Can you learn to sing?

[Pldgy]

13yo DD loves singing, has current plans to get into musical theatre. This thread isn’t really about that ambition because that’s a whole other thing.
She recently took grade 4 singing for musical theatre and passed, but only just. She got merit marks for all three of her accompanied pieces but did very badly on her unaccompanied piece. The comments said that ‘most phrases lost their sense of key’.
She has never been someone that can open their mouth and just sing. She has got a lot better with lessons but doesn’t seem to hear when she goes off key. Is that something that can be learnt or comes with maturity?

I don’t know how honest to be with her about it, just mostly stuck to being encouraging so far.

(She has many other talents and is doing brilliantly at school, and generally has a pretty robust level of self esteem 😄)

She sings in tune and on key with an accompaniment, it’s only in the unaccompanied song she went off key?

Yes you can.

Musical bods used to say you can teach a dancer to sing but you can't teach a singer to dance! Certainly true of me anyway....

She may have been nervous but it can be worked on. Perhaps lessons need to focus on "a capella" for a while?

It doesn’t say anything about going fully off key in the accompanied pieces, but mentions intonation not being consistently precise.

That’s interesting, she’s definitely a far more natural dancer than she is a singer!

Quick morning bump

Final bump just in case anyone has any thoughts…

You can learn how to sing, but at 13 I would say if she is struggling with her tuning then musical theatre may not be for her. It's cut throat to get into and the knock backs really do have an impact. Heading into the next 12-18 months she needs to be focussing on other aspects of singing performance, not being able to sing in tune or stay in the same key.

I’m not really expecting her to take the musical theatre world by storm. It’s a hobby I’m happy for her to pursue for now. Just wondering if there’ll be a point when someone (us?) will have to give her some harsh truths, or whether she will actually get better with lessons.

I sing in an acappella choir - a barbershop choir. There is a skill to singing in tune without accompaniment. We sing in four parts so you can tune to the other parts which definitely helps. If she's really interested in improving I recommend it. Other things to do are have a pitch app to check your notes. Recording yourself and listening back to it helps pinpoint where you need to practice.

We do lots of work on interpretation and emotion, etc too. It's fascinating what makes a difference to the sound!

I meant to say - they is a real sense of teamwork and the experience of singing together has a myriad of health benefits too. If she enjoys singing this is way to carry on doing it without all being on her. We compete so standards are high.

I’m a singing teacher 😃 yes over time you can improve your aural skills (eg pitch-matching, interval training etc). It does take practise though and personal discipline etc. Basically only doing these things once a week in lessons isn’t going to work.
A lot of singing is within our control, a lot of it is muscle memory. So a lot of it can be learnt. What really makes a star is that un-capturable quality when it comes to tone, interpretation, connection etc.

I agree with recording herself and listening to it to hear where she's going off-key. A lot of people can't hear themselves going flat (and it usually is flat) while it's happening, but they can identify it when they're listening - then, once she can hear where she's losing pitch, she can start to deal with those bits of the song.

Even singers with excellent pitch will have areas of songs where they lose pitch - certain vowel sounds, quite often, or jumps between notes - so she shouldn't lose heart! It just isn't going to come as naturally to her as it might to someone with perfect pitch, for example.

Thank you 😊
I’ll look for pitch apps and when she starts working on some new songs I’ll suggest recording herself. We’ve not really pushed practicing so far like we did when she was learning piano, but she’s hopefully starting with a new teacher soon so will crack the whip 😂

She won't get better just with lessons, it's like anything, she needs to be practising every day. I wouldn't recommend recording herself. If she can't recognise when she is losing key then recording and listening back isn't necessarily going to help that. If anything it will hugely dent her confidence as particularly mobile phones, do not record singing very well.

Yep, she’ll be practicing, I’m aware of the importance of practicing.