Some voice teachers and be quite forceful and intimidating and it’s a wonder how they ever get positive results from their students.
Recently, a prominent voice coach scolded her student for Singing Off Pitch!
The student responded by SMILING and continued singing.
In this case, the student’s response was exactly what was needed.
Smiling is an old school technique for improving flat pitch that still works for correcting small pitch errors.
The benefits are two fold:
- The SMILE can actually slightly tightens the vocal chords, thereby increasing pitch
- The implied “brighter” mood of the singer is also known to slightly adjust pitch.
SMILING can make a significant difference, but don’t get me wrong – smiling will not solve all of your vocal pitch problems!
First, smiling almost always raises pitch slightly, so if you’re singing sharp it’s just going to make the problem worse. Next, most people have a variety of vocal pitch problems:
- Scooping Attacks
- Leaps that Slide into the note
- Overshooting or undershooting the note
- And, ability to hold a steady pitch
While smiling will help in some cases and will help you feel better, to get to the bottom of Voice Pitch problems and solve them once and for all, you need an unbiased bio-feedback tool, such as my flagship product, PitchPerfector.
By practicing simple sustained notes, short scales and simple arpeggios, PitchPerfector literally trains you to sing on pitch. And most singers can visually see improvement within just a few minutes.
Learn more about PitchPerfector and start solving your vocal pitch problems today!
If you found this article helpful or interesting, please leave a comment below.
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At the end of the day after years of singing in bands and karaoke their are only 2 things you need to be a reasonable singing…okay 3.
1. Be in tune (on pitch)
2. Breath properly (ie; dont start to sing with an ’empty tank’
3. Have a ‘forward’ tone/placement (ie; dont sing fron the throat)
PitchPerfector is certainly a very valuable tool in achieving No.1 but dont’ get too hung up on just singing scales/arpeggio’s etc all the time or this will create a comfort zone and you will still fold once you
attempt a ‘real’ song.
I used to actually sing parts of the song I was working on and finding difficult into the PitchPerfector esp the starting note of the song, tricky vowels of sustained notes/vowels. This tip doesn’t seem to have been mentioned but it is definately something you can so with PitchPerfector to a degree.
Steve
Great contribution – thanks, Steve!
If a smiles helps a little with flat notes, then a frown should aid with sharp notes.:S:S
Hi Tholuu,
Great thinking! I’ve not experimented much with frowning, so won’t endorse this notion at this time, though it does make good sense. Most students that I work with have “flat” pitch problems, but I’ll investigate frowning for sharp singers!
Stephen
Hi Stephen,
Gary Richards here. I like your LGM (lead generation magnet) email. It made me click through to read more. However, when I got here I was dismayed to not find a clickable order button that would clearly enable me to obtain the implied benefit. I was already sold….
Best,
–Gary
Hi Gary,
Great feedback!
There was an order path at the bottom of the article, but it was too subtle (the big PitchPerfector Logo). Hopefully this is more discoverable now.
Thanks for your help!
Stephen