Ask the average person in the street to sing for you and they’ll say “Nope, I can’t sing, I’m tone deaf!” Sound familiar?
What’s funny is that even passionate musicians, from amateur to professional, will tell you this!
But “tone deaf” means you can’t tell one note from another – so if they were truly “tone deaf” they would be physically incapable of enjoying music, let alone performing it well.
We treat singing like an innate part of us, something you’ve either got or you don’t.
And I understand why you’d think that because singing is an innate part of us, it’s the most natural of musical activities.
BUT real tone deafness is extremely rare – 98% of those who consider themselves tone deaf or unable to sing actually just haven’t yet trained their ears and their voice.
If you were truly tone deaf you wouldn’t be able to tell one note from another, and all music would sound like a drone.
And if you were truly incapable of singing then you also wouldn’t be able to change your pitch when speaking and every sentence you spoke would sound like a monotone robot like thiiiis.
So singing is possible for you – and this is extremely important, whether you aspire to be “a singer” or not, because for any kind of musician your singing voice is the most powerful tool you have to train your ears and unlock your inner musicality.
There are two parts to singing: your voice and your ears. And both can be trained so that you can understand and reproduce pitch.
Over the last ten years we’ve helped over half a million people start singing in tune.
We start with singing a single note, any note.
Then matching pitch with a single note you hear.
Then learning to move confidently, accurately and reliably between notes.
There are other factors (15, in fact) that go into having a “good” voice but once you master just this one skill, singing in tune, you’ll feel and sound like someone who “can sing”.
Once you “can sing”, singing can be a powerful tool, for example when learning solfa to recognise notes by ear or improvise or compose your own musical ideas.
This idea that “good singing isn’t a gift, it’s learnable by anyone” is a mindset shift that can transform your musical life – learn more in the rest of this Musicality Unleashed series.
