I would recommend downloading some karaoke songs to listen (and sing along) to in your car. Songs you know very well. You should just find yourself coming in at the right times.
If not, learn to read music…
Here’s a little gimmick you might explore – I know from another thread you’re pretty adept at GoldWave as an audio editor. You could take a track you want to sing over, and do a few things: add manual a little click track, maybe with a stronger click or a bell sound on the first beat of a bar, and some kind of computerized voice saying “Sing will begin in 3 seconds, 2 seconds, 1 second, you may begin singing now!” The countdown voice I’m kidding about, but it would be pretty funny, I think. Laughing is good!
Corny sounding, but lots of musicians make use of little tricks like that to make practicing a little more rigorous – whether from using the equivalent of Karoake tracks (Aebersold books) or EQing out the instrument they play (as best as they can) of an existing recording, or just recording a little bass line or drum track to get tight when not rehearsing with other people. It helps me sometimes, because I never ever rehearse with my usual core group of conspirators – we count on each other enough to know how to follow each other on the fly, but also have enough faith that everyone else really knows some of the more complicated originals well enough to make it sound OK.
I always heard it as
Q: Why are viola players always sitting in their own front garden
A: They can’t find the key and don’t know when to come in
What makes me feel all the worse for being bad at this is that my mom is so good at it. She accompanies herself on the guitar, will sing along with a bunch of other instrumentalists, etc. And she has no fear. In fact she has too little fear–she sings when it’s inappropriate and embarrassing or rude to do so. So how it comes so naturally to her and so…not…to me…it just makes me feel stupider.
Oh, I don’t know why it took me so long to think of this - Band in a Box! It might be something you’d enjoy playing around with…
Hmm, once upon a time, you could download a demo version that just didn’t save anything until you paid for the whole program. Now, you’d be depending on their 30 day money back guarantee if you didn’t like working with the program…
Anyway, what it does is that you enter in the chord symbols and it interprets them in one of various styles. You can also order pre-made tracks done by other musicians. Like all karaoke/backing tracks set-ups, I can’t imagine ever using it for anything other than practicing. However, it might get you over your fear of singing.
I don’t know what to say about being truly afraid of singing - I started in choirs when I was too young to care if it sounded bad or not.
ETA: Hell, don’t feel stupid about it, though - you wouldn’t believe how stupid some singers are!
As to the first, it sounds like an awesome piece of software (and good to see that it isn’t Apple only, which I had previously thought it was) however it’s outside my budget. Maybe someday…
As to the second point, I honestly think that part of my fear of singing comes from being so embarrassed by my mother’s singing that I never wanted to be thought of that way. She will interrupt a conversation with someone to burst into song if something they said reminds her of a song. She’ll burst into song in a store, or anywhere. And she won’t stop until the song is over–it’s not a little snip of the chorus or the relative line and then over. It’s the full on performance. And at her holiday parties, she invites people to sign along with her, then sings so many obscure songs (many in different languages) that it’s mostly like inviting a large group of people over to your house so you can have them listen to you sign solos. I found the behavior very embarrassing, and I think it affected me. Add to that my utter insecurity about the sound of my own voice. Sometimes in the car I think I sound pretty good, but other times I’m cringing at how bad it is. In the car I split it about 50/50 singing along with mp3s (that have singers) or singing acapella. Sometimes the acapella sounds pretty decent, but other times it never quite finds a landing on the right note and meanders through all the wrong ones first. Ouch.
Serious question, not meant to be anywhere near as bitchy as I fear it’s going to sound:
If you are so dead set against singing in front of anyone else, why do you care about improving your vocal ability? Why not just keep doing what makes you happy, which is singing along with CDs/MP3s/the radio?
Because I want it to sound good to me which it only does about half the time right now. I don’t like singing a song to myself in the car and then thinking “that sucked.”
Ahhh, ok. That makes sense.
So you can’t sing, you may not be able to pitch, you can’t read music, you don’t know when to come in, not sure if you can hear / count the bars or beats, you won’t sing with / in front of anyone, you won’t go to a teacher nor will you buy any software to help you learn? Have I got that right?
Then the answer to you on your question of “How hard is it to learn to sing along with music?” is almost impossible.
For someone else who chooses to do one of the things suggested in the thread, the answer would be not too hard as long and you’re not expecting to come out like an opera singer.
I didn’t say I wouldn’t buy software. In fact I specifically said I WOULD just not the one that was way over $100. I also said I think that I could follow along with sheet music even if I can’t technically read it. So you’re getting some things wrong in your assessment.
My assessment did not read between the lines. However …
OK, so you won’t buy that one. I’d suggest you actually don’t buy anything. Software will not teach you to pitch or anything about tone. I can scream high notes or use falsetto, but any vocal teacher would cringe if they heard how I was getting there. It also means I am using falsetto where it shouldn’t be and therefore will sound crappy. A teacher is the only one who can tell you that the reason you sound crap is the way you are singing. You can be pitch perfect, but if your tone is off, it will be crap. You can pitch right and get a nice tone, but if you’re in falsetto, you are doomed. You have to have someone listen and instruct. If you are not willing to have someone listen and instruct then you will sound crappy and what will frustrate you even more if that you don’t know why you sound like crap.
Reading music, even just to follow along with it can be extremely difficult, depending on the piece of music you are listening to or following along with. That’s also not going to help you unless you are standing still with both the chart in front of you and the music in your ears. Sitting in a moving car to practice, well you can’t read the music and that’s bad for your diaphragm. Even putting aside the charts (if you can get them) and the standing up, you can’t read the notes, so you are only listening to the notes being made by the recording and mimicking what you hear. Adding further to the problem of following along, syncopated beats will trip you up time and time again if you are just following the beats. You will come in on the beat and (I’d suggest) there is a minimal amount of vocal music out there that is on the beat. You will need to learn syncopation to hit the sound and the note and the tone at the right point.
Ultimately the only way to learn that is for someone to listen as you do what you do and train you what to listen for, how to form your sounds, where to get the notes coming from and a whole pile of other things.
Simply singing along to karaoke, “rock band” or other game software will not help. Not one iota. Seriously, it will teach you bad habits. Practice will not make perfect if you are practising and ingraining the wrong habits.
You either need to get over your pathological fear of singing in front of someone, take some lessons, learn what you are not doing right, get better or give up and continue to sound the way you do right now.
QFT. Singing isn’t my area at all – though I do occasionally (often) sing while playing piano for my own amusement well away from people. I studied solfege, but never mastered it, and sight singing cold just scares me something fierce.
But your post reminded me of something a former teacher told me when I was getting over that hurdle of losing my place in tunes while improvising (trying to count in my head while playing) that encouraged me, and I tell it to my own students to encourage them: with practice and experience, you won’t have to count. You’ll feel intuitively what four bars is (maybe in three or four time, not suggesting going all prog jazz and messing with tunes in 11/8 and or 7/4, unless very patient).
It’s gotta be tough without intuiting the structure, or actively following, say, the bass line to get your cues – since there’s nobody physically giving you a nod. That’s such a huge part of playing music – constantly communicating, even if it’s subtle, with body language. I don’t mean Paul Schaffer with his giant arm gesticulations, but a little nod or eye contact or some obvious musical cues if out of eye contact go a long way.
So, OP will probably have to just find a way to get inside the music. I still like my idea of overdubbing some kind of cues to accompaniment, putting it on an mp3 player, and just listening again and again until it makes sense. But it’s an art, so no one method is right or wrong – whatever works.
Sorry for the 2x post, but don’t you think you’re being a tad harsh, Caught@Work? As I indicated above, I respect your opinion and agree with certain of them, but singing is an art, and pedagogy of music is multi-varied and hotly contested in all areas of practice – reading music isn’t a sine qua non for a singer, and OP already said she knows the basics. And I truly don’t think counting time is necessary – it’s an intermediate step that should be cut out once the feeling for the rhythm of a tune is there.
That said, I still have the card of a vocal teacher I met working a seasonal temp job at Home Depot last year, and obviously think that could be valuable for me, or, really, anyone. Your average man on the street would be surprised how many very accomplished musicians still take lessons on instruments they know very, very well, and a good teacher can be good for all kinds of things. Confidence, mentorship, tricks of the trade. I’m just a hack pianist with a few things I can do well, but if I had the scratch, I’d go back to my first real teacher, a college professor at Reed, for some pointers on technique to get back to Bach and the Well-Tempered and hammer out some technical issues in a second if I could.
I didn’t get the vibe that the OP was literally paralyzed with fear of singing, just unsure of her chops. Like any other instrument, any practice is better than none. And my pedagogical core technique is teaching transcription of recordings one likes. I don’t know how that would work in vocals, but it sounds pretty similar to how I learn tunes as played by someone like Chet Baker or Anita O’Day (my favorite chick singer next to Annie Ross) – I write them out pretty literally, heads of tunes they sing, but that’s not necessary, just the way I like to do it.
I saw some jokes above – here are some old ones:
Frank Sinatra’s hanging out with some of his “connected” friends and someone calls out from the crowd, how about “strangers in the night in 5/4”? Frank says “What? How? That will never play” Goodfella says, like this, “Strangers in the fuckin’ night…”
Or the chick singer who’s tracking with a piano player for a record – after the first run through of “My Funny Valentine” to check levels and warm up, pianist says, “That was great. Let’s cut that one first. We’ll start in 5/4 for three bars, modulate down a half-step for the next three, return to the original key, keep it in 3 for the first chorus, and then you can do an Albert Ayler kind of out thing for another four bars.” “How am I supposed to remember all that, you ponce?” “Well, just do it like you did it before!”
Jaledin may be I’m being harsh, but I really don’t think so.
You were taught music of one fashion or another. So was I. I have been playing music (not singing, because I suck), for the last 35 years. My eldest daughter was taught music and so was my youngest. We can all clap along to the beat. No 1 and 3, but 2 and 4 as God intended us to do.
My wife, on the other hand, can’t read music, sings (mostly as bad as I do) and can’t count 2 and 4 if her life depended on it. Being taught something, even something you now know as second nature, still means it’s a learned skill. I can pick up a beat by the end of the bar. I can tell you if it’s in 4/4, 3/4, or 6/8, etc, etc. Eldest can barely judge 6/8 and youngest cannot yet get the feel for it. Assuming we’re not talking 5/4 or 7/4 (not much popular music with those time signatures), 4/4 is still tricky for a lot of people to “feel”.
Look at concerts. Note the people clapping along. Unless the band started it, I will guarantee than almost 100% of them are clapping on 1 and 3. Wrong. Feeling the beat is a taught skill and unless you know that 2 and 4 are correct, you will go with 1 and 3.
I’m trying to draw an analogy here. If OpalCat does not get taught something, she will not pick it up or will pick it up incorrectly which will lead to worse results. You know someone doesn’t know music (feel, taught, emotion) when they are clapping on 1 and 3. It’s just that obvious.
Singing relies on musical cues. Beats. Notes. Syncopated rhythms. Knowing where to come in is a big deal. If someone can clap along, then their either doing it right or wrong. If OpalCat doesn’t know if she’s clapping on 1 and 3 or 2 and 4, then she probably won’t be able to follow the music. I don’t know whether she can / does, but it would be interesting to hear if she has that skill so she can follow the chart.
Singing also relies on lots of practice, but practice in the right way. As I said before pitch, tone, breathing, posture, knowing where to push from, not hurting your throat, they are all key to singing better. Learning to sing (if you don’t have natural talent which most of us don’t and I assume from OpalCats post she doesn’t either) requires being taught.
To drawn another possible analogy, typing with two fingers means you can type. Touch typing is a skill that is taught. You can teach yourself touch typing, but without referring to a book or teacher, you teach yourself the wrong habits and you end up not being very good at it. Remember, this is an analogy, not a parallel.
If OpalCat believes her singing is not good enough and wants to get better, the only real way for her to learn is, harsh as it may sound, is for someone to point out what she is doing wrong and correct it, or what she is doing right and promote it. Given we have a situation where she fears singing with someone else there, there is not a lot you can do to teach yourself to sing without forming bad habits. Bad habits will let you sing crap, good habits means you can improve, but until you know what you’re doing that makes you sound crap, you really can’t see a way forward.
Points taken, man. And disclaimer, I never made it to play concert rep on piano, but I got pretty good as a young teen at playing chamber music and recital fare at a pretty good level. Breaking out of that mold (and my previous mold of playing – as performed on the records – stride and ragtime) took just plain experience.
Just for the sake of argument – watch some video of the Basie Old Testament Band or most other big bands – they be tapping on 1 and 3, man! Unless it’s some heavy backbeat chitlin music, that ain’t wrong! Of course, right you are: a crowd clapping on the downbeats is going to sound more like a rock anthem at a basketball game than any kind of music I know well.
I 100% agree with you, though – the voice is an instrument and bad Paderewskian defects in technique can hurt a person’s ability to achieve what they might with solid pedagogy at a basic level. But plenty of people can intuitively pick up on what they already feel, given the right guidance. Very often this is a teacher, or just as often, it’s practice in a real environment with other people. People are resiliant and adaptive, and music is kind of a birthright of homo sapiens, don’t you think>
But where you and I might differ slightly (and I’m not convinced we differ at all at core) is that I don’t know if the stricter method works psychologically – after all, music is generally fun (and, yes, it’s rigorous and has its rules, but the best music has levity as well). Something, IME, happens when someone takes up the mantle of realizing a piece of music in the way of their choosing. I guess Anita O’Day singing 'Sweet Georgia Brown" really comes to mind here.
Just like preachers learn by doing, and professors learn jargon, people can learn a great deal by copying and even analyzing, if they know what to look for, great performances and try to start with simple things for which they have concrete exempla.
I admit, I don’t know anything about diaphragm and stuff except what I’ve overheard, but I do know human are pretty good at mimicking aurally things and translating that into their voice/horn/axe/whatever – improvised or with strict written guidance in the form of scores, that’s IME the way anyone good came to learn to play.
To tell a family secret, I still often just play tunes the way I’d imagine someone else would – I don’t care about being original, just making some money and playing what I feel sounds right. It doesn’t matter if I invented it. There’s a time and place for both just playing what you learned (not note-for-note in my case, but in the style of) and spending the time and creativity to try some new ideas out.
Now, I agree that a singing coach or joining a choir is the better option, but…
Console games such as Singstar/Lips/Karaoke Revolution will help with pitching and timing, because that is how the game is scored. Sure, it does not help with tone (or even the right words), but that is something that can come later, with confidence. They show relative pitch on the screen, and they give immediate (and ongoing, through the highscore table) feedback via the score. And they are designed to be fun and can be played when no-one else is in the house. The console listens and does not judge.
Rubbish. People learn on their own and improve all the time. And if the goal is sounding better to your own ears in the privacy of your own car (or shower), then you can do as you please.
I grew up in a household with a musically gifted mother and older siblings, which I certainly could not match, and still can’t. Eventually, I learned to play the guitar, but it seemed obvious that I could not hold a tune vocally. With practise, I learned. Good enough to lead singing in church for years. Now I perform pub nights and sing in the local community choir. I have good days and bad days - sometimes I can’t bear to hear myself in the car, other times I’m pretty happy. But I stick it out, for me, because I enjoy doing it.
Si
I’m on the same page, man, same page.
What we don’t know is whether OpalCat can count. I don’t mean counting, obviously, but count (as someone upthread suggested), 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3,4, etc.
Most modern music is going to be, verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus with the occasional bridge thrown in and probably a key change (for those who can’t write lyrics, change the key, sing the same lyrics again).
They are pretty much going to be 8 bars each (or 12 bars depending on how many chords you know).
So if you can count 8 (or 12) in groups of 4, you’re on your way to working out when a verse finishes and a chorus is about to start. If you’re listening to modern music, listen for the snare drum. That’s pretty much guaranteed to be on beats 2 and 4. Again, in most modern music your cues will also be a change in instruments (or volume) as it gets to the chorus.
As **Jaledin ** says. You count to learn, then you feel for experience. After time you can come in, in the middle of a song and based on what the cues are around you, you know you’re on bar 5 and have 4 more to go before the chorus kicks in.
Can you do that? I don’t know. Some people have tempo, some don’t. Kind of like dancing. If you have two left feet you can be told where to put them and mark them out on the floor, but you’re never going to be good at it. If you have no rhythm, you’re always going to struggle to know where to come in.
Music is so very much more than just the ax, or the kit or the vocals. It’s a huge tapestry where every thread tells part of the story and you need to learn to be able to listen to each thread, individually, before you can really appreciate the whole.
Put your music on. Turn down the treble. Turn up the bass. Hear the boom, boom? They’re your beats. Get into it. Learn it. Replicate it by clapping. Now turn the bass down and turn the treble up. Hear the smacks? They’re the snare. Learn where they are. They will probably be offset by 1 beat from the kick drum / bass. So you’ll hear boom, tish, boom, tish. That’s beats 1, 2, 3, 4. Set the bass to middle and the treble to middle. You’re now heading the guitar / keyboards. Listen to where they play against each other. You might hear one going down while the other is going up in tone. When they reach the climax, you’re about to hit the chorus.
Set everything back to your normal EQ and listen. Not just hear. Listen to the interplay of boom and tish with the guitar and keyboards. Ignore the vocals for now. Listen to it again and again and again. Listen and hear where it goes quiet, where it becomes louder, where there is a decrescendo and a crescendo, they are the cues you need to listen for to tell when the vocals are about to come back in.
There are years of listening, not just hearing, listening and analysing the fabric of the tapestry to filter out high pitches and low pitches, the counter directions on bass and lead guitar and all the time counting, counting, counting until you can feel yourself sway to one side on the boom and the other on the tish and you can clap your hands instinctively on 2 and 4. Then and only then will you be in a position to gather the cues for the vocals.
Sounds hard? Nah. Easy peasy for some, tricky for others. For you I don’t know.
To quote Douglas Adams.
That’s what music is. It’s not knowing how it’s done, it’s feeling it inside you. Inside you. Inside you. (I echo) It’s all about knowing, you, what you can do, your emotions and feelings at the time that you listen for the cues. It needs to be you, you , you. There is mathematics about music, but it’s really about you understanding the music and you. Feel it. Live. Love it. Make it about you and don’t get caught up in the details.
si_blakely I don’t think we really disagree. Singstar, et al, will show you you aren’t pitching right, but don’t help you understand what to do to correct it. You can pull you vocal cords or push harder (to sharpen), but is that the habit you want / need or should you really get some advice on how to flatten or sharpen your pitch?
I play these games with my girls. They can get the high notes, I can’t. I pitch them an octave lower and still get good scores. It’s not matching the pitch, specifically, but the note. Not sure how that is being done.
With regards to improvement, you can indeed, improve with practice. Some have talent and can get by with self improvement. Some will need help every step of the way. I suppose what I am saying is that OpalCat will not sing in front of everyone, so in terms of learning what to do right and what to avoid doing wrong, there isn’t much chance of success without having someone there, listening, to advise.
But if OpalCat can’t get herself to sing in front a teacher, she will need to rely on other methods. I hope that your encouragement and some of the more technical nature of how to listen to the threads of music will help her to accomplish what she wants for her.
If she’s the only one listening to herself, she’s the only one that she has to please.
Knowing when and where you are going wrong can really help the process, though.
That is a deliberate choice by the designer, so that everyone can play. And I do that sort of thing in choir, when the Baritone parts get too high for my Bass voice. I cheat with the solo pub songs, I just transpose everything down into my vocal range. Playing guitar with a capo makes that pretty easy. 
Si