Impromptue vocal coach

6-22-09

From New Orleans

This morning I met the concierge of the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans named Sandra. Her husband is a drummer and a DJ who told her she can’t sing.

She admits that when she heard herself singing that it sounded “wrong.” She stated in her lilting, mellifluous voicethat she was “tone deaf”. She is an intelligent, educated woman; personable and comfortable in her job as concierge.

Of course I found it difficult to belief that such an accomplished person wouldn’t be able to control her voice to sing.

Upon asking for more detail, she told me she grew up in a Methodist church, quiet and conservative, which told me that she missed a lot of chances to sing as a child.

She is not tone deaf, she is “pitch deficient.” Pitch awareness is learned at the same developmental stage as language, usually between the ages of 2 and 5. If a person is not exposed to singing at those ages, they have more difficulty learning to match pitch. Match pitch means I sing a note and you sing the same note back.

A person who is pitch deficient will sing a different note or sing the same note but flat. When they put together an entire song they will tend to miss more pitches than they hit, so it sounds like what most people call bad singing. There’s nothing wrong with their voice, they are just missing notes.

I recommended that she choose a song, listen to it, record herself singing short sections of it into a small recorder. While miracles can be accomplished in modern studios, a mini recorder is a very honest representation of your voice.

Since she said she could hear she was singing it wrong, she should be able to listen to the recording and fix the notes that are wrong, then record it again. By repetition she should be able to correct the notes and eventually learn to sing the song. Then perform that one song perfectly for her husband, who told her she couldn’t sing.