the paintbrush and paint to draw correctly, and be very sensitive and perfectionistic about that. that's all, happy singing.
thanks for reading.
Firstly, staying in key is not just about the vocal cords. Three components: vocal chords, breath(diaphragm) and brain.
The brain is the memory and crap, it tells what note to sing. You have know be focused enough mentally to keep the note. For young singers it's very hard to keep that part right. In my choir, the sec 1s and 2s are always straying off cuz they only thing they can think of is the basketball game they played an hour ago and the rematch after choir practice. You must not be distracted, it's like a memorising lyrics, you can't memorise if you have another song playing in your head am I right?
That part I can't help you, you have be more focused on your own. If you're tone death then that's harder, cuz I've never been tone death. A good idea will be to listen to yourself more. I've heard a couple of tone death people and they just don't seem to be listening to themselves. You have to be conscious of three things simultaneously.
1: The pitch you are trying to sing(if you're singing with a piano, listen for the piano)
2: The pitch that's actually from your voice, if you can't hear yourself that well, press one ear with your hand. Use your inner hearing to check for the pitch. Keep the other ear on the pitch you're trying to sing.
3: The body, if you find that you're not singing the same note as the piano, then you'd have to change. you must move your vocal chords and diaphragm together to change your note while listening consciously for the wanted pitch and your real pitch.
If you keep your mind on all those 3 for a 100% then you should be able to hit it right.
For your vocal cords, you can try running scales, like a chromatic or a solfege(do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do) scale. Use a piano to help, just run all the white keys from the C. Start slowly and listen for the piano's pitch and yours. Check and move to the next note and keep going and speed up gradually. It'd improve with time.
For the breath, it's important to learn proper breathing(some of my old stuff: http://www.soft.com.sg/new/modules....c&t=7059&sid=db7ac60a6ece3e89fe306b367f8a312b). I don't want to say too much here, but you must make sure you learn proper diaphragmatic breathing from someone, cuz it's important that you're not breathing with your chest or the airflow will not be constant enough to stay on pitch. Your breathing should feel like a yawn, a very lazy feel. You shouldn't feel like you're sucking air, but instead more like just relaxing your lungs and letting the air fill it up. Not all vocalist do it the right way, but if you need help then there it is.
About tone deathness:
Tone deathness is not a hardware problem. All vocal cords can sing pitch and we all can do it. It's just consciousness of the thing called "pitch". Tone death people can hear pitch, just that they don't understand what's a hi or whats a lo. Tone death people are unable to understand that different pitches are different musically. It's like choosing paint colours, some of us don't understand why artists get so picky about colours, we just pick one and start colouring and don't even care when their brush is dirty with alot of funny colours after painting for a long time. Doing that is like being tone death when you sing, just any note will be the same to you. Be sensitive, make sure you are singing what you hear, even if there is the slightest difference between the piano and you, it is still a difference and is NOT acceptable.
A good way of understanding pitching problems will be to run from your highest note to your lowest. Start by screeching the highest note you can sing(without hurting youself) and you go all the way down. Like a sigh, you just slide from the highest possible pitch and go down to the lowest possible. Make the whole thing smooth, just slide down and go lower and lower till you cannot reach any lower. Then you should have heard every single pitch you can sing in your range, now divide that into a hundred different pitches and make sure that you take only right 1 out of the 100 at one time and not singing any note. While you are sliding, you can also mark each pitch with the piano play it down as you sing, it will help.
The point of getting the right key is just to be conscious of it, and be conscious of the instrument which is your body. You must know the strokes and the colour of the paintbrush and paint to draw correctly, and be very sensitive and perfectionistic about that. that's all, happy singing.
thanks for reading.
