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Hi all,

I am a lousy singer. I've never been in a choir, I've never in my life sang anything from any sheet music. And I have never had the desire to learn to sing, either.

I can hum or whistle the melodies of pieces I am practicing, and frequently do so. But if I see a new piece and try to picture the melody in my head or sing it, I can just about think "okay, now higher!" - regardless of whether it's going up a minor second or a perfect 5th.

Now, singing has always been mentioned as a invaluable tool for learning to play and especially musicality. My teacher recommended singing the bass voice while playing the melody voice in a Bach invention as a learning tool. That's so ridiculously over my head that I don't even bother trying... Plus there's all these posts by people saying "just listen to how singers do it, sing it yourself and imitate it on the piano!". Well I wouldn't know the first thing about that..

So, should i start looking for a singing teacher? If yes, what direction? Classical, pop, Jazz, ...?

Keep in mind:
- I have no interest in ever singing along to my piano playing
- I don't care how pretty my voice sounds, I just want to hit the right intervals for now, and use voice as a tool for piano learning only
- I'd literally start from absolutely nothing.
- Any time I spend singing will be time I won't spend practicing piano.

What do you guys think? Can someone who can't sing at all ever be a good piano player? Not world-class, but GOOD? Good enough to be worth 10-15 years of 2 hours daily practice? Can I even start learning at 29? Is it worth it? What's the weekly time investment?

Thanks!
Bunneh

Hi Bunneh,

My opinion? Singing is the best kind of aural training there is. If you can sing it, you can hear it, so singing forces you to listen. By contrast, you can play an instrument without truly listening to what you are doing. Until you try to improvise....

If you want to sing to improve musicality, then do, just do sing. Sing ditties, sing traditional songs. If you have children, sing children's songs.

If you want to improve the quality of your singing, then yes, you will need a teacher, or a good choir or something, but I would say this is a different kind of skill than just simple plain singing for the sake of musical skill.

I would just like to point out a bit of a contradiction here:



That's not nothing! You can sing, so go ahead and do it. You don't need a licence.

Sing at a range that is comfortable. When you are more confident, begin to work out intervals (scales, arpeggios, etc) with your voice. It will deepen your understanding of theory.

That's my opinion.

A couple of reactions:



Not true, it is not over your head.



You're interested in Bach, in classical music, join a choir.



In my view, no. Someone who can't sing at all can never be a good piano player. But then, no one can't sing at all.



What a strange question. If you look at music that way, better off learning to play golf and getting your stroke analysed.



If you're talking about singing, you can't start at 29 because you've already begun ... 29 years ago !



Huh ?!?!?!?!?!

My teacher makes me do the same thing (singing the bass). Except that he has me play with both hands, not RH only. But I sing from memory, not from sight! And it is immensely valuable to develop my ear and improve the phrasing / musicality of the piece.

So I think you should try to sing the bass of your inventions from memory. Singing at sight, with all those modulations going on, would be way to hard.

I don't start singing until I can play more-or-less hands together. But for the singing, I go back to playing LH only, just listening and memorizing. Then I sing along with the LH from memory. Then, while still singing along, I start adding the RH again, at which point I might have to go back to practicing in small sections. I sometimes use the split keyboard setting on my digital to make the bass section stand out (either by using a different instrument, or by adjusting the relative volume of the two sections) and then slowly wean myself of it.

If you can not sing along with the bass from memory, I don't think interval training or scale degree training or whatever your favorite method for sight singing is, is going to help much. And singing from memory is already so useful, I don't know what the additional benefits of singing from sight would be.

IMHO, you don't need formal voice training to be able to play the piano. Just sing!

Singing and being in a choir are very rewarding enterprises in and of themselves. If you have time, try to find a choir to join. There are community and church choirs all over the place that are happy to have a new voice at any skill level. Just get out there and do it.

Considering the factors you listed, lessons would be overkill.

I think the best way to find out is to try it. If you learn that you don't want to continue taking singing lessons, then you just quit. But before you have tried, you will not know if they suit you or not. I would suggest joining a good "beginners" choir that offers good training. Piano is usually quite solitary, and it is huge fun making music together with others in a group at the same time as you learn the basics of singing.

As a voice teacher as well as piano teacher, I would say do *not* take voice lessons. Voice lessons are extremely focused on the technical aspects of singing, so a lot of time is spent on building the voice as an instrument. You'd be wasting your time and money.

I sounds as though you are capable of singing right now. It doesn't matter if it sounds great, the point is that you attempt to do the singing and make it sound as musical as you can. How do you do this? You listen to great singing. Even supposed "tone-deaf" people can listen to great singing and learn something from it.

Spend some time each day listening to great singers like Mario Del Monaco, Franco Corelli, Titta Ruffo, Luisa Tettrazzini, Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Jerry Hadley, etc. Listen to what they do beyond singing the notes. It's what they do with the notes and in between the notes that matter. We cannot do these things on piano, but we can affect dynamics to change the tone of the piano and timing. The timing especially can great the same effect as a portamento (not glissando, mind you) that singers do by not playing all the notes at the same time. You'll note that these singers will linger on some notes and speed up others, and they may all be written as even 8th notes! If possible, listen to some of the arias while looking at the music. It will really help you see what they're doing.

Bunneh, it sounds to me like what you want is not voice lessons but interval training/ear training. Look around the internet for "ear training" and "sight singing" exercises. Don't be scared of the term "sight singing," it just means recognizing and reproducing intervals. Once you get the hang of what they're trying to teach you, you can sit at the piano and make up your own exercises all day (play a note, pick an interval and try to sing the next note... then play it and see if you're right).

Given your stated goals, I suspect that you don't want to spend the time and energy doing all the things "learning how to sing" entails, i.e., lots of work on breathing, voice quality, range, etc. I hear you saying you just want to learn intervals and how to sing along on pitch. That's easy to learn (relatively speaking) and can be done in fairly short order. Of course, like anything, getting really good at it is another matter...

I think the recommendation to sing doesn't mean "singing" in a formal, great-voice-or-fit-into-a-choir. If you're humming and whistling now you're doing naturally much of what singing-to-play-the-piano is for. Morodiene has good advice.

It's the phrasing, the breathing, the feel of the piece, that singing and whistling help you find in the piece. I, as Syboor does, sometimes hum one part and play the other, and find that also helps in being able to bring out each part - to make it "sing".

I have always sung in choirs, etc, but I did take a beginning sight-singing class at the community college that reinforced the interval recognition, and in a beginning music theory class we wrote down some tunes the instructor played on the piano. That was all good.

But it sounds to me more like, for you, the awareness of what your humming and whistling brings to the piano is a good step.

I'm impressed with the whistling, tho. A friend of mine whistles his tunes, and somewhere along the line I quit whistling. When I was a kid I was good at it. It's a great thing to do -

Cathy

I totally agree with this. In January this year, I thought it might be a good idea to start a voice lesson since I like to sing. Wow! Voice is hard. I lasted only one lesson. I was very naive. I was not prepared for Hanon like excercises using my own body. I quickly realized that it was not a very good idea. what was i thinking! I hate Hanon in piano too. I also don't have so much time to practice on top of my piano practice. Yes, you need to practice for Voice too. Nothing comes easy. I am totall used to it in Piano practicing routines but it takes a lot to start a new. Just enjoy singing by yourself.

I think your time would be better spent practicing piano. I disagree that everybody can sing, I know lots of people who cannot who are totally tone deaf and cannot hear anything and cannot even hear what is coming out of their own mouths. They cannot distinguish between sounds, at least when they are making them.

Voice lessons are not cheap, you don't need formal voice lessons. I never took singing lessons and don't recall any teacher telling me to sing something when taking piano lessons, but I always was in choir or chorus class in school, even though I was never any great singer.

I just think you're looking for something magical, just study the piano. If you want to learn what an interval sounds like, you can do that by studying the piano and taking various kinds of theory or music classes, you don't need voice lessons.

I don't sing either. In fact I'm really lousy when I try, mainly because I'm very out of tune.

I started using Canta last night. It detects the pitch of your voice and you can match the notes with a MIDI you're playing.
www.singintune.org

Not sure how much it'll help though, but I'd still want to learn to sing in tune, just to get better ear training.

For what it's worth, I don't think my several years of singing lessons had much impact on my piano playing. I think the time is better spent practicing!

However, LISTENING to good singers is immensely useful. You listen to them sing a phrase, and then try to recreate it at the piano. It gives you a much different perspective on how to be musical. You can start with this *amazing* video. Try playing the tune exactly how she sings it. It's hard and useful as an exercise!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbQY0FUyBO4

I took voice lessons and really enjoyed them. It really helped me develop my ear.
The interesting thing is sometimes I have a hard time locating a note from instrument to instrument but if I hum the note first then I can find it.

You could do a group lesson or see if you can do a trial lesson. You just might find that you enjoy it. And also meet people who have an interest in music.

However, if you are only doing it to become a good piano player then I don't think that's necessary at all.

Btw.... 2 hours a day would be too much practice for a beginner.

Rachel - thanks much for the introduction to Kate Royal - a superb voice and vocalist!

JF

You're welcome! I just got that video from a friend the other day, and was totally flabbergasted by it. I mean, she can do *that* with Danny Boy! Makes me not want to bother ever singing a tune again. But I really do think it's useful as an exercise to try mimicking a great singer on a simple tune now and then. While a piano can never do what the voice can, if we at least try, the results can be quite beautiful.

+1,000,000; that was astonishing! And gorgeous!

I'll never be able to touch my piano again. I just can't sully my memory of that voice!

LOL!

If singing is to be a means of improving your piano skills, maybe you can accomplish some of the same objectives with ear training. I recently added a few minutes daily with Functional Ear Trainer. Too early to tell if it's making a difference in my playing, but I'm definitely better able to hear intervals and sense where I need to move my fingers to hit the sounds in my head. It's free, so maybe worth a shot.

(I enjoyed Kate Royale as well. Incredible voice.)