Not being able to sing in tune with other people: is/was this you?

[ontosecondary]

Hi, I'm teaching music and feel a bit rubbish teaching singing because I literally have no concept of what it is like not to be able to sing the same note as someone else in reasonable tune.

So... can anyone help me? Can anyone describe what it feels like and how you improved? I know there are methods out there but what I'm after is insight.

I feel much better teaching instruments because I can nearly always "see" the process of not-understanding....dawning understanding... understanding.....

grateful in advance.

I am like Jenny- I can keep in time (fine at Zumba!) and love to sing, but I can't... Apparently I just change key all the time! Would love to learn.

I'm pretty good at languages, but maybe not accents. There's something called APD I think I have a touch of.

Can anyone describe what it feels like

I couldn't hear myself, had no idea what I sounded like or that it was wrong except from reactions of other people. I didn't understand why I was hushed when I sang with my cousin (he could sing beautifully). It's quite nasty because the teacher scolds if don't you sing but the other children point and snigger. Then when you're an adult people shudder or move away, or snap "DID YOU ACTUALLY SAY YOU HAD music LESSONS? Then why do you have NO SENSE OF RHYTHM?"

Yes, all true.

Especially annoying when people insist "Oh anyone can learn to sing." and try to get you to show you just how bad you are, but you've wised up by now. And it's sad when they invite you to a choir & you just know the leap to even their minimum standard is impossible.

and how you improved?

I did improve, singing by self to particular songs again & again (usually very much in private), and learning to play instruments helped. I still struggle to hear which note is above or below another but I can sometimes tell if it fits badly. Singing sounds off-key to me that I'm told are completely on-key. My natural singing range still very narrow & I am only sort of in key, I'm sure.

DH can't sing at all but he can hear when a song changes key or a single incorrect note. DD regularly picks out tunes on the piano (like Harry potter theme tune) and quickly learns to play them well (well to my bad ears, anyway, she has not had piano lessons).

going to toddler groups helped a lot, I suppose. It's hard to completely screw up Baa-Baa Black Sheep. Very short songs that even the children sang badly so not too obvious. Singing the same songs repeatedly many times every week & my eldest liked me to sing them at home, too.

I am shocked how cruel teachers can be to children who find singing hard. There is really no excuse for smashing a child's self esteem in that kind of way.

The church organist takes the view that he will accept any child who wants to be in the choir. There was one little girl who really had no sense of pitch and after 6 months she has improved, but it has been slow. He takes the view that if a child is prepared to attend choir practices then he is prepared to help them learn.

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is completely different to deafness. My son wore hearing aids due to glue ear for a long time and has some damage to his hearing caused by multiple perforations. He has an excellent sense of pitch. I think that APD is an entirely neurological problem.

I suppose a child who does have APD has bigger problems than being unable to sing in tune. Perhaps is kinder for such children to skip the music lesson and work on their literacy.

I think there are two aspects to singing in tune: The ability to hear whether something is in tune or not and the ability to control your voice in order to tune it. Both these things can be taught but will come much easier to some people than to others.

I have no musical talent at all. I couldn't carry a tune at all as a child. My parents (who are both quite musical) were quite sad for me. But I had amazing music teaching and over time I learnt to listen and to hear and (to an extent) to control my voice enough to sing in tune. If there's any other noise I have to have a finger in my ear so that I can hear myself clearly enough to judge pitch. Tunes I know well I can easily sing in tune (I think because my voice knows what it's doing, iyswim). New tunes are more difficult, but I can get them with a few attempts. My range is crap though.

I cant sing, I know this because i have been told so by many people; in a jokey way by people who like me and not so nicely by primary school teachers who would never let me sing in any school productions!

I can't hear it myself so I don't know why. I would never allow myself to be recorded singing so I can't tell you if I could hear how bad I am if it was played back to me.

If I'm completely honest I don't really know what things like pitch and tone mean but that may be because I haven't ever had music lessons.

I do sing at toddler groups now i have dd and I try to sing quietly so no one notices how horribly out of tune I am, but to be honest I don't care much so long as dd likes it.

However I am really good at languages, I did well at languages at school and when we go on holiday I pick up lots of words without really trying. I've don't think I've ever tried to learn a tonal language like Chinese so I don't know how that would work out.

Hi ontosecondary:

Can't say I've read everybody's posts - but will say that DD1 (now Y7) was atrocious at first when she joined her school choir.

Several issues:

Everyone sang the same part (which can be pitched to high for some).

To much emphasis on singing loudly

Too little emphasis on singing in parts/ harmonies

I think if you want to improve children's singing - my advice is start by avoiding trying to force every child to sing the same note.

I'd start by separating out your sopranos from altos/ tenors from basses - and I'd also look into encouraging harmonies/ accent sounds/ singing in rounds/ etc... - rather than everyone singing the same thing.

You can also introduce things like bells, drums, etc... to add layers to the sound.

finally - the one thing that amazed me was that during primary DDs choir rarely used hand movements. I think this is a real shame - movement during singing - makes it interesting for the singers and audience.

I have no sense of rhythm which doesn't help when singing, unless there's a conductor. Until my 20s I thought when people clapped to music that they had learned the score beforehand so they knew which notes got the stressed beat...

I can learn languages ok when written down and a teacher who writes everything,but can't pick them up by ear - my hearing is pretty bad even with hearing aids and picking anything out from ba kground noise is hard enough in English.

First of all, ontosecondary, you sound like a fantastic teacher for caring to research it so well! I don't know the difference between tone and pitch, can't hold a beat, and I suspect I can't sing in tune. When I was around 11 years old I remember in weekly all-school 'hymn practice' our horrible teacher pointing in my general direction screeching that someone was out of tune, then prowling up and down the rows to detect the culprit - as if they were doing it on purpose. I strongly suspected it was me so I just used to mouth the words as she passed me.

I would love someone to have discretely helped me, as, although I am an awesome singer in my car , I still mouth the words or sing really quietly if I attend a church service as I believe I am still singing horribly out of tune!

I think your class are very lucky to have you!

My dc go to music classes where they're taught kodaly hand signs and I think it has really helped develop their awareness and ability to pitch.

I can sing in tune with a piano and I can sing accurately unaccompanied. I find it really hard in a choir as I can't hear my own voice over the others and this makes me lack confidence that I'm hitting the right notes.

So one size definitely doesn't fit all.....

They are year three and four. We are focussing on ukulele, which I chose partly because you can sing with it.

I have a sort of idea of a game where they have to find "their" voice and arrange themselves in high/low order. I need activities that are fun, free of humiliation and allow them to get better at listening to others. Something where there is a consequence if you don't match but not a bad consequence.

I could start by matching the pitch they sing, then allowing skilled children to also be pitch-matchers? Help, need inspiration, can anyone describe things they think would have helped them?
I think that there will be resources out there....

I'm bad at music but good at languages - I've learned half a dozen or so European languages to some extent, and have a degree in one of them.

Never tried a tonal language though except when I'm watching the Lingo Show

Strikeout fail!

I really cannot sing. You know how most people think they sound good? I don't. I can actually hear how bad I am myself.

I can hear notes. Then I try and sing/hum/make them but what comes out is totally different and I just can't match it up.

DP was humming the tune from Hunger Games earlier, I coild hear the tune but just could not make it. Really bizarre!

I tried to teach a friend to sing in tune once, and we did make some progress.

I started by simply playing two notes, and getting her to listen for same/different. Then I played her scales and glissandos and showed her the concept of lower to higher, and got her to play them. Then I played various notes, and had her listen to whether they were generally 'low notes' or 'high notes'. Then tried to get her to say whether a second note was lower or higher than the first, both with very wide intervals and then narrower.

Then she did some glissando type things with her voice, actually trying to make really low notes and up to high notes, up and down, to get the feeling of how to change pitch in her voice. I didn't have one at the time, but now I have a tuner app on my iPhone that shows the pitch you are singing (well, it wobbles around a lot!) but you can kind of get the feeling if you are making your voice go up or down, which might help. She didn't really have any idea how to change what her voice was doing at first.

Then I'd play a note or sing one, and just try to get her to match it - and I could point up or down to encourage her to change to match mine, listening to what it would sound like when it was together, and what it would sound like when it wasn't. (I could also play a note, and sing a different one, to show her what it sounded like when it wasn't the same note).

She was only visiting for a weekend, and it was just an experiment to see if she could improve, as she'd always loved the idea of singing, but was really quite tuneless. And she did improve. By the end of it, she was matching my pitch about half the time, after starting out wildly different. I think with more practice, she could have done it, and then started to learn to reproduce intervals. We were not working on fine tuning, as in whether she was slightly flat or sharp.

I'm sure children could be taught to do something similar, especially with someone who knew what they were doing in terms of both teaching music and teaching singing, like how to actually create the high and low pitches (I am not particularly good at singing or being in tune myself, but I have a general idea and can play instruments).

children's choirs often seem way too high when I hear them, and I think no wonder half the time they sound flat! Softer, lower, and lots of emphasis on listening and blending would help.

I can sing, but was dreadfully out of tune as a child. That's because I wasn't singing properly -- i.e. on the note, full voice. It was a sort of strangled, whispery sound.

One Christmas, memorably, I got it -- just stood up and sang Good King Wenceslas when asked at a party (we used to have those sorts of parties when I was little). My father got terribly over-excited but it was a while before I could repeat it because I couldn't remember how I'd done it!

I think the secret might be getting children to stand properly, with their chins down, and not actually opening their mouths too wide or attempting to sing too loudly. I tell adults to sing like Elvis, which gets them to relax their throats, but unfortunately most children don't know who Elvis is!

It might be worth looking at the RSCM voice for life materials. It has lots of ideas on how to teach singing to children.

www.rscm.com/education/vfl/vfl.php

I try to hit the right notes but they just don't come out right (rejected from junior school choir!), even when I try and adjust my voice, it doesn't work. However, I can tell I am not in tune and I can tell when other people are not singing in tune either (even slightly). Its a bit like a physical ability - so imagine you are trying to hit a ball with a raquet - you know what you are trying to do and you know you're not doing it.

Ds is learning and instrument and his music teacher said 'DS is unable to sing a note back to me' as if this was really unusual.

Thanks really tired,

I'm excited about the idea of the tuner app on my iPhone that shows the pitch you are singing. Can you link to it runaway?

Friendlyladybird your parties made me smile.

There are several available: i used one called iStrobosoft, but there's also ClearTune, and OmniTuner, and several others - you might google for reviews to see which ones might be best for voices (they are designed for tuning instruments, which produce a slightly more stable note), and also which one shows the display that suits your purposes best (mine, for example, shows note names, which is fine if you know that a D is a higher than a C, but not so useful otherwise - but I expect some of them might have e.g., a keyboard display).

Here's one page of reviews of music apps, but there are lots others when I googled 'app for tuning voice'. It sounds like the 'do re mi' one might be a good set up for voice

apps4idevices.com/categories/my-best-setup-for-singer.html

I can't sing at all. I wish I could. I don't think it's a question of not being able to sing well it's not being able to sing at all or appreciate tones. Or tell the difference between a sharp note and a flat note.

I was the child at school who had to have a teacher sit next to them in assembly to show how to clap in time (during clapping songs)

Still can't do it.

Can you hear beats though Caulkhead?

I speak 3 languages (2 fluently) and have, quite literally, never hit a note in my life. I LOVE singing but have little rhythm or no pitch. I know I'm singing out of tune but there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I had one-one singing lessons when I was 11ish and she gave up after 2 weeks because I just didn't "get it". I learned a couple of instruments, mainly because I think the music teachers at primary realised that if I had a recorder in my gob I couldn't bellow my awful noise and drag the whole choir down. I got a couple of big parts in plays (good memory, loud voice) but the choir sang my solos because I literally couldn't.

I don't believe I can be taught. But I still sing in the car on my own (and karaoke, given half a chance, but there's only a couple of people in my social circle that'll allow it now).

Sorry, very little advice except bung a recorder/trumpet in to avoid dragging neighbouring singers down.