If you dream of becoming a good singer but you’ve been told that you are tone deaf, this video is for you1

My name is Jorgelina, I’ve been a vocal coach for 13 years and I specialize in teaching adults how to sing contemporary music from a holistic and integral approach.

Make sure you stick around until the end because I’m going to show you a resource that you can use to train this skill in yourself every day.

Let me get started by telling you that really, really, really few people on the planet are actually tone-deaf. I’m actually not too sure that it’s not just a limiting belief. There is a very, very, very, very small percentage of the population that has a condition in which they neurologically can’t differentiate pitch.

But that is not the case for, most people that think they are tone-deaf. After teaching voice for 13, 14 years, I actually never, never came across someone who couldn’t learn how to sing in tune. and I know you might be thinking ‘Oh, yes, I am one of those people that have that condition’. Well, you are probably not! I’m saying this because a lot of people think that they are just tone-deaf because they can’t match a pitch and that’s not being tone-deaf.  

As I said, everybody that I have taught has learned  to sing in tune.  People that are actually tone deaf  (it’s probably not you) also talk like monotone. So you can even hear in the speech that they can’t differentiate the pitch, but that’s not the case for the immense majority of people.

When people talk about being tone-deaf, what they mean is that,  are singing songs out of tune.

Now what that actually means, it’s not that you are tone-deaf. What it means is that you haven’t trained your ear. And that is totally different. It is super important to understand the difference. If you think that you are tone-deaf, that is kind of an absolute statement.

And you are saying that you are tone deaf and that means that you can’t learn. If you think you can’t learn something, just forget about it. You’re not going to learn it!

So, I would suggest, if that is you, that you maybe rephrase that and you can perhaps say that you don’t have any ear training (done yet). That is probably more accurate. If you want to learn to sing in tune the best thing to do is not to start with the hardest song in the world. The best thing to do is to start recognizing one pitch at a time

As I said, I’ve taught a lot of people who couldn’t recognize pitch and they all learned. So how do we do this? Firstly what you have to be able to do, is not even recognize one pitch, but firstly you need to be able to tell me if I play two notes, let’s say I play (demonstrates) and (demonstrates)  are you able to tell which one is higher?

(Watch the video for a demonstration!)

If so, great. You can learn to sing in tune.

If you know that you find it super hard to sing in tune then I will recommend you to take some private lessons with a vocal coach so they can give you the feedback in real time and that is gonna make the process much more easily. At home when you are training yourself to sing in tune you want to start with short exercises, not full songs. That just makes it super hard and it makes your process of learning much more slow. what I would recommend is that you, for example, start with one note at a time.

(demonstration and exercise on the video)

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If you find it hard, just close your eyes, and feel the vibration of the note. And try to produce the same vibration from your voice. It’s not easy if you are just starting, but it is a necessary process. And, I promise, once you tune your voice to sing in tune, you have that skill forever.

The next resource I would like to give you to practice singing in tune is actually a slide exercise. Now, slides are great for your voice if you are not used to voice training because they allow your voice to have some movement without you being too stressed about specific pitches, and that it’s good for your voice.

in a slide, you go from one note to the next, going through all the notes in between smoothly. 

(Demonstration and exercise in the video)

It’s very important when you are learning to sing in tune that you do not worry about songs or exercises that are away from your comfort zone. Sing in a range that is comfortable for you so you can make those connections much more easily. And then it’s naturally translated to higher and lower pitches as well.

I actually wrote an article about how to sing if you are tone deaf and I’m going to leave a link in the description below so you can access it and I give you some extra tools there.

Now I actually have a few other resources that I wanted to show you. As I said, at the beginning of this video, the first one is a gentle voice warmup that is really slow. And so you can download it from the description below. It’s very gentle on your voice and it’s slow. So you can actually focus on singing  the right notes.

And if you do it every day with a lot of awareness, then you should get better in no time. The other resource I wanted to give you is, I actually prepared a list of 10 songs for beginners. You can also download this for free from the description below. This list is designed to allow you to sing songs that don’t have too many complicated steps or intervals.

And that is going to be good for your voice because you are going to be able to organize those sounds in an easier way, which will really train your ear and be great for your voice. If you enjoy this content and you would like to have some more training, you can always book a lesson with me or alternatively, I’m about to release a course for absolute beginner singers in which we are going to work on all of these things.