Transcript
Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to do a couple of exercises to show you how to sing in tune.
When you talk about how to sing in tune, what does that mean? It basically means making sure that you’re singing what we call ‘within the pitch’ of what you’re singing about. You want to make sure that the note that you’re singing is the correct note so that you can sing the song without sounding like you’re not singing the song correctly. Here we go. We’re going to start on a very simple, what we call ‘half-step exercise’. We’re just going to be going from the first to the second interval.
Good. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to do something a little more challenging. We’re going to break it out into the chord, and we’re going to do 1, 3, 5, and then back down to the first. That way you have to make the jump from the fifth to the first. It enables you to tune in and listen. Here we go.
That way, by making that jump, I hung on that, what we call ‘fifth’ a little bit longer. That way, I would hold the note out and be able to come right down to the first without sliding into the note. Let me show you an example of sliding into the note, so you know what I mean. That’s where we slide off the pitch into the note. If you’re talking about working and being in tune, you don’t want to do that. You want to keep the note strong and come cleanly down to the note. Let me do a correct example.
Now we’re going to apply it to an actual song. This is a really easy song that you already know, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’; everybody knows it. We’ll just do it very simply, making sure that we’re in tune. What I’m going to do is I’m going to try to take out vibrato. Vibrato is where your note quavers a little. I have a lot of it naturally, so I’m going to pull that out so you can really hear the note.
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.
That way, we’re really listening to the note without having embellishments and changing it around.
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.
I’m Anya Singleton, and this is Matt Gallagher. That’s an example of how you would work on singing in tune.
