The "I can't sing" people!

kickingtone

New member
If you have never heard of "breath support" or never tried to apply breath support in singing, then you simply don't know whether or not you "can sing". You basically have never tried.

Breath support is so fundamental to singing, it can totally flip your assessment of whether or not you "can sing"

Learning breath support takes research, and a bit of time (as it requires isolating and beefing up of certain muscles you may not be used to using).

I wonder if there are quite a few musicians, here, who actually have a big advantage, given their musical background, but who believe that they cannot sing simply because it is not "happening" automatically.
 
I think there's an intuitive nature to singing that allows some folks to get moderately good without any real theory. If you're a "naturally good" singer with no training, you probably already have ok breath support.

That said, yes, breathing is absolutely fundamental to singing well. Not knowing how to breathe well and not knowing that you don't know how to breath well will severely limit your growth as a vocalist.

Once you get "sing from your diaphragm" and "if something hurts, stop doing it" down, you've got 90% of the most important theory down.
 
I think there's an intuitive nature to singing that allows some folks to get moderately good without any real theory. If you're a "naturally good" singer with no training, you probably already have ok breath support.

Supposedly, we are pretty much all born breathing correctly for singing, breathing from the diaphragm. Most of us exercise that ability as children as we play, compete and shout -- some children ..... more than others ..... Then we generally get to being less noisy and may lose touch with exercising the necessary muscles.

Environment is important. I know people who are public speakers who have naturally picked up diaphragmatic breathing again. If you go past a noisy building site, you may hear builders who have done the same, and others who haven't and end up barking. Accent plays a big part too. Some accents encourage diaphragmatic breathing more than others.

That said, yes, breathing is absolutely fundamental to singing well. Not knowing how to breathe well and not knowing that you don't know how to breath well will severely limit your growth as a vocalist.

Once you get "sing from your diaphragm" and "if something hurts, stop doing it" down, you've got 90% of the most important theory down.

I think that it definitely opens the door to putting a host of things singing within reach.

Some people think that you are talking about "not running out of breath", when you talk about correct breathing.

But it is much more than that incidental fact and is the single most important thing that can totally change the tone and dynamic of your voice, to the point that you don't know whether or not you can sing, until you breath correctly. Chances are that you can, because you were born that way. It is just not easy to rediscover. It can take quite a bit of research and experimentation.

Some singers sound so different when they speak. That is basically a result of the way they breath for singing.
 
isn't this just the same thing as those people who think that because they can get their fingers on a few strings on a guitar, and play a tune - that this makes them a guitarist. A voice is an instrument like all the others, and some people can play, some can't and that is pretty much that. Some can have endless inout via lessons and practice and make minimal progress, others have a natural aptitude. The best singers have this natural ability and have the support of proper lessons or supportive assistance. Bad technique gets caught early and good techniques replace it, and progress takes a jump.

Television makes people believe ANYONE can sing, and frankly, they just lack the musicality to hear how poor they are - plus when they were at school or college - if they did sing, their friends cheer and whoops and add to the belief they are talented. What's my voice like guys? Brilliant is the answer. If you say terrible, you can affect their mental health. Universities who do Performing Arts and Music in the UK have started to NOT give grades for Year one - in case it damages people! Madness.
 
tbh, I think this can/can't false dichotomy is a big part of the problem. Why is singing different in this respect?

Is that how it works with playing the guitar? You're seven and mum shows you off to her friend down the road..."Look! My Johnny plays the guitar so nicely"...."oh, yes!....doesn't he....".... then you haul your guitar in to school one day.... Teacher: don't laugh! Johnny's doing very well. Suddenly, mum telling you you can play doesn't cut it. You actually like playing the guitar, and your pride makes you practice. But the mud sticks, and your friends a school keep teasing you. Then you move school, prejudice vanishes, and fresh ears comment. "Damn! I wish I could play like that"......"Get John to play... he's really good....". Then you bump into Bob's elder brother, Eddie. Bob is your best friend. Bob's brother, Eddie isn't that impressed with you guitar skills. He plays the guitar and spots all your limitations in three minutes, and he's not the nurturing type...... You watch Eddie enviously, as he effortlessly plays licks you struggle with. Gotta be like Eddie, otherwise I'm a n00b, you think. Two more years of sweat and toil and you pluck up the courage to see if you're good enough to help out with Eddie's band. It's been a long while since you spoke with Eddie. The Eddie you remember...so cool. You find him at his studio in the middle of waxing lyrical with his mate over the way someone called Fred plays the guitar....

And so it goes on and on and on....just like my rant....

There never is a point where you stop because "I can play" or "I can't play", unless you're not really into it.

It is the same with singing.

I suspect that professional singers treat feedback from their ordinary fans very differently from feedback from their peers. What do the screaming fans know? "Most of the time, the fans still cheer when we mess up, they clap on the wrong beat, and couldn't tell an F from an F#." Of course they still have to act out a sh1t load of "appreciation" of their fans. Don't tell me that some of these perfectionists take to heart the praise of Joe Blow.

But they are still interested in the critique of their peers. It's genuine. It's not, "I know I 'can sing', I just gotta hear you say it."
 
isn't this just the same thing as those people who think that because they can get their fingers on a few strings on a guitar, and play a tune - that this makes them a guitarist. A voice is an instrument like all the others, and some people can play, some can't and that is pretty much that. Some can have endless inout via lessons and practice and make minimal progress, others have a natural aptitude. The best singers have this natural ability and have the support of proper lessons or supportive assistance. Bad technique gets caught early and good techniques replace it, and progress takes a jump.

Television makes people believe ANYONE can sing, and frankly, they just lack the musicality to hear how poor they are - plus when they were at school or college - if they did sing, their friends cheer and whoops and add to the belief they are talented. What's my voice like guys? Brilliant is the answer. If you say terrible, you can affect their mental health. Universities who do Performing Arts and Music in the UK have started to NOT give grades for Year one - in case it damages people! Madness.

The big difference between the human voice and every other instrument is that almost every single human being on earth dabbles with their voice as an instrument at least a little. Some folks pick up a guitar, get frustrated and never try again; but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who got frustrated with their vocal limitations and then quit entirely.
 
Another smaller difference is that skill level of singing is a lot more subjective. You'll get a much better consensus about your skill level at playing guitar.

So "can/can't play the guitar" makes more sense than "can/can't sing".

But both are still meaningless. :D
 
Everything everyone has said makes sense.......but I think the real question here is.......how is it that some people cannot recognize their own lack of skill? Many people can....and do.....but many cannot or will not. And I'm not just referring to those who get to hear their singing or playing back on tape......(as some never do).....where it should be obvious to anyone......including their own ears. And really.......is this just limited to people who think they can sing and can't or those who think they're a good guitar player and aren't? Inside or outside of music.......there is no realm of human talent that does not seem to have some people like that. Aren't we just looking at a small sample of people (singers / musicians) and trying to figure out the answer.......when the syndrome does not just apply there only?

When you look at it that way.......and realize that it's likely just a pathological part of some personalities...........as in liars and con men....cheaters.......etc.......we're probably expecting way to much if we expect such people to respond as expected to our feedback. And......that's why this "Can I Sing" thing drives us nuts.
 
Everything everyone has said makes sense.......but I think the real question here is.......how is it that some people cannot recognize their own lack of skill? Many people can....and do.....but many cannot or will not. And I'm not just referring to those who get to hear their singing or playing back on tape......(as some never do).....where it should be obvious to anyone......including their own ears. And really.......is this just limited to people who think they can sing and can't or those who think they're a good guitar player and aren't? Inside or outside of music.......there is no realm of human talent that does not seem to have some people like that. Aren't we just looking at a small sample of people (singers / musicians) and trying to figure out the answer.......when the syndrome does not just apply there only?

When you look at it that way.......and realize that it's likely just a pathological part of some personalities...........as in liars and con men....cheaters.......etc.......we're probably expecting way to much if we expect such people to respond as expected to our feedback. And......that's why this "Can I Sing" thing drives us nuts.

Ha! I love this question, human psychology and all that.

First of all, I can't tell you how many times having a slightly higher opinion of my own abilities than I actually possess has helped me in life. Sure, life slaps a reality check in my face every so often, but I get to challenge myself in the brazen way a child does, biting off more that he can chew, but still able to come through smiling, with bumps and bruises. When I look back at successful projects I have taken on, and what they put me through, I marvel at how naive I was to start them in the first place, but I am grateful for that "naivety". Maybe biologists would say that hubris is evolutionary. Maybe there is an "evolutionary advantage" to overestimating your abilities........................slightly!!! It is not difficult to imagine the diminishing returns!!

Anyway, specifically with singing, I think that one factor I have noticed is that people come in with different motivations. Some people really like the art of singing, others may be in it for "stardom". When the latter type listens to himself "live" or in playback, he may have a whole theatre going on in his head, images of himself prancing about in front of hordes of wild fans, etc. etc. And the real feedback gets swamped by the illusion.

I recall learning djembe drums (basics) with a friend of mine. While drumming his head would flap about and his whole body would jerk to and fro out of rhythm. There was a whole stadium erupting in front of him, in his study. He would spend the rest of the time "correcting" my drumming. Then he bought one of those software packages that could automatically transcribe a recording to musical notation. We each played a few bars of a rhythm we'd been arguing about. My eight bars came out identical, and when we checked, the notation was correct for the rhythm. His rhythm, on the other hand, transcribed to a mess! There were those continuation things (smiles), under half of his notes. A few months later, when the topic came up again, he had genuinely forgotten. He called me a liar. His mind had rewritten what had happened. I know it was genuine, because I could see a light come on when I reminded him of a phrase he had used at the time: "the computer must have quantized your recording" (to explain why mine had come out right). His mouth just opened, but he said nothing. Pragmatically, I changed the subject.

Another slightly more subtle effect concerns how we listen to music. Just like looking at a scene, we only "see" a fraction of the scene, and the rest is joined dots, I think it may be the same with sound. The fraction we actually tune into varies according to taste, so we may filter out things we are not interest in. Some who like high frequencies may tune in there, and not be to bothered about how stable the low frequencies are. Somebody else may tune into low frequencies, and be guided mainly by that. The high frequencies may be ragged, come in and out, but they don't notice. So, listening to feedback of yourself singing is quite an art. Like a policeman trained to observe as much as possible about a scene, the singer has to learn to pay attention to the entire bandwidth, even though the casual end listener is going to tune in to their favourite haunts.
 
I have a professional diagnosis that I can't sing. Quite a few years ago I was at an after-show party chatting to the Musical Director (who also did singing lessons when things got slow. She boasted "I can teach anyone to sing" so I said "Yeah? What about me?".

So, it was set up that I'd get a 1 hour lesson next week. After 45 minutes of trying she pronounce me the exception that proved the rule and asked me to never sing again. I've kept my promise.
 
To me singing is much like any other instrument. Yes it starts with breath support, not unlike picking technique on guitar, but you learn your vocal range like a guitarist learns a fret board. What pitch do you change into falsetto, using your chest and head voice, blending full voice and falsetto. You practice scales so your muscles get used to voicing correct pitches just like you practice scales for muscle memory on guitar or piano.

As a music teacher of children I will say this, not everyone can hear musically. Not everyone can match pitch. Not everyone can hear a tune and pick it out on the piano or xylophone. Can they get better at it with lots of practice? Sure somewhat, but I can tell you almost from the moment I have a student echo simple two note phrases back to me if they have a musical ear. I truly believe like some kids can just run faster or throw harder from the get go, that some kids have better ears. Why do you think siblings who harmonize vocally sound so tight? I believe it's because their ears and vocal chords have physical similarities they are born with. Now I have zero scientific evidence to back this up, except for the fact that I have been tasked with making young humans better at music for 15 years. So these are just my informed opinions.

I do think people record themselves and really cannot hear if they are in tune or not sometimes.
 
As a music teacher of children I will say this, not everyone can hear musically. Not everyone can match pitch. Not everyone can hear a tune and pick it out on the piano or xylophone. Can they get better at it with lots of practice? Sure somewhat, but I can tell you almost from the moment I have a student echo simple two note phrases back to me if they have a musical ear.

I know I would struggle, but I don't think that I lack a musical ear, particularly. Two isolated notes could be a challenge for me. Ten notes of a melody probably would not, even if they contained those two notes Somehow, once I feel the context and melody, the notes slip into place.

Sometimes, I can also confuse wildly different notes, say, C and F. I figure that it happens when I'm hearing a strong third harmonic on the C. But I wouldn't get confused if I were singing a melody. It would only happen if you were to ask me to sing just the one or two notes. I don't think it is necessary to be able to isolate the fundamental frequency, and it doesn't seem to be the way I naturally hear notes???

Another thing I have noticed is that when a run of notes are all the same pitch but are on different vowels I think I am hearing different "pitches". This is again something to do with effect of harmonics and not isolating the fundamental. I am actually quite surprised when I see the music written down. But, when I check what I am actually singing, I find that I do hold the note even though I am not aware of it. All that I am changing is the harmonics to get the different vowels.

If you had been my teacher, you would probably have written me off. :mad::p

(Except that I have a really thick skin. I advise anybody who wishes to affect me to practise a few months with a triceratops.)
 
Lots of my money making work comes from having a decent ear. I work with some excellently talented people. If you hear the same pitch but because of the harmonic content you determine them to be different notes then I guess you've come to terms with it like being colour blind. One of the things we do here is produce customise backing tracks for bands and singers. We've become pretty good at listening to the originals maybe 2 bars at a time, and identifying everything that is going on. Last year we did a series of Carpenters tracks - layers and layers of harmonies and picking out exactly what is there so we can re-record it took a lot of work. Two of us would sit together and I'd say, I think it's going la-la-la-la, and my colleague would say "are you sure? - I hear la-la-la??" and eventually wed get consensus. Sometimes, we'd hear one thing, then listen very, very carefully and pull out something else. We got better and better - but I firmly believe you can train yourself, IF, you have that acuity in you. I don't think some people would ever be able to do it. We had real problems with the singer reproducing these backing. We'd sit with her, and say ok - you have to sing la-la-la-la with some very strange jumps and slides into new notes, and doing it one line at a time really made me appreciate how Karen and Richard Carpenter did this in the studio. I heard a youtube clip where they said "Take 38...." and I wondered how somebody so talented could get to take 38 - but now I really understand.

In another life as a senior music examiner, where students needed to reproduce a popular piece of music, I stopped being amazed by people who could not sing.I've found one old example. The back story is that the guy liked this style of music, but could not get anyone to help him record it - and the grades were for the recording NOT the musical ability. So he recorded the entire thing himself. The real problem is he's not a singer, but he also chose a tempo that he could not keep up with. he managed the guitars and other instruments, but not the voice. The key is also wrong for him and simply not the right song for his voice. People tried to counsel him out of doing it. He insisted. He actually made a decent enough job of recording it - but it's difficult to listen to.
 
If you hear the same pitch but because of the harmonic content you determine them to be different notes then I guess you've come to terms with it like being colour blind.

On the contrary. They ARE different notes.

They ARE different notes which happen to have the same fundamental frequency. The fundamental frequency does not DEFINE the sound, the feel, or anything musical about the sound (I mean it is not a musical DEFINITION of a note). It is only one aspect of it, an analytical detail.

It is a useful detail, if you wish to transcribe the music, pull it apart, apply some technical standard (as oppose to playing by ear) etc. But it is not necessary in order to be able to sing a melody. It is something that we can do automatically without the analytical skills.

I did highlight the word "necessary" in my previous post. Of course there are many applications of such a skill where it is necessary. Singing is not one of them. You could look at a painting or even your computer screen and the same colour against a different background or in different contexts could look like six different colours. Your artistic appreciation of the painting would not be affected. But if you had to use an external instrument to reproduce or work with the painting, you would need that skill.

I didn't say it was a bad thing to have at all. That would make no sense to me. It is something I intend to familiarize myself with. But I will do it cautiously, because I do not want to lose the holistic feel of a note, and make too strong an association between fundamental frequency and feel.
 
I know I would struggle, but I don't think that I lack a musical ear, particularly. Two isolated notes could be a challenge for me. Ten notes of a melody probably would not, even if they contained those two notes Somehow, once I feel the context and melody, the notes slip into place.

Sometimes, I can also confuse wildly different notes, say, C and F. I figure that it happens when I'm hearing a strong third harmonic on the C. But I wouldn't get confused if I were singing a melody. It would only happen if you were to ask me to sing just the one or two notes. I don't think it is necessary to be able to isolate the fundamental frequency, and it doesn't seem to be the way I naturally hear notes???

Another thing I have noticed is that when a run of notes are all the same pitch but are on different vowels I think I am hearing different "pitches". This is again something to do with effect of harmonics and not isolating the fundamental. I am actually quite surprised when I see the music written down. But, when I check what I am actually singing, I find that I do hold the note even though I am not aware of it. All that I am changing is the harmonics to get the different vowels.

If you had been my teacher, you would probably have written me off. :mad::p

(Except that I have a really thick skin. I advise anybody who wishes to affect me to practise a few months with a triceratops.)

I guess I should have said, I can tell who has a "better" musical ear. But in my practice, most of the time, the students who can match the simple "sol-mi" or "g-e" early on are also the ones that can sing back a melody, say of 10 notes like you mentioned. And just so you know, I give everyone who wants the chance to sing a solo an audition. It is interesting though, because even the students that struggle singing on pitch and in time can usually tell who sounds the best, which is weird because they have trouble making themselves sound better. Which brings me back to the point that some singing/musical ability is just given.
 
I guess I should have said, I can tell who has a "better" musical ear. But in my practice, most of the time, the students who can match the simple "sol-mi" or "g-e" early on are also the ones that can sing back a melody, say of 10 notes like you mentioned. And just so you know, I give everyone who wants the chance to sing a solo an audition. It is interesting though, because even the students that struggle singing on pitch and in time can usually tell who sounds the best, which is weird because they have trouble making themselves sound better. Which brings me back to the point that some singing/musical ability is just given.

What you may have observed is a trend, rather than a fact. I am not sure the value of the observation, given that a song is never two notes. If they can sing the ten notes back, that is what matters. There are reasons why 10 may be easier than 2 that are not to do with "better musical ear". For example, breaking down a note into its fundamental plus harmonic content is actually artificial. It is a result of theoretical Fourier Analysis, and it is questionable whether we hear using such analysis. There is nothing to say that the most important thing about a note is its fundamental frequency. In fact, most of the power may be in the second, third or fourth harmonic. The fundamental may be very weak, or even absent ('missing fundamental'), so it is only an "implied" frequency. So somebody singing back to you what they hear as the most prominent feature of the note, needn't be singing a note of the same "pitch". The more notes you have, the more of a pattern emerges, the more music emerges, and the more objectively the ear can match. In that sense, what you are calling the less musical ear may actually be the more musical ear. Of course, there are also those who will repeat back to you something that appears to bear no relation to your notes. They could have a problem.

It's horses for courses. And breaking things down doesn't work best for everyone. For example...

My mum taught me to read in the following way. She simply took a children's book and read it to me while I watched her point out each word as she read. That was that. I was nearly 5 when I started school, by which time I could read fluently. I could repeat the "bits" -- the alphabet -- really quickly, too, but quite frankly, that "skill" was useless. And at school I was bemused to hear the teacher teaching us "KER - A - TUH, CAT,.....DUH - O - GUH, DOG". Some of the class were still doing that, aged 9.

Another example is the drummer I mentioned earlier, who taught me and a friend. He was a very accomplished professional drummer from Ghana on an international circuit. But he didn't know what a quarter beat was. (He knew what it meant theoretically, but he couldn't tell if he was drumming quarter beats). If you asked him if something was a quarter beat, he would just play it and say, "it's like that."

Listen , repeat was the way he taught. He talked of beats being even, but "quarter, half, third"??? forget it!! If you auditioned him and asked him to play quarter beats, you'd write him off! :p
 
Well this guy would pass my audition because no where did I state that students had to identify what they were singing notation wise. And I also never said I would "write a kid off" if he didn't match pitch early on. I start with a pattern, a pattern that uses only two pitches(And yes two pitches can make music, the beginning to Beethoven's 5th is arguably the most recognizable melody on the planet). I sing the pattern, and they try to repeat it. Some are better than others. I sing songs that emphasize the pattern and we repeat this process. Some take more time to learn it, some never do, but some get it right away and are usually musically inclined in other ways as well.

I get what you are saying and far as fundamentals and harmonics go. Some people wonder if Van Gogh actually saw the world the way he painted it. When I sing in falsetto some students try to emulate my "squeaky sound."

We can go round and round on this, but think it is imperative for a singer to be able to hear and reproduce intervals as that is the relationship between two pitches. Whether they do this consciously or not really does not matter but the ability to hear something and repeat it correctly differentiates singing from just random sound production.
 
On the contrary. They ARE different notes.

They ARE different notes which happen to have the same fundamental frequency.

I think we have to agree to disagree here. The fundamental IS the note, because the note is the frequency and frequencies are determined by the fundamental, NOT overtones, or indeed the waveform shape - sine, square, sawtooth etc - C1 is ALWAYS C1. Nothing can be lower than the fundamental, so measurement starts with that one. The only example I can think of where there could be confusion would be a Hammond organ, where there's a Perfect 5th available as a distinct higher tone - but all this means is that if you hear a G, on the add 5th drawbar, without the fundamental, then you are hearing G, but seeing a C!

In real sounds, while you may have lots of frequencies in the harmonic series, the fundamental is the basis of the sound. Same fundamental frequency - same pitch, same letter name - and when you sing it, the same note there too. I cannot accept any variation of say a C as anything other than C - even if mega rich in harmonics.
 
Well this guy would pass my audition because no where did I state that students had to identify what they were singing notation wise.

:p You wouldn't get to audition him, either. But seriously, the point I was trying to make is that the drummer couldn't relate in the same way to "beats per bar" of whatever, regardless of whether it was written down. Three beats to the bar, four beats to the bar, twice as fast? Those questions were alien to him, and that was probably why cross rhythms were easy for him.

And I also never said I would "write a kid off"...

course not. I was joking.

if he didn't match pitch early on. I start with a pattern, a pattern that uses only two pitches(And yes two pitches can make music, the beginning to Beethoven's 5th is arguably the most recognizable melody on the planet).

It must be, since even I can guess what you are referring to.

I didn't say 2 PITCHES, though, did I? I said 2 NOTES. I am sure you spotted that ;) because of the way your carefully said pitches.

It is a perfect example you have given. I can google the sheet music and see the "2 pitches". Yet my immediate reaction would have been 3, only the first two being the same. Perhaps somebody can explain why? :eek::eek::eek: Yet, I have no problem singing it back to you. "Something" about the 3rd note sounds higher than the first two, to my ears. Maybe it is only one of the harmonics being more pronounced or something, and, if that is the case, I would automatically replicate it, without necessarily realizing how it breaks down.

I sing the pattern, and they try to repeat it. Some are better than others. I sing songs that emphasize the pattern and we repeat this process. Some take more time to learn it, some never do, but some get it right away and are usually musically inclined in other ways as well.

Sure. Musical inclination is a real thing. I won't deny that.

I get what you are saying and far as fundamentals and harmonics go. Some people wonder if Van Gogh actually saw the world the way he painted it. When I sing in falsetto some students try to emulate my "squeaky sound."

I was actually thinking along those lines in my last post. Particularly a small child, may go for the loudness, emphasis or other quality of the sound, and may or may not relegate pitch as a matter of interest.

We can go round and round on this, but think it is imperative for a singer to be able to hear and reproduce intervals as that is the relationship between two pitches. Whether they do this consciously or not really does not matter but the ability to hear something and repeat it correctly differentiates singing from just random sound production.

I think we can agree on that!
 
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