Should you learn to sing on pitch, or learn how to sing on key, before you learn other singing techniques?
Giving my personal opinion on this subject, I suggest not to.
I suggest not learning how to sing on pitch, learning how to sing on key, or pitch matching (which is being able to play a note on a piano or other instrument, and replicate that note with your voice) until after you have learned all the other singing techniques.
Instead, I suggest learning how to breathe from your diaphragm, how to form singing vowel mouth shapes, and how to sing in all 3 of your vocal registers (Head Voice, Mixed Voice, Chest Voice) all before you even look at your ability to sing on pitch or in tune with a song.
Allow me to now explain why I suggest this.
Why I Think Singers Should Leave Pitch Matching and Fixing Pitch Issues or “Tone Deaf” Problems Until Last
Firstly, I’d like to just put a disclaimer out there that I did not struggle with pitch. I am not Charlie Puth, I do not have perfect pitch (will explain this below if you don’t know what this is), but I have had relative pitch my whole life, even when my voice sounded at its worst. I was able to sing in tune, but my singing voice just never sounded good, even when I was hitting the right notes.
So all of my advice about learning to sing on pitch comes from what I’ve learned working with singers who did struggle with pitch and keeping in tune, and what worked for them.
To this day, I’ve worked with many singers who had claimed they had pitch problems and some whom even wondered if they were tone deaf, and that did not prove to be true for ANY of them.
To first explain what singing on pitch is, let’s just go over some of the language I’ll use in this post:
Singing on Pitch/Singing in Tune/Singing on Key: these are all alternative ways of saying that you can sing along with a singer, and your voice is doing the same thing the singer’s voice is doing. Pretty much, you’re able to hear a melody of a song, and repeat it back and it sounds the same note-wise. Even if it doesn’t sound great (such as you’re straining), this is just referring to your ability to hit the notes you want to hit.
Something to remember with this is that even the best singers in the world hit wrong notes sometimes. I like to say that an expert in singing on key is someone who doesn’t hit many wrong notes, and when they do hit wrong notes, they can either recognize it in the moment, or on a recording. If this is you, you are absolutely not tone deaf, and I’ll get into this later, but you also don’t have a problem with pitch. This will be solved by something else (we’ll talk about this later in the post).
Perfect Pitch: Perfect Pitch means that a singer can replicate any note from memory. This is a very rare and impressive talent. One of the most famous examples of this talent is Charlie Puth.
Most people will learn to sing with relative pitch, which means they’ll be at least somewhere close to the note they want to sing from memory. Truthfully, this is all you need.
Pitch Matching: Pitch matching is usually a term referred to in a vocal warm up. Usually, a voice coach will play a note on a piano, and then ask their student to sing the same note they hear on the piano. If you are able to hit the note you hear, then you’re an expert on pitch matching.
I want to add here that with this too, even the best singers in the world sometimes hit wrong notes, even in this. All you want is to be able to know if you are on pitch or not. That’s step 1: if you can hear yourself hit a wrong note, then you’re good in my book. Lots of voice coaches will spend weeks and months teaching people to “sing on key” this way, and ask a student if a note is higher or lower than another note.
My unpopular opinion: this is soo unnecessary for learning to sing.
I’d say it’s only important if you are:
Trying to be the next Charlie Puth and get perfect pitch
A singer who relies on sight-reading. (Sight-reading is when a singer can be handed a sheet of music filled with notes on a music staff, and just by seeing which notes are written, they can sing them from remembering what those notes sound like. This is usually found in choral singing, and it’s very impressive, but also very not necessary for the average hobbyist, or even professional singer such as Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo, or even musical theatre singers. They have plenty of time to listen to the melodies of songs to learn them. Sight-reading is usually something you’re singing that you’ve never seen before, or seen few times.)
If neither of those are you, then feel free to do away with pitch matching. If you can hear your favorite song and sing relatively the same melody with your voice, that’s all you need. Your pitch problems will be solved with other things we’ll talk about later.
Now that we’ve gotten those terms defined, let’s get into how to fix pitch problems without pitch matching, or focusing on pitch at all!
How to Learn to Sing on Pitch (without working on pitch)
If you’re familiar with other blogs of mine or my YouTube Channel where I share vocal techniques and exercises, you might have heard me talk about how there are 3 parts to singing:
These are the ONLY things you need to learn when learning to sing. They are also all of the physical parts of singing.
Matching pitch is more of a mental technique, connecting what you hear to what you then sing.
However, the thing is… if you don’t learn breathing, vowels and placement to the best of your ability, doing any of those three things incorrectly can cause pitch issues.
If you are breathing incorrectly, your breath support can suffer, which can mess with how your air flows and thus cause pitch inaccuracy.
If your singing vowels are not shaped quite right (singing vowels are mouth shapes we hold while singing to give you great vocal tone and flexibility), then you can find yourself with pitch issues.
Lastly, if you don’t learn how to sing properly in your 3 vocal registers, you can end up trying to sing notes in a register that they can’t go, which will cause people to often fall flat. This isn’t because they can’t sing in tune; it’s because they’re trying to sing higher notes in chest voice, that need to instead be sung in mixed voice or head voice. The fact that you are trying to sing a note somewhere it’s impossible to be sung will then cause your voice to fail trying to hit that higher note, and stay at a note that’s too low, which sounds flat.
So many people blame their ability to sing on key, when it’s actually one of these three things. I’ve had singers who believed they were tone deaf, learn singing vowels or learn placement, and all of a sudden, their pitch issues were solved!
This is why I suggest not working on pitch specifically.
Learn breathing, singing vowels and vocal placement first. Because chances are, you’ll solve your pitch problems with those techniques! And even if in the rare occasion learning those techniques doesn’t solve your pitch issues, at least you’ve already learned how to breathe correctly, learned singing vowels, and learned vocal placement. You’re already so close to the best voice you’re capable of.
My motto for pitch issues will always be:
Even if you’re hitting all the notes incorrectly, learn how to make them sound pretty! Learn how to sing with good tone, learn how to hit all the notes in your range with ease and fluidity and freedom.
Learn how to sing the wrong notes well, first.
To make it even easier, stop trying to do vocal warmups along to a piano or to a song you want to sing. If you keep getting frustrated with pitch issues, stop trying to be on pitch. Make up little random melodies and songs to practice with. If you’re learning to breathe, then learn to breathe, take that diaphragmatic breath, and sing a random melody on “la la la la”. Who cares if the notes are in a specific key? Just learn to breathe.
Then practice singing vowel mouth shapes on made up melodies - it doesn’t matter what pitches you practice on with vowels. Just sing whatever comes to mind, and focus on singing vowels.
Then learn vocal placement - practice the chest voice exercise (Nyah) on your made-up melody that you make up in that very moment you start practicing. Practice the mixed voice exercise (Nay) on another made-up melody.
Just learn how to use your voice, and learn how to sing.
After that, if you need to look at pitch, go ahead!
But I will bet that you will find that by the time you learn all three of those things, you won’t have any pitch issues to worry about anymore.
Leave any questions or comments below, and if you need any more help, I offer online voice lessons over here!
Happy Singing!