How to Develop Your Ear: Part 1- Finding Your Head Voice

Music in the Home, Every Day, Every Way!

“Psychological complexes are more difficult to overcome than physiological misfits are to adjust,” G.B Lampert.

After my last post, there were requests for app suggestions to help develop your voice. I am in the process of reviewing a plethora of options but the glaring issue of not singing “monotone” should be addressed first. I wanted to give some quick helps that you can use today, in your home, and with your children to improve in-tune singing.

Locating “both” voices

I hesitate to oversimply this, but in short, you have two voices, the head voice and the chest voice. With children I refer to the head voice as your “singing voice” and the chest voice as your “speaking voice”. Inability to get in the head voice or stay in the head voice does NOT mean you are tone deaf. It just means you or your child need to practice. 😊  This can be achieved in so many simple ways. For a child it is fun and playful, for an adult you may want to do this in the shower or during your solitary commute if you feel a little silly. This is truly the first step to in-tune singing. If you hear someone singing “monotone”, this is why, and this is how to correct it!

1.       Start as high as you can and sing “whoo” down and up again. Imagine you are a ghost in a haunted house scaring some trespassing teenagers. This will help you to slide into your head voice. Try putting a bucket on your head while you do this. It not only magnifies the voice, but contains it to a safe environment if you are feeling shy.

2.       Vocal play: When you go up the stairs, show it with your voice. When you lower the blinds, sing them down with the slide of your voice. When your two-year old plays with his cars, have him brum-sing going up and down. When you zip up a jacket, sing that jacket up. When you call your children to dinner encourage them to sing responses to your “Din-ner” (G-E) with a “Com-ing” (G-E).

3.       Sing! Sing! Sing! Make singing a part of your routines. Don’t make a big deal about it. My mother would sing “Now the Day is Over” almost every night when I was a young child. I remember her changing keys three or four times over that two line song. She sang “La Cucaracha” and “Happy Birthday” and “Let us All Speak Kind Words to Each Other”, NEVER on pitch, but always musically. She sang with her heart. I still love sitting next to her at church as she boldly sings the hymns. Her joyful song has always given me confidence to sing next to her. Sometimes she would giggle when she went out of tune, but she sang on. Make singing normal in your home. Find ways to add it to your family meetings, to disciplining, everything. A favorite song from a friend is “Whiners, Pouters, Shouters Never Get,” (basically sing those words over and over to the tune, “If You’re Happy and You Know it.”)

 In the morning when I wake up my girls I sing “Good Morning to You.”

 Eventually, this simple, cheerful melody can be sung as an easy round in three parts. 

Another friend taught us the tradition of when you go through a tunnel while driving on the road you sing a note with the word “tunnel” for the duration of the tunnel. 

Eventually my girls have started to harmonize to my note.

As you use your head voice, your ear will naturally take control of the vocal cords and with time your ear and voice will find confidence in singing in a group. But you must practice. A playful vocal child does these voice sliding exercises over and over in a day. Make sure you and your children are too.

What do you do to bring music into your home? 

So your instrument is a picket fence?

So your instrument is a picket fence?

Who hasn’t sung in their bed, or in the car, or the shower where we think we are safe from judging ears? Surely anyone that has grown up with jump roping, camp songs, or simply the radio can relate private experiences where they hazard to sing.

But you sound like an old picket fence! Jagged, uneven, and never returning to the same note you started on. Or maybe you don’t have that smooth open control of Celine Dion when you are jamming out to your favorite song on the radio.

So you “don’t sing”. Not for anyone. Maybe you know you “don’t sing” or maybe someone told you that you shouldn’t. I am here to tell you. You are wrong. They are wrong. You can sing. And you should. I am going to tell you why your picket fence is perfect.

It is said,

“that which we persist in doing becomes easy to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

It is often assumed that if you can’t sing you are—tone deaf. There are two problems with this statement. First, singing is a complex physical act, but almost without exception, everyone is capable of singing. Secondly, tone deafness is an American urban term implying that you are incapable of hearing differences of musical pitch accurately.

Lets address the first problem, that you “can’t sing”. The reality is to sing is to play your own musical instrument. This instrument is special to you. No other voice on earth will sound like yours. They can try, but your tone and timbre is specific to you. You have vocal chords and a body making up your sounding box.

The second issue, according to the Liszt Academy a good musician can be summarized as

1.       A well-trained ear

2.       A well-trained intelligence

3.       A well-trained heart

4.       A well-trained hand

All four develop together in equilibrium. So many instrumentalists focus on the development of their hands. I will address that issue in a later post, but the important thing to note is that the ear is trained.

Was there always music in your house growing up? Was your father a passionate violinist organizing chamber music and your mother accompanying on the piano?

Not likely. More likely your family was like the average American home. You listened to the radio, your parents played their favorites, and may have even attempted to fit in some kind of piano lessons into your busy teen or preteen routine.

As a parent, you work very hard to shape your child’s heart. You demand they do their homework and chores before play. You teach respect and responsibility. All of these things do not come easily. They take time and training. What do you do to train your ear? How do you do it? Are you as persistent with training your ear as you are potty training?

Now I am not suggesting that ear training is paramount to the accomplishment of getting your toddler to sleep through the night without a diaper, but I am suggesting that it can take that much effort.

I was told by a professor that not only is “tone deafness” an urban legend, but that it is corrected, sometimes easily, and sometimes with a bit of training and persistence. True story. This same professor gave the example of a man that could trace his “tone deaf lineage back to the Civil War.” Within three months of ear training, this gentleman was singing on pitch.

Would you expect to play perfectly the day you picked up a flute or set of drum sticks? Ridiculous. It is equally ridiculous to think your picket fence voice can be concert hall quality after a few times sung.

So start singing.

And for those musicians out there that are super focused on “playing” and haven’t yet developed their ear, you have a deficiency. Even keyed and fretted instruments come to favor certain notes without an educated ear. Don’t believe me, how much easier is it for you to play in the key of C Major than the key of C Minor? That’s ear training. You need it. We all do.

Check back soon for a post on How to Develop Your Ear.