Tone deaf student

[green]

I have a student who I believe is Tone deaf. We are doing the aural training gr 4 ABRSM, he sometimes can get the right pitch in the repeat what you hear part but rarely. And sight singing also a problem. Does anyone have experience with this? It does seem to improve a very little with practice, but I'm not sure if this simply is a loosing battle or how to negotiate this if doing exams?

[keypeg]

What have you taught her prior to trying to get her to hear at this level?

[green]

I took over for him just before doing the grade 3 ABRSM, same problem for the aural, I guess I am somewhat at a loss for strategies to hear relatively when simply singing back a single tone, any tone, which is often very difficult for him to really 'hear'. Sometimes it is ok, if he can get the first starting pitch then he can usually sing back a 4-5 note ascending pattern. Now, if I ascend, and descend, he will sometimes get the ascent but mess up on the descent. Descending patterns are always harder. I have worked with him on sitting up, breathing into the diaphragm to support the sound, and projecting to a point in the room, this often helps, in fact I almost wonder if it isn't a lack of control of the vocal tension required to reproduce what he hears. He says he knows when he gets it right, and when it is not in tune, but that he doesn't know or hear 'how' to correct it. I have tried to get him to slide through pitches until he hears it come in tune, that is a bit too difficult.

[dinulip]

One of my students had no idea how to sing on pitch at all when she started taking lessons with me a few months ago.  She had studied the piano for 5 or 6 years, was not very advanced, had very little sense of rhythm, and could not reproduce any note that I would play on the piano...  Now, after practising various exercises that I created especially for her, she can sing the entire C scale (from middle C up one octave) pretty much on pitch!  I am very proud of her progress  --- so is she!

I think that, nowadays, many children and teenagers don't know how to sing because they don't learn it at an early age.  How many 'modern' parents sing traditional songs/lullabies to put their babies to sleep?  They'd much rather let a Fisher-Price music box play over and over the same 16-bar tune for them every night!

[elliepitt]

I had one such student in our class and he use to learn quite well. He did well in exams as well. But this can only be a case with some people and not all. I hope you doing well with your student.
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[timbo178]

It probably doesn't help that the aural tests in exam syllabi like ABRSM and AMEB are just tedious to practice.

I often tell my students to listen to a piece they like and try and figure it out on piano, starting with the melody. I think this is can be a fun way of improving aural skills.

Recently, I did a bit of an exercise with a couple of my younger students. We'd learnt the F major scale, so I told them to figure out the melody of happy birthday on the piano in F. They know the melody in their heads, and it didn't take them long. I then told them they could harmonise it with chords I, IV and V. They're still working on that, but I think some good aural skills are being learnt through the exercise.

But then something more interesting happened. An older student of mine who'd been waiting for his lesson, had heard the younger students trying to figure out the melody for happy birthday. So he started trying to do that same thing, and wasn't succeeding (to my surprise).

This older student likes to sing, and takes singing lessons, but struggles as he often can't tell whether he is singing the right pitch. He plays piano very well, has an excellent sense of rhythm, learns quickly. But he can't hear whether the pitch of his voice matches a pitch on the piano.

I thought about it over the week and said to him at his next lesson that figuring out melodies on the piano (not necessarily happy birthday) might just be the thing that improves his singing, as he would really be focusing on trying to get the pitches to match, listening to whether the melody is going up or down, the size of the interval etc.

Don't know if it'll work yet, but Green - perhaps you can try a similar sort of thing with your student? Find out a piece that the student LOVES, figure out what key it's in to make it easier for him, and see if he can figure out the melody on the piano. Then after the exercise, see if he's able to more accurately match his voice to a pitch you play him on the piano.

[quantum]

You may just want to work on matching pitch to the piano.  Play the pitch, have the student internalize and think of the pitch before he/she sings it.  Make sure the student is using good posture for singing.  Form the vowel and let the air fall into the lungs while maintaining the vowel shape.  This will all prepare you to sing the pitch. 

You may wish to try movable DO solfege.  Use familiar tunes singing the solfege syllables instead of the text.  Have the student notice how certain intervals and scale degrees in those familiar tunes feel, and how they relate to the solfege.

[ben_crosland]

I used to teach two brothers who were both absolutely terrible at singing - certainly bad enough for me to consider them to be "tone deaf". Once they got to a high enough grade, I suggested they choose the option of playing the melodies back. Thankfully, they were quite good at this, and interestingly as they gained confidence at this, after a couple more grades, I found they could have a fair stab at the singing tests again.

Regarding the concept of "tone deafness" - if someone can tell that the pitches are rising or falling, they are not tone deaf. There is a rare, physiological condition that prevents the subject from distinguishing pitch at all, but the student to whom the OP refers is clearly not suffering with this.

What I do often find is that students struggle to translate the sound of the piano to a vocal equivalent. So, if I play a note, they sing completely off, but if I then sing the note for them, they can find the pitch much more easily. I would suggest working like this for a while to help them gain confidence.

[keypeg]

Green, you have described things you have done in the studio.  What is it that the student is asked to do at home to practice this?  Do they have to sing for the ABRSM exam, or is there an option of playback?  Imho, singing (mandatory), for a piano student is absurd.  This involves physical control and singing technique - you're not a vocal teacher, you teach piano!

[timothy42b]

I can think of 3 or 4 different reasons for this problem, and the strategies for coping might be different.

To me one of the most likely causes might be a timbre problem.

Let me tell a story, longwinded and peripheral as most of mine are.

We were in a small Lutheran church with no organist that Sunday, and the pastor wanted us to sing an unfamiliar hymn.  He turned on the organ to plunk out the melody and hit the keys.  Of course nothing happened; I sighed, jumped up, and pulled enough stops to make some noise.

He played the melody in the correct key and turned the organ off.

Then he started singing it IN A DIFFERENT and unsingable key, way too high for the congregation.

I remarked to my middle school age daughter, an excellent singer, that I didn't understand how it was even possible to make a mistake like that, and she said, "Daddy, I couldn't do it either.  I can't match pitch to the organ, it sounds too different." 

She would never make a mistake matching pitch to another voice.  But the further you got from voice timbre, say an oboe, temple block, violin maybe, the more trouble she had.

The reason was simply lack of experience, and as she's grown up she's been able to add more timbres that make sense.  It hadn't occurred to me then that this would be a problem, but I've played in ensembles all my life hearing pitches from different instruments. 

The brass teacher Reinhardt advised learning to recognize pitches first from your own instrument, then from similar ones, then from different ones.  A trumpet player would add trombone, then maybe clarinet, cello, etc.

Middle C on the piano has a distinctly different timbre than C a couple octaves up.  It also has a distinctly different timbre than middle C on saxophone or tuba.  Recognizing these middle Cs as the same note is a learned skill.   

If this is part of the problem, then it seems to be trainable.  Get a keyboard with multiple voices, or download some midi files, and practice singing back short (2 - 4 bars maximum) phrases.         

[keypeg]

But why stress singing for a piano student, and expect a teacher whose expertise is piano to teach it?  If it's ear training, then surely playback on the piano would be the way to go.  There's the option with RCM?   Does that not exist for your system?

[timothy42b]

But why stress singing for a piano student,

I don't understand that part either, or why solfege would help. 

[quantum]

IMO knowledge of the voice will help a pianist become a better pianist.  Piano study tends to focus a lot on the extremities and how they interact with the keyboard.  Especially in advanced studies, and students preparing for university there is an ever increasing emphasis on technical proficiency and virtuosity.  However, the piano's ready made tone can also be a double edged sword.  Many piano students would do well to work on tone production, especially listening and recognizing the subtleties of sound.  It is all too easy to pound on the piano and rely on serendipity that maybe, just maybe the tone will sound pretty. On the contrary one must learn how to craft tone, and studying the voice will shed light in that regard.  Awareness of breath is also another area where pianists, especially musicians who are exclusively pianists, need work. 


If one wishes to pursue university studies in music, singing is mandatory regardless of one's primary instrument. 

One is not required to become a virtuoso in voice, but one should be proficient in its use.

[keypeg]

I am a decent, natural singer.  Tone production is not the same in voice as it is on the piano.  And surely the process of listening to what you are producing, having a preconceived idea of what you are trying to produce and then checking how close you come, is something belong to any instrument.  Surely that is taught along with playing the piano.  If a student is "banging away at the notes", has he been taught about effects?  You could also tell a singer who bellows out notes to learn to play the piano with subtlety, so that he can stop bellowing the notes.

If singing IS mandatory for later studies, surely that should be taught by someone trained in teaching singing.  When people playing other instruments go to college, piano is mandatory, but they usually take piano lessons with a piano teacher.  The tuba teacher does not teach piano.

[keyofc]

Hey Green,

You sure have some interesting students!

I once played a piece for someone on purpose with wrong notes - but used the melody
and rhythm correctly and asked them what they thought of it.  They told me it was wonderful.

It was pretty disheartening - because I played all the chords wrong to see if they noticed.

Good luck!  You have been given a lot of good suggestions - please keep us posted on the progress.

[quantum]

Tone production is not the same in voice as it is on the piano. 

This is exactly the point.  It is the knowledge one gains from an instrument so different from the piano, that can make one a better pianist.  When one begins to understand differences in perspective - of how a pianist, singer, clarinettist, violinist, percussionist, or what have you may approach a given problem - one can better understand one's own approach to that same problem.  

To think that one can only seriously learn about an instrument exclusively from a teacher that specializes in that very same instrument is utterly ridiculous.  I have learned much about the human voice from concert pianists, I have gained much insight into being a pianist from singers and teachers of voice, I learned to appreciate the nuances of tone from playing traditional instruments in a Chinese music orchestra.  One of my former teachers (RIP) once told me in a lesson: if you want to be able to understand this piano piece, you need to sing and experience first hand what it is like to use one's own voice.  


The lack of basic musicianship skills in keyboard and voice from first year college students may shock many.  Many of these music students are virtuosos on their primary instruments, yet struggle with keyboard, voice or both.  Some are not even able to sing a simple tune.  

[keypeg]

To think that one can only seriously learn about an instrument exclusively from a teacher that specializes in that very same instrument is utterly ridiculous.  I have learned much about the human voice from concert pianists, I have gained much insight into being a pianist from singers and teachers of voice, I learned to appreciate the nuances of tone from playing traditional instruments in a Chinese music orchestra.

Learning about another instrument, and learning to play that instrument are two different things.  I was talking about a piano teacher teaching a student how to sing.  Or it could be a guitarist teaching how to play a piano.  Or a vocalist teaching guitar or piano - unless they were specialized in teaching those instruments.  I have also gotten insight across instruments by instrumentalists of different instruments, but they didn't try to teach me to play them.

[keyofc]

Keypeg,

I think teaching singing -or just encouraging it - is so helpful at the piano.
I can't remember anyone ever telling me that.
But I finally learned years later after playing piano for many years
that the reason I could play by ear hundreds of songs was because I sang them
all the time at church.

And you do hear it differently - I think it really helped me with the dynamics a lot.