Can everyone learn to sing?

[tedmaul]

Around 60% of people are tone deaf and these people will never be able to sing in tune.
The first thing I did with people was to play a note on the piano and see if they could match it and if they didn't I knew I was in trouble.
If you can hit that note immediately and other notes that I play then you're in with a chance.
I have made tone deaf people sound good in a recording studio by having them sing one line at a time over and over again and adding everything together.

That's not true. It's actually only around 3 or 4% of the population who are tone deaf. Anyone else can be taught to hit pitch with the right training.

They might not have a good quality to their voice in terms of timbre, but they can be taught to hit pitch accurately.

 

[LukeTW]

I can sing when im drunk, does that count ?

 

[Munky1080]

I am one of those that are tone deaf...I can tell the difference between some tones....but not very well and I sound like a dying cat when I try to sing.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

About 3 years ago a test was conducted with around 2000 people.
A brass band played in a shopping mall and basically they played like Les Dawson all through the set (forget the fact that Les Dawson was a brilliant musician who worked out which wrong notes to play).
The result was that only 40% of the listeners could tell that wrong notes were being played and the other 60% hadn't got a clue and would never have a clue even if you pointed them out.

 

[THMRK]

About 3 years ago a test was conducted with around 2000 people.
A brass band played in a shopping mall and basically they played like Les Dawson all through the set (forget the fact that Les Dawson was a brilliant musician who worked out which wrong notes to play).
The result was that only 40% of the listeners could tell that wrong notes were being played and the other 60% hadn't got a clue and would never have a clue even if you pointed them out.

That doesn't prove a lot. When I started playing guitar, I couldn't tell if my guitar was in tune our not. I always loved music, and I always loved singing and such, but I was never truly musically inclined. As I started learning guitar and learning how to sing, slowly, over time, I've become able to differentiate between notes and tell if something is in key, or in tune, or not. I certainly don't have a natural ear for music, but you can pick it up over time. As many people do, my self included.

Most people have relative pitch, but very little people are truly tone deaf. Being unable to tell if the right notes are being played or not, isn't something that comes naturally to a lot of people, but that doesn't mean the potential isn't there to pick that kind of thing up.

 

[MidnightLamp]

actually tone death people could still develop very good musical ears with a large amount of sol-fa kodaly technique

in my opinion developing musical ear isnt so different from learning numbers and mathematical processes.

its just like people who say i cant draw,
all bullcrap
what they mean is 'they havent drawn enough to get anywhere'

im not arguing that any person could become mozart, but peoples limits are far beyond what they think

 

[BigglesPiP]

HAHAHA!

 

[Jono8]

*ignore*

 

[montymint]

If you are not tone deaf, you can learn how to sing. However the older you are the harder it is.

Remember breathing is very important to singing, if you cannot master good lung control and if you don't know how to push air correctly through your nose/mouth when singing, you'll never hit harder notes correctly and thus always singing flat/sharp and you'll think you are tone deaf.

 

[singist]

If you are not tone deaf, you can learn how to sing. However the older you are the harder it is.

Remember breathing is very important to singing, if you cannot master good lung control and if you don't know how to push air correctly through your nose/mouth when singing, you'll never hit harder notes correctly and thus always singing flat/sharp and you'll think you are tone deaf.

There's a lot of poop talked about learning how to breathe etc; we all know how to breathe, mostly, people need to just extend what they do when they speak (v simplified) to start with.

Learning to produce ones voice properly/naturally is one thing; using that voice to perform a song/**** is quite another.

I'm convinced that most people can enjoy singing, though, not everyone will be as gifted as Pavarotti was or Katherine Jenkins is.

If you look at the countries where historically, many great singers have come from, they are places like Italy, Spain and Wales; all having strong traditions of religion/hard work etc where singing was a natural thing to do in daily life (no mp3 players etc).


Musical theory is an advantage when learning new music but it is not a prerequisite to becoming a singer.