Always hear what you sing

The title here is self explanatory, but I’ll explain exactly what I mean, how and why it’s useful, and how to practice this.

So let’s start from the top.

What do I mean?

Always hear the note that you’re about to sing right before you sing it. Hear it in your head in as much detail as possible. You can also visualize yourself singing it and imagine how that will feel, but the main thing is to hear the tone that you’re trying to sing.

Try to hear it in the correct register (head voice vs. chest voice) and in the correct dynamic. Try to hear it as clearly and as in tune as possible.

This can be difficult at first so I’ll give you some practice tips at the end of this post.

How and why is this useful?

This is useful because it prepares you to sing the note. It also makes sure that you know which note you’re about to sing before you sing it. It focuses your attention on one note. If you just try to sing a song without hearing it you might do just fine, but you’ll do much better if you can imagine each note before you hear it.

This skill is called “audiation” and it’s something that I’ve posted a lot about. For singers it’s a necessary skill to learn because it’s something that’ll help you sing more in tune and likely more relaxed. And doing all of those things will likely give you more confidence so that you’ll be a much better singer all around if you can learn how to do this.

When I teach my students how to do this they immediately sound better. It’s kind of amazing how much better this makes them sound.

That brings us to the next section.

How do we practice this?

The way I teach this to my students is by playing them something on an instrument, most often guitar, or from a recording. I play it for them at least four times. Then I have them give me a thumbs up when they can hear that piece of music in their head. I take maybe three notes. I don’t take much of the song. I give them something like three notes. Sometimes I have them find what part of the song that piece of music is from.

After having my students do this a few times I’ll have them sing it all together. They always sound a lot better.

Another way to practice this is by pitch matching. Pitch matching just means that you play yourself a note, hear it in your head, and then sing it. That can be super useful if you’re having problems with pitch at a specific part of the song. Practice pitch matching each pitch individually, then practice it in chunks of notes.

Eventually the goal is to do this with every single song that you sing. The goal is to hear each note right before you sing it without having to think about it. That’ll help you sing with much better intonation. Having music in front of you can help a lot because it can be a quick reminder of where the music goes, but hearing it in your head is the main thing that’s going to help.

ISJ