Singers, I need advice!

[tomasf]

I wanna practice singing and was wondering if there is an app that can help me practice my pitch. Any recommendations?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[andygabrys]

two aspects to that I think....

having the musculature / breath control to sustain notes in tune

and

having an awareness of where the pitch is and hitting it.


No help on the first one, but the second one is easily done with just a piano. Play and sing and match the pitch. Play and sing. Then later sing and play and see how close you are. etc.

[funsongs]

Would be interesting to have a microphone with a pitch-scope display... where you could sing a note and see how close you are to pitch; in case there's the need to train the ears, without use of an instrument (such as the piano suggestion) to hear correctly.
If you could sing into a guitar tuner.

How many times have you heard someone say that they can sing "on pitch"? (as they hear it);
and, in fact, their hearing is off... and, thus, so is their pitch.
It could be ear-training as well as voice-training that's needed.

Okay... gear guys are gonna chime in (on pitch, please ) and tell there's something that does that.

fwiw: While I sing my own scratch tracks, I'm always listening for the right voice that will fit the song;
and it's usually NOT MINE... in that case, it's "hire a pro" time.
hth; cheers.
Peter

[Len911]

Just google "solfege app"

And then choose if you want fixed or moveable do

Because a piano is equal tempered, it might not be the best method to practice on. It is said that "Just intonation" is more natural and "accurate", so maybe a violin, or even sine waves that are the exact frequency of just tuning??

[andygabrys]

difference of opinion Len.

The most important thing is you have a good sense of pitch, and be able to match whats around you as well.

I don't think the vocalist (or violinist) is going to do their own thing when playing with a piano if they are playing unison - nor the acoustic bassist doubling a left hand piano line in a jazz arrangement - they are going to try and match - but that's just my opinion.

[elser]

I would compare that to tuning a guitar, which many people find difficult. You have all the tools readily available to you. It's not really something you learn from a book. I think it's mostly about listening to yourself very carefully. You know it when you hear someone else singing out of tune. You can also learn to hear that in yourself.

[elser]

Just google "solfege app"

And then choose if you want fixed or moveable do

Because a piano is equal tempered, it might not be the best method to practice on. It is said that "Just intonation" is more natural and "accurate", so maybe a violin, or even sine waves that are the exact frequency of just tuning??

And then there's this, any instrument with frets or keys are limited to equal temperament tuning. So you might learn to sing more perfectly in tune with the overtone series but you'll then be out of tune with the limitations of the instruments in your band. So like Andy said you listen to what's on going around you. It's never perfect. Nothing is.

[Len911]

Andy and Elser, I agree with what you both are saying, yes, the voice is flexible and will adjust to whatever tuning or scale is played by the band. My reasoning was that the primary use for solfege was when there are no instruments, picking up a score and singing it accapella, or if you wanted to write a melody with only paper and pen, and I have heard tell that it is easier or comes more natural using just intonation. I haven't actually "got around" to learning solfege to know for certain, and because I always have access to an equal tempered instrument, I haven't really been too compelled to learn, lol!

It's only a few cents, but it might make a world of difference in how quickly it is learned?? I'm not an expert, I'm probably more asking questions than making any sense or cents myself,lol!

I seemed to remember reading or maybe hearing in a lecture that perfect pitch was extremely rare and that many people that claimed to have it didn't. I suppose that makes some degree of sense if what some of the radical "just" intonationists say about the equal temperament system being out of tune.

Using pure tones by generating sine waves, should be more accurate because you don't have all the clutter of timbre frequencies. If you have Wavelab, you can not only generate the sine waves, but you can also get an average pitch from a vocal sample in hz and cents. Once you've learned solfege, you can go back and check yourself to see which tuning you were closest to and go with that one as the "correct" one,lol!

[Len911]

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/37/14795.full

Very interesting article. It has pretty much snuffed my musings and proven me wrong,lol!!

For one, I'm at the age that even if I had AP(absolute pitch), it doesn't make sense at all to learn solfege.

The study interestingly used both piano tones and pure tones equal-tempered, and for people with AP it didn't make a notable difference.

The interesting thing they found was that G# was most often in error and they theorized it to be because of the proximity to the "tuning" frequencies of A at differing frequencies, eg. A=440, A=415, A=446. And also interesting, the piano tone was more easily correct than a pure tone because of the timbre frequencies around the A=440, but of course a piano is always that because of the equal temperament, which leads me to believe the sound was primarily memorized??

Also, most AP people had a lot of musical training in their early years.

The study primarily seemed to be trying to tie genetics into AP probablity, however they only used equal temperament, and still doesn't answer the questions about just intonation and/or the differences between them if any. It seems a little premature to conject that AP could be genetic, if you only used one tuning, and perhaps not the most accurate tuning, so it's possible that through early training and "brainwashing",lol, or repetition rather than genetics plays a more important role. And after all, the whole raison d'etre, is about tuning

Mainly, I just wanted to mention that I was wrong on a few things and clear the air, I'd have to do more research to find something more conclusive on the other issues, didn't quite go where I hoped it would,lol!

~Len

[Kolstad]

Try recording a few sine waves onto your phone, and practice to those.

Ive gotten tons of great tips from Brett Mannings youtube channel, and heres one to practice right now, utilizing the sine wave idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN7ol4aU4TQ