Practicing Your Karaoke at Home - Part 2

Now that you are practicing and you have identified some areas to work on, how is your pitch? If you are a fan of "American Idol" as I am, then you have no doubt heard the judges proclaim that a performance was "pitchy". What do they mean by that? What they are trying to say is that the singing was off key or off "pitch". Being off pitch is sometimes very hard to perceive by yourself while you are singing. That is why I recommended earlier making a recording of you singing. Sometimes, that is the only way to hear the spots where it went off key. I know the first few times I heard myself recorded, I would cringe when I heard the clinkers in the recording that I never noticed live. But then we can also be our own worst critics. I may hear things that others don't hear. Then too, some can't tell at all if something is off pitch.

If you do have trouble hearing things that are slightly off key, you can employ the use of a friend or family member to help, if you're confident they can hear pitch problems. Or short of that, there are tools that can help. One handy little gadget is a chromatic tuner. These come in several formats and are usually used for tuning instruments. But your voice is an instrument, is it not? A company by the name of Korg has a few models that have a built in microphone, or you can plug in a separate microphone to reduce other ancillary sounds in the room. It can be a very useful tool for improving your pitch accuracy. The unit will play tones as well show the pitch on a digital readout. A needle on the meter will swing to the left or to the right to indicate if a note is sharp or flat. It can be quite enlightening (or should I say horrifying), when you first sing into the device. When the note is right on, a green light will come on.

Practicing with the tuner will help you develop the coordination and control you need to keep the green light on while sustaining a single note. You can begin to practice the scales and the tuner will follow you so you can monitor and adjust as needed. Don't be alarmed if you're all over the place. Just take it slow and try to come as close as you can. Remember, it is the practicing that will develop muscle memory to keep you in tune when it counts.

There is a caveat to being on perfect pitch. Perfectly placed pitches can often sound unemotional to the human ear. Our ears are far more forgiving than an electronic device. Sometimes a tone that is just a bit off can be a more pleasing. For example; when a singer is just a hair flat, it can be perceived as being more soulful. If the singer is just a bit sharp, it can be interpreted by our ears as intellectual, or edgy. This is not say that an entire song should be deliberately sung flat or sharp. The instances where it is most useful are usually with a word or phrase that is performed that way to evoke an emotion. It will ad a subtext your song. It is what can make performance unique. Of course, we all want to be "unique" in a good way.