Bitchin’ Pitchin’: Teaching the ‘tone-deaf’ singer
Thursday 29th August 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
This course will dig deep into why some singers struggle to match pitch and how voice teachers can help them develop this skill.
Many beginner singers identify as ‘tone-deaf’ but Amusia only affects around 3% of the population (significantly less than the percentage who struggle to sing in tune). For most poor-pitch singers there are underlying neurological reasons for their struggles. In this course, the neurological processes that must co-ordinate in order for someone to match pitch successfully will be reviewed. These include accurate pitch interpretation, pitch production, internal feedback evaluation and, crucially, pitch translation and the involvement of memory within this sensorimotor loop.
A variety of strategies that can be used to enhance a singer’s pitch accuracy will be shared and demonstrated so that course attendees will leave feeling better equipped to recognise the potential causes of a singer’s pitch inaccuracy and have a list of strategies they can draw from in order to guide singers to accuracy.
Heather Baker
Heather Baker is a Contemporary Voice Teacher based in the North of England and a Founding Director of the Institute for Vocal Advancement (IVA), delivering global training to voice teachers.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
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Some successful pop stars are celebrating career lengths of over sixty years, having been around since the 1950s when pop music emerged and diversified from jazz, so pop singing has been in existence sufficiently long now that, for teaching purposes, we can observe and analyse what type of approach serves it best.
Tuesday 21st October 2025
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
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Tuesday 21st October 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
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Dr Tish Oney
As the jazz voice major represents a relatively new program of comprehensive singing study in higher education, it most often absorbs the course requirements of other related majors with which it is grouped. Join Dr Tish Oney for a short course that will reach across a multitude of program requirements in three academic contexts: grouping jazz singers with jazz instrumental majors; grouping jazz singers with voice majors; and grouping jazz singers with commercial music majors. Tish tackles this topic with the authority of one who has pioneered the way for student jazz singers while teaching in jazz departments, classical voice departments, and commercial music departments!