How to sing in tune when you were told you are “tone deaf”
“How to sing in tune” is a very hot topic for those who want to get started in singing but are terrifying of doing it.
A lot of people are told by well-intentioned relatives and friends that they cannot sing, or even worse, that they are “tone deaf” and that they will never be able to sing. These statements, which could be made as simple jokes, have enormous consequences for those who believe them.
The truth is that most of the time, people that make these statements don’t even know what being tone-deaf means.
The term tone-deaf is reserved for those who are unable to identify different pitches.
However, in over 10 years of teaching, I haven’t had one single student that is actually tone-deaf. There are some that have difficulty singing in tune at first, but in my experience teaching, all of them eventually learn to sing in tune.
There are two kinds of people that talk about themselves as tone-deaf. There are those who cannot currently sing in tune, but they can hear it. And then there are those who don’t sing in tune and cannot tell. This post is about the last group, and for the sake of the article, I’m going to assume that you know nothing at all about music.
How to sing in tune: What to do if you’re told you’re “tone deaf”
First of all, identify who planted that belief in your mind. Then, observe if that person has music knowledge of any kind or not. If not, then discard immediately their opinion. Remember that opinions from specific persons are just opinions and not an absolute truth, no matter who that person is.
If you think you’re tone-deaf, find a friend that actually knows music. Not only likes listening to music, but can actually play an instrument.
Then ask them to help you check if you can sing in tune or not, not by singing a song, but at first just by singing one single note.
If they have their instrument with them, ask them to play a note that is in your comfortable range (Probably C3 to F3 if you’re a male, and C4 to F4 if you are a female, will work OK). Then try to match the note by singing a long AHH. They will be able to tell you if you are in tune or not.
What if you don’t know anybody that knows music, and you cannot afford a music lesson?
Well, in that case knowing how to sing in tune gets a little bit more difficult but there are still some things you can do.
You can download a tuner app on your phone. Tuners are used to tune instruments such as guitar, and there are also apps that help you recognize whether you are matching a pitch or not.
What if I cannot reproduce the same pitch at all?
If you are playing a D and then when you sing the app shows you a note that is nothing like that, for example, a G, then you have to work a little to tune your voice. It still doesn’t mean that you are tone-deaf, since lots of students with the same issue have resolved it with practice.
So if that is your case, prepare yourself to be patient and open to the process, because the process of opening your ears requires transformation
How can I open my ears?
Well, to start with, we not only listen with our ears but rather with our whole body.
A simple exercise you can try:
Sit comfortably in a position that allows your body to relax.
Close your eyes
Relax your breath
Listen to a single note. You can ask someone to play a note in the piano for you, or you can play a track like this:
Listen to the note with your whole body, and pay attention to the vibrations that it produces. Every note vibrates in a particular frequency, so it is useful to concentrate on that at the beginning.
Once you have found the particular feeling of that note, sing the note that you are hearing, and feel if the frequency that you are singing feels like it.
Pause whenever you need to rest and try again. Take all the time you need to sing the note until you feel that you are “in tune” with it. Listen and record yourself. Then listen to the recording and try to identify if you are singing the same note or not. If you are still unable to tell, ask for the help of a friend that can play music.
This exercise has worked for all the students I have had that thought of themselves as “tone deaf”, with no exception. The moment they could sing the note in tune they knew it because it just felt right.
It is about connection and allowing the sound to flow through you. When you are starting, it doesn’t matter if you spend 20 minutes or more with a single note, that can well be a form of meditation actually! The more you practice, the easier it will become and soon you will be able to sing not only single notes but entire songs.
