Music Question: Can I Learn To Sing?

In my day to day job, I'm a piano and voice teacher. I've played piano since I was five and added singing to the mix when I turned eleven. I love doing both - you can often find me at my piano at all hours! Teaching was a natural progression for me; I had always wanted to be a teacher, and I taught classroom music for a few years before I decided I wanted to work one on one. Teaching piano and voice offers me all the joy of classroom teaching with much less of the 'stress'. 35 kids on recorders isn't exactly a 'soothing activity'!

Piano lessons tend to be mostly straightforward. There are multitudes of piano curriculum books and an expectation from parents and students about how lessons go. We warm-up with scales, we play our songs and provide the learning and 'fine-tuning', and then we do our theory. Sometimes, if we're REALLY wild, I'll change the order, but it's still essentially the same formula. The key is (quick music pun!) - piano lessons are easier to document learning because we 'finish' a song and move on. We complete a book level, we do an exam, etc.

Voice, however, is different. There ARE curriculum books on voice, though none that I've loved enough to commit to (if you have recommendations, please feel free to comment them here). There are vocal exams, though they tend to be centered around classical music, and often kids want to learn to sing but they DON'T want to do anything but contemporary (which is a whole different post!). The difficulty surrounding this is that most voice teachers have different methods, and documenting the 'learning' or 'advancement' is difficult. As a teacher, I encourage all students to videotape their first few performances and do so periodically as they continue. It's often hard to see our growth until we can compare it to where we started!

So, here is the most frequently asked question about vocal lessons I receive. "Can I actually learn to sing or do I need to be born with the talent?"

No one EVER asks this about learning piano. In short, the answer is YES, YOU CAN LEARN.

While true that some (small amount of) people are naturally gifted (I could rant for years about why I dislike that term!) that doesn't mean that an average person can't LEARN the instrument - including voice!

When someone mentions they are 'tone-deaf' it's probably not actually true. Less than 4% of the ENTIRE POPULATION is truly tone-deaf, a condition called amusia - please note there are different variations of amusia, and I am generally referring to congenital amusia, which is a condition one is born with. With amusia, it's not just singing that is affected - usually they can't hear any pitch at all... so car horns and talking sound like the same monotone pitch even if their volume differs). Often rhythm can't be differentiated either!

What people usually mean when they tell you they're tone-deaf is that they have a harder time pinpointing the pitch they're hearing, or discriminating between two different pitches which, of course, makes it really tough to hear it properly and match it with their voice! This is much more common than true 'tone-deafness' and it's an ENTIRELY teach-able and practice-able skill!

Even if you aren't taking voice lessons - sing along with other songs and singers, use piano apps and try your best to match what you're hearing. If even that is tricky for you, use something like an online tuner or an app like 'sing with Smule' to actually have a visual representation of your pitch and whether you need to raise it or lower it. Like any instrument, the more you practice, the faster you'll improve!

Although it is true that some people are naturally able to hear pitch easier and match it quicker than others, which is where you'll come across kids with great singing voices at a young age, it's usually because they were exposed to lots of music and singing at a young age. Gifted does NOT equal didn't work for it. Quite often, students who are active in churches will have better pitch than others! This is usually because most churches are actively singing within services or Sunday schools. Obviously, you don't need to be active in a church community to be a good singer! As a child, my family was always singing together and doing sing songs around the piano or the campfire, and naturally, my pitch improved as I joined them. This is from practicing, and not inherently a gift.

If you've read this far, thank you! Please take away two things from this vocal teacher's rant:

#1. You're not tone-deaf. You can learn to sing! And if you're not sure, take the tone-deafness quiz I linked below :)

#2. Please stop telling musicians and students 'you're so naturally talented or gifted'. Don't get me wrong - it's a lovely thing to say and it comes from a place of kindness. But instead, try this one: 'Wow! You're great at this - you must have worked and practiced very hard to be able to be so talented.'

Tone Deaf Test!

And remember, I always welcome suggestions for great vocal songs and great vocal curriculums! Drop a note in the comments :)