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ChrisSalter
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« Reply #26 on: October 22, 2010, 11:47:24 PM » |
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I am reposting this, it was a direct reply to Ana in another thread, but it may help some people here.
Ana,
Singing is actually a fairly subtle art. It involves tiny muscles in your voice box, that we are rarely trained to use correctly. You have heard of voice lessons, and even gotten some for you daughter, but you have accepted and even embraced a fundamental attitude and belief, that YOU cannot sing in tune. Perhaps right now you are not able to NOW, but you can learn to as sure as you can learn to tango. Will it take work, practice and will you feel like a fool? Yes. Do you need expert guidance and feedback? Yes. Can you learn this skill and become competent and enjoy this and share in this with your daughter? Yes.
So, first off, your attitude must shift. Then you must embrace a long (life long) and initially frustrating and embarrassing process as the cost of learning this. However, once you stop worrying and apologizing over what you don't know and can't do yet, you can begin to learn.
I will give yo a few tips to get started, but you will need a teacher for feedback and guidance most of all.
First of all, find your range, that is the lowest note on the piano you can sing, and then highest. That can expand with practice, but it will be where you start. Sing every half step, (all the black and white keys between the lowest and highest). If you have an organ sound or flute sound on your keyboard, those longer non-percussive sounds are better targets because they continue to sound and you can hone in or tune into them without it dying away. Also, try just being conscious of moving down and up in a continuous glide, occasionally stopping at the "stairs" of the notes on the keyboard. You need to be able to consciously move up or down at will so when people give you feedback (higher) you can move in the right direction. Again, like riding a bike, easy if you know, but you can learn the basics once you get out of your own way.
Second, sing long tones to each of them, working on the micromuscles in your voicebox to try and tune into each note. Some will be easier than others, there will be a patch of notes where your voice needs to shift to another mode (sometimes this is called a falsetto, but I think of it as the way your body needs to shift and adjust to lift heavier weights with your legs whereas simply lifting with your arms is enough for lighter weights.
Third, the most challenging part, where you need feedback to learn what is "right", is learning not only to figure out when you ARE in tune, but to memorize (sense memory) what that feels like so you can do that with each note. The paradox is that no matter what note you hit, it has some harmonic relationship with the target note, and so you will feel (subtly, in your throat, ears and chest perhaps) SOMETHING. When you have tired to sing in tune before, perhaps as a child, you were guessing at the correct note, and probably got it wrong, without ANY instruction as to how to adjust up or down, or what was "right". You were probably told "you have no talent" or "you are tone deaf" by an adult, or peer, and YOU TOOK THAT TO HEART. The truth is this is very tricky, and not "visual" or obvious, and so getting it "wrong" was normal, like a baby speaks "wrong" and is corrected, hopefully lovingly and repeatedly. The big difference is that most speech sounds have a strong visual component (think the letters "b" and "th", and how you can watch where to place your lips, tongue and teeth). Vowel sounds and vowel like sounds ("r" and "l") are the hardest and longest to learn. Tone is far more subtle, and with almost NO visual cues, so naturally more difficult. We also practice it MUCH LESS than we do language, so we reduce the time, and should we have some elitist, impatient or just ignorant feedback, we are not encouraged but completely humiliated.
Here also is how confusing the "right" (unison, or same tone) can be. You could be singing an octave above or below and it will feel in tune, very similar to the exact same note. OR, you could sing one of the notes that harmonizes with that note, a third, a fifth or sixth away from the notes, and it will "resonate" in some distinct way as "something". Worse, the most dramatic feeling (and most "noticeable) is when you sing the note CLOSEST to the one you are aiming for, the half step or whole step above or below the target note is the MOST DISSONANT, and it "resonates" weirdly and dramatically in your ears, throat and chest, and you think (floundering with no feedback) "there, I feel something, that must be it". And you are close, but harmonically completely dissonant, and no one helped you find how to move JUST A LITTLE up or down to "tune in" and then to REMEMBER that "tuned in feeling" so you could replicate it again.
Finally, if someone knowledgeable, with awareness, technique and patience, LOVINGLY showed you the way, you COULD learn to sing, enough to enjoy it, and to please yourself your whole life long, and who knows, after a few years or even months of practice, someone else will say, "my, you have TALENT". What you will have though is not talent, but persistence, courage and faith, and a good teacher. And the birth right of music and the right to sing.
Above all, find that kind of LOVING teacher for your daughter.
Good luck
Chris
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