http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tone-d...ess-bad-singing

Interesting for me anyway

I have a grade 8 student who has a really good 'ear' for music. Almost perfect pitch. Has no problem with the aural tests, except for the singing, which is a nightmare as so much is singing based.

He sings out of tune...he knows he does. He can hear it, but just can't seem to pitch the correct note. We've done a ton of practice and there has been a definite improvement over the years, but it's so frustrating for him.

I think it's easy to assume that if you can't sing back a phrase, you probably can't 'hear' it. I knew he could.

Think this bit of the article might be his problem



Anyway. Thought it was interesting.

I think this is an interesting article! I have a friend who claims that she knows it when she sings off-tune. I did not believe in her. Now I think I do... So being able to sing in-tune is not a mean feat at all!

Only just clicked that your student plays the piano and now am not wondering how he passed grade 8 singing.

Wow, great article! I have a pupil just like this. At first I thought she too couldn't hear the notes, but if I play her a D for example, and then play another note, she'll straight away tell me what the other note is. She too just can't make her voice 'find' the note she can hear.

No. He's grade 8 piano, clarinet and Grade 6 (or 7) saxophone. Aged 14. It's just been the singing parts of the aural tests that have been a problem.

Interestingly, he's a bit of an enigma. Sight reading could also be a problem, (in a way). Plays it dreadfully first and 2nd time. By the 3rd time, he has it close to perfect and by heart, phrasing, notes, timing, dynamics etc. But of course, there's not time to play it 3 times in the exam, so sometimes the marks have been down on that. He gains on his pieces which he learns incredibly quick. Comes away with a merit usually.

In his real 'off exam life', sight reading and aural are no problem for him as he generally gets to look over the music for a bit longer, so then plays without a problem and he doesn't have the need to sing.

Interesting article.

It makes perfect sense of course - I have a good ear, have perfect pitch, but wouldn't be able to give you an F# on the bassoon - so if he's never had lessons to learn to pitch his voice, control his vocal cords, the cartilages in his larynx and control his air-flow, it's perfectly natural that he shouldn't be able to produce the notes he wants.

He just hasn't learned to play his voice yet.

There was a lot of discussion about this in a thread a few weeks ago (I can't find it right now) about whether the AB is right to require sight-singing as an element of the exams. Most of the contributors seemed to think it obvious that if you can't sing a note then that proves you can't hear it mentally. They were not persuaded by the minority who either (like me) have "never learned to play their voice" or know people who haven't.

Yes,I participated in that thread and I am convinced that the AB aural tests which require sung responses are not a valid test of aural perception. I repeat what I said then which was that testers should think very carefully about what they want to test and should ensure that the test tests just that.

I was pleased to read the Scientific American article. We also read "Science et Vie" here and it seems that with recent research into the workings of the nervous system and new medical imagery we teachers are going to have to rethink some of our received ideas - and update some of our methods. It's interesting and exciting.

A perfect way of putting it!

So basically the article is saying there could be four possible causes:

1 poor music perception

2 poor control of the vocal system

3 an inability to imitate

4 poor memory: between the time of hearing a song and singing it back, the notes are forgotten

In aural training, I've been using a method that seems to work very well. Starting very simply, I sing or play a note, and ask the student to listen very carefully, hold the note in their head for five seconds and then sing or hum it back. So far, they have managed to sing or hum it back correctly in 100% of cases. This includes my partner who is what you could describe as 'tone deaf' - ie he has an ability to sing in tune or stay in key after he's started singing a tune.

Anyway, what this seems to do is train the aural memory. The next time we do it I ask them to hold it in their head for 10 seconds, then 30, then a minute. My partner was able to hold a note in his head for a whole minute and sing back the exact same note! He was amazed when he discovered he could do this.

Once people start becoming confident at this, you can introduce two notes, the second note preferably being a minor third below the first one, or a tone above. This is always performed correctly the first, second or third time, the accuracy improving each time.

I think the poor performance the article is talking about is almost always caused by a lack of confidence, which usually goes back to some horrendous event in early childhood where the person was told they were 'rubbish at singing', 'tone deaf' or whatever. This causes a fairly big trauma because one's voice is so close to one's whole identity that an attack on it is perceived as an attack on the very self, which causes part of that self to close down in self-defence and rendering it incapable from then on of controlling the vocal system, or being able to remember the note to be able to sing it back because of the ensuing panic at being asked to do it in the first place.

Asking someone to peacefully hold the note in their head seems to give the person a renewed quiet confidence in their ability to do it, hence the success I've witnessed on countless occasions.

One particular pupil springs to mind - she was once told she was a 'useless singer' and something in her shut down. I was trying to get her to sing to help her aural awareness as she was playing out of tune; her tendency was to approach the note from below (lack of confidence) so it would come out flat. The holding it in her head trick worked a treat and she slowly developed an ability to sing beautifully in tune which in turn helped her intonation on the violin.

The fact that in Hungary virtually everybody can sing beautifully and here so few people can would suggest that it's a cultural and/or a psycho-physiological rather than a purely physical or purely memory-based problem.

And me.

And I'm sure it will also be interesting for those others among us who have been voices* in the wilderness here against a sea of 'you obviously aren't aurally aware enough...' Or am I mixing too many metaphors?

(*'voices' being the operative word. )

I always wonder whether the "singing from memory" part can be replaced by "playing from memory on the instrument". Surely playing on the instrument demonstrates the same ability to pitch accurately.

When I was a child in the late 1980s to early 1990s, I don't think there was any sight-singing section in the aural exams. I think there was beating of time with the arm (duple, triple, quadruple) and in the higher grades, verbally transcribing the melody into crotchets, quavers, dotted crotchets, rests, barlines etc. Does anybody remember such an old syllabus? There used to be only one "singing from memory" section that required any usage of the singing voice.

I have a question that may seem far-fetched. If the candidate has a disability such that he/she cannot speak, how will the aural section be conducted? Is there any alternative? There must be some budding musicians who have speech difficulties. I only know that theory papers can be customised to help candidates with visual disabilities.

Just for the record, some years ago I had a pupil whose vocal chords had been damaged by life saving surgery. As a toddler she had fallen from a ladder and suffered a head injury. At some point in the attempt to save her life a tube was used to help her breath (I assume). Although I no longer teach her I do see her sometimes and she is now in her early twenties and can still only speak in a hoarse whisper and certainly can't sing. She passed Grades 1 and 2 piano. I can't remember what her aural marks actually were but we more or less ignored the singing bits so they must have been low. I didn't ask for special consideration as at the time I didn't know one could. I did, however, warn the examiner and ask him not to embarass her.
The pupil gave up piano and went to learn clarinet with the local town band, and she also plays accordion.
I think her aural perception was quite good but she couldn't prove it by means of her voice.

Ditto for myself. This was always my nemesis when I took the AB practical exams. I learned to live with it and make up the lost marks elsewhere in the exam.

And some people never manage to accurately use their vocal chords. I simply don't believe anyone who tries to tell me that it doesn't take an equal amount of time, lessons and effort to learn to control your vocal chords, even if only for exam tests.

Strictly speaking, it could be said that most people would need singing lessons to get through the AB aural tests, which is why I keep saying the tests are not right. They do not test the candidates aural (ear) pereception, they predominantly test vocal skills. Two different things.

However, it also proves that you don't need to be able to sing in tune in order to play an instrument in tune. I have total control over pitching the notes in my head, but can't always get my vocal chords to respond in the same way and I know the same applies to many of my professional musician colleagues.

Just to remind everyone, there is also the option to hum or whistle if you can't sing. That might help make the distinction between singing per se and singing as an aural test.

I find Aquarelle's post quite an important point; some people do have physical problems with their voice and obviously can't sing the same way. I'm not sure what conditions the board would make in this case but it would be unfair if they expected the same response.

I have to disagree you need formal vocal lessons to do the aural tests. In my day at school we sang in assemblies every week without any 'tuition', we just did it, from primary school. I have never had and vocal tuition apart from the choirs I have been in and coped quite well.

Memory is quite a different issue. Again there may be genuine reasons for having poor memory but it can be improved in almost all cases. The memory requirements seem rather taken for granted but are not too extreme until the higher grades, where people are obviously committed having got that far.

I must say some posts on here and similar topics do smack of the 'anyone can memorise and sing' even when some people have ADHD, Autism, vocal problems, dyslexia (for the read/sing, not memorising) etc. This article is talking in general, but the aural tests themselves do actually take note of genuine difficulties (hum, whistle, play on instrument, special needs tests).

I expect some opposition to my beliefs on this, but there they are.

I've made a real effort to learn to sing and now have my G5 certificate to prove it - but I still can't manage those aural tests - I just can't remember all those notes by the time it comes to sing it back. I scored highly on the (G1) Jazz improvised response test though - I think that might be the answer for those of us with terrrible memories. Or maybe a simple sight-singing exercise would promote the practice of a useful skill. I'd have no problem singing back if I had the music in front of me - which just proves that it's a memory exercise.

I've long since also said that not being able to show control of voice will not necessarily prove that a candidate hasn't got a good ear - the aural tests asking us to sing do test our vocal control, whatever may be said to the contrary. As for being able to whistle instead - even fewer people can control this skill enough to demonstrate a good ear, and some can't manage to whistle at all. Playing back then remains, and for that, you need to be able to show that you have identified each interval individually being played to you - which a singer or whistler won't have to be able to do....

A pertinent point!

Yes, I used to do the above mentioned as well. We had to sing in assembly every day! But it still didn't make me a whizz at sight singing - we didn't sing from a printed score in assembly because not everyone could read music - or being a whizz at interval naming. However, I feel certain that the choirs you have sung in have given you a more formal training in singing than you possibly imagine... and you do have to sing from a printed score, which no doubt does help the sight singing issues somewhere along the line.

That's also a very pertinent point! and humming also requires control of the vocal chords, just like singing.

Except that of course the candidates with perfect pitch will know exactly what notes they need to play, which gives them a built-in advantage in so many of the ABRSM aural tests, e.g. also cadences, modulations.