To Learn To Sing On Key: What You Must Do

Most people would naturally assume that the problem is in the hearing.

The common belief is that in order to learn to sing notes and patterns of notes you must do exactly that – sing notes and patterns of notes. You are, therefore, in most singing lessons encouraged to sing along with scales and other various patterns of notes. If you can’t sing the right note, you are encouraged to listen.

Unfortunately, numerous people spend years and decades (unless they give up) on these detrimental strategies. In fact, the consequences are often even greater...

To illustrate why this is detrimental, let’s look at a child who tries to throw a ball at a target. Most well-meaning parents would tell the child to “look at the target”. That is understandable. After all, professionals focus on the target. In fact, how can we accomplish anything without being focused on the target or the outcome?

But what if the kid who has a hard time throwing a ball continues to miss even when he is looking at the target?

It is interesting to observe that the singer who has a hard time hitting the notes and who doesn’t sound good, is often well aware that he doesn’t sound good (although he may not know how and why and what to do about it). Likewise, the kid who tries to hit the target knows perfectly well when he fails. His vision is evidently good enough to notice when he misses.

Unbeknownst to those who want the child to focus on the target, the child’s visual sense is completely irrelevant at this stage. In fact, it is exactly because he is so focused on the target (i.e. using his visual sense) that he will never learn to confidently hit the target.

It is because he is so focused on the target – i.e. using his visual sense – that he has no clue of what his feet, hips, torso, arms, shoulder, wrist are really doing.

Nor is he aware of what his mind is doing.

The reason he isn’t skilled at throwing the ball is not because of faulty vision, but because he hasn’t discovered the mechanics of how to effortlessly and effectively use his body to throw a ball with flow and balance (which creates a trajectory that goes straight at a target).

But worse…

Since the sole goal is to hit the target, he becomes trained to judge success versus failure. He becomes outcome-oriented and has little knowledge of what kind of process is required to achieve success. Since he is set up to fail more often than not, frustration naturally builds with every failure. Very soon the child won’t want to engage in this activity anymore. He will believe he has no talent.

We can argue that he has little skill in throwing a ball. But what he really is lacking is the knowledge of how to engage in a process to learn effectively.

The effective coach will immediately make the result of the throw irrelevant. First of all, to help the kid move away from anticipating and judging the results (the failure). Secondly, to give the kid a chance to finally focus on the mechanics. The effective coach will devise a strategy where success is inevitable – where each discovery becomes interesting.

Many sports trainers do understand the importance of form and mechanics and how to shift your mind depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case when it comes to singing training. Singing training has never been designed to help those who don’t find singing “natural”. And unfortunately singing training has been so captured in tradition and old beliefs of "right" and "wrong" that it has evolved very little in comparison to many other principles.

I don’t know how many hundreds of people I have seen who have wasted years and fortunes with very little progress. As gratifying it is to see how these people’s lives change when their limiting beliefs are shattered, I also know that there are even more people out there who never attempt to sing again, because they have come to believe that singing is not for them.

The bottom line is that the more difficulty you have singing on key, the more you need to let go of using your auditory sense. This is sometimes hard to do on mental level. Your brain goes: “ But I want to sing the note, therefore I should be listening to the note” – just like the kid who has been conditioned to believe he must focus better on the target.

Am I saying hearing and vision are not important? Of course not. The issue is what to focus on at any given moment.

The reality is that as long as you are engaged in singing scales, your auditory sense will automatically turn on and you will likely never truly discover your body. And you will likely make even less discoveries as long as you are engaged in the common artificial ways of manipulating your body, such as “feel as if you’re yawning”, “stand with good posture”, “widen your throat”,"sing through your mask”, “use stomach support” etc.

As long as you are engaged in trying to “hit notes” and using your auditory sense to judge yourself, you will likely never experience what it’s like to confidently release free vibration, to experience wonderful flexibility and effortless breathing. You will likely never experience how singing “on key” becomes a natural by-product of free vibration, or when singing becomes the enjoyable experience that it can be.