Recorded Practice Sessions

1 Minute Videos Addressing Common Singing Questions

Easy Guitar Lessons

How To Sing Runs Practical Sing-A-Long Series (Free Course)

Learn Vibrato By Singing Along With These Videos

Live Q & A Talks

Motivation Talks & Frequently Ask Questions

Are you sick of not being able to sing runs?

I know how you feel.

I spent years trying to learn them on my own, but got super frustrated and ‘quit’ many times.

After years of trial and error I finally figured out several strategies which got me gradually getting better.

I have now reached a point where I can copy the fastest runs on my favourite songs.

I can also copy long runs, that are approximately 25 notes, such as those done by Brian McKnight, Tank, Boyz II Me, Chris Brown and others.

This was a super long journey, but through my experience teaching myself, and then teaching others in over 1000 one to one private singing lessons, I have created a way for you to learn runs, as much as possible on your own.

I have compiled a list of runs, from short to long for you to gradually increase your memory capacity for memorizing runs. Click on them to hear them, and click the download button at the bottom to learn them in Singing Pitch Trainer. There is a second page which also has female runs.

These runs have many different patterns, such as ascending, descending, and a combination of ascending and descending, and other variations such as intervals and range differences.

Learning these runs will give you the capability to copy other runs you hear, as well as make up your own that are similar.

When it come to runs, there are two stages – pitch and rhythm.

With pitch, you have to 1)learn each note and sing it perfectly, 2) be able to delineate very clearly from one note to the next, 3) memorize several notes.

With rhythm, you have to 1) sing the notes at an even rhythm, proving that you know every note 2) sing the notes in the rhythm the singer is doing at a slow speed 3) sing the run at a variety of speeds, both with and without the singer, eventually reaching the speed the singer is doing.

You can download all the runs I have on the singingpitchtrainer.com page, under the Learn To Sing Runs slide. There are 3 columns. The first is the shortest runs, the second are medium length runs, and the last is super advanced long runs.

Download these runs and import them into Singing Pitch Trainer (my webApp which you can buy), and you will see every note. Work on every note at a comfortable speed.

You can watch the tutorial videos on the first slide on the SingingPitchTrainer.com page, about runs and import/export to learn how to use it.

Good luck with your runs!

I guarantee you will be killing it within a year of dedicated 30 minutes of training a day.

The more runs you learn, the easier it will get, and the faster you will get and the more you can start creating your own as well.

Welcome to the exciting world of improving your runs and becoming an advanced singer that wows the crowd every time with your impressive vocals.

With these methods, runs are no longer only for the natural singers with raw talent. We can all learn them! I did, my students are, and so can you.

If you have any questions, please email me at rachedh@hotmail.com.

Thanks

Rached Hayek | RnBSingingLessons.com | SingingPitchTrainer.com

Breath – Long Note Holds

Learning to sing a stable long note (3 to 20 seconds) is a very fun skill to have. This will ensure that whenever you have to hold a note for more a than a quick second, it sounds rich due to the perfect pitch on the note, and the strength it takes to keep that steady for a few seconds all the way up to about 20 seconds – which is about the longest you will ever hear a note or phrase sung for on one breath. People can sing phrases longer than this, but they are usually on easier to hit notes and phrases, meaning they aren’t as exciting.

To sing long notes, take a deep breath before you start, filling your lungs (your stomach should pop out like a balloon, then your chest fills up) and then attempt to hold a single note. Using Singing Pitch Trainer, there is a function that allows you to play the piano note on repeat, and see your voice, to make sure it is steady, and also measures how long you hold a steady note for. It can take thousands of reps to learn to hold long notes across your entire range, but it is worth it. The next step is to add vibrato, and also to find phrases where there is more than one note sung.

Vibrato

Vibrato is taking a single note, and then adding a bouncy or wobbly sound to it. The pitch will shift slightly up, approximately between a quarter tone and a semi tone. Singers can do vibrato on either of these two, or somewhere in between. The pitch shifts up and quickly back down to the main note, repeatedly, at an even speed that fits with the songs tempo and the rest of the phrase you are singing (if it’s in the middle of a phrase).

You only spend a tiny amount of time on the top pitch shift. The majority of the time is spent on the main note. If not, it would sound more like a run or melody going between two clear notes. Using Singing Pitch Trainer, you can practice shifting your pitch up to a quarter tone and up to a semi tone, with the aid of the visual chart which shows you where your voice is. A vibrato will look like a triangular bounce, and you can practice creating this. Sometimes you can bounce your head to help you create it, as an early crutch, and once you can get the right sound, you gradually stop moving your head, and just use your voice and breathing muscles to produce the vibrato.

Vibrato can be after a straight note is held for a few seconds, or it can be on the immediate onset of a note. They are both hard to learn, but after thousands of reps, you will be pro. You have to learn to produce vibrato at a wide variety of speeds, so you can use it appropriately in any song at any time.

Pitch (Of Lyrics)

The biggest issue beginners have is not realizing that every lyric that is sung has a note that is attached to each syllable. If the note is only slightly wrong, the lyric will sound off. We are all great at learning lyrics naturally, because we spend most of our youth learning to read and write and speak a language. But when it comes to singing lyrics on pitch, we have to explicitly learn to do it in order to sound professional.

Sheet music is a great way to make sure you are singing the right note for each lyric. Sheet music contains every note that is sung, with the lyric for that note. Using Singing Pitch Trainer, you can enter the sheet music notes and lyrics into the Sequence page, and check that you are singing the note on the lyric correctly via the chart which shows you where your voice is in comparison to the note. This is one of the most important and basic skills – as if your lyrics aren’t spot on pitch, you will never sound professional, no matter how many exercises you learn.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the length of each note and when a note starts and ends. It’s also referred to as timing. As a singer you need both to sing lyrics on pitch, and in rhythm. Most people can already follow rhythm at a decent level; i.e if they sing along to a song, their timing is good – it is usually the pitch that is wrong, and possibly the harder rhythms that are wrong.

Basically if you are off pitch, your correct rhythm won’t help you. This is why pitch is what must be trained first, then rhythm is added. A good rhythm can’t fix a bad pitch. But a good pitch still sounds nice, even with a bad rhythm. Of course you must learn both to be a professional. Once you learn pitch, independent of rhythm (which you can do using Singing Ptich Trainer, as it forces you to sing pitch independent of rhythm to ensure you are correct) then you can start trying to sing those accurate pitches along with the rhythm that you hear on the actual song.

The next step up is to use a metronome to force you to sing without the assistance of the track, but still in time. This is the hardest step, and is the final step to eventually singing on your own, in perfect rhythm, without needing any assistance. The most common mistake with rhythm, is rushing. This does take a long time to fix, but can be done.

Runs

Runs are when you have to sing a very fast sequence of notes, usually on one vowel, and sometimes on more, for the harder ones. The longer the run, the harder it is to learn. The more vowel changes or consonants, the harder it is to learn. Runs are kind of like guitar or piano licks/riffs, and can go by the names runs, riff, licks, trills, melisma.

Learning runs is extremely difficult, because of how fast they go by. An excellent strategy is to slow down the runs using software such as Amazing Slow Downer or Transpose Extension Pro. You can also input runs from sheet music into Singing Pitch Trainer, and gradually learn the run note by note.

There are three stages to learning runs. Note memorization, speeding up, rhythm. Once you learn the notes, you can begin to go faster, then lastly you perfect the length of each note.

Blend

Blend describes changing from your chest voice to your falsetto voice across two notes. There is a clear switch that happens, which usually sounds vulnerable, compared to if you just did both notes in your chest, which usually sounds more powerful or belty.

Learning to blend opens up much more emotional moods to your singing, and always gives you the choice to not have to belt notes, as well as the variety of being able to do it in falsetto.

You will have to learn to blend across a variety of intervals, with the octave being the easiest to start with, and working your way down to blending across a tone or semitone, which are the hardest. You simply go back and forth across two notes and the blend will sound like a yodel. Use Singing Pitch Trainer to make sure you are perfectly on pitch during both the chest note and the blend. This is also referred to as changing registers (what I have called ‘voices’). For example, changing from chest register to falsetto/head register.

Falsetto

Learning to sing your mid and high range chest notes in falsetto adds variety to your singing. Falsetto is usually airy in the lower zones, and gets thicker sounding when it starts to get above your high chest range, and sounds more screamy than breathy/vulnerable.

Learn to sing all your mid and high notes in falsetto, and go higher. You can develop 1.5 or more octaves in your falsetto. Practice holding straight notes, using vibrato, singing wordy phrases, and doing runs in your falsetto. Use Singing Pitch Trainer to make sure you are staying on pitch – particularly on the breathier falsetto which is hard to control.

Range

Your range includes your entire range, low, mid and high. Training low notes is integral to training your high range, as it helps you to warm up, as well as give a sense of stretching and resting if done in between high reps. This strategy helps you build stamina in your high range, while simultaneously developing your low range – instead of you getting exhausted singing high notes over and over.

There are many ways to train your range. I recommend starting with your favourite songs – just a section, such as a verse/chorus/bridge, and sing it 12 keys down, and gradually work up to the originally key. It serves at a great warmup and workout at the same time. When it gets to your limits, check the highest notes, so that you can keep track of your progress.

You can also train your range by practicing holding notes for a longer time than normal. 3 seconds or more is enough. When you start to not be able to hold a note for this long, you should train around this area and slightly lower, to build the foundation for the new high notes you want to create.

Volume

Learn to sing in a low, medium and high volume, on a single note, without stopping your sound. This is a difficult exercise, and usually you will go up or down in pitch instead of modifying only your volume. Focus on keeping the pitch the same and only making your volume change.

You can sing the same note three times, low – mid – high volume – but this time with stopping your sound, instead of one long held note as in the previous exercise.

Volume control adds a lot of variety, impact and emotion to your singing. Using Singing Pitch Trainer, you can attempt to sing at different volumes, while it gives you feedback on whether you are still on perfect pitch.

Tone

Tone is also referred to as placement. Where you place or feel your sound in your mouth and face makes a difference. Practicing a single note on the three common placements helps you control this. They are nasal, open/neutral, operatic/dark/low. RnB/Pop uses open/neutral, beginners who can’t control their sound mix between open and nasal, and opera singers intentionally use operatic/dark/low placement.

Using Singing Pitch Trainer, sing a single note on pitch, and try all three placements, while continuously holding the note. Then try again, but stopping your sound before sounding each new note.

Your overall tone is a combination of your pitch accuracy, volume, diction and the placement you choose. Your placement should ideally be similar to your speaking placement, if you are singing rnb/pop. Sometimes speaking a lyric can help you find a reference for your placement, particularly if you are a nasal singer.

Diction

How you say words can automatically change your placement. Diction has more to do with language and the standards of singing that each genre has created for how we apply language rules to when singing lyrics. You have to know your vowels, diphthongs (two vowels combined) and consonants. You need to know what vowel you need to sing if a lyric note is held for longer than a quick second.

The best strategy is simply to listen closely to what the singer you like is doing, and emulate it. A good exercise is writing down the way each lyric is sung, to help you notice it more when you hear it. I still write down the vowels for each note, as it helps with grasping difficult lyric combinations or long runs.

Diction is important if you are not an english speaker. You will need to learn to not show your accent. I am of Arabic background, but raised in Australia (I speak both languages), but if I sing English, you can’t tell which part of Australia I am from (there are many accents in Australia). So you should aim to sound the way your favourite singers do – non accent specific.

There are a few artists which break the standard diction rules and add in their own accents – if that’s what you like, go for it. But generally in rnb genre, I have not heard this done. This is mainly done in indie or the occasional pop artist. At the end of the day, as long as you are clearly understood and still on perfect pitch, that’s what matters.

Instrument (Guitar/Piano Accompaniment)

Many singers do not play instruments. Personally I think these singers are missing out on a whole world of fun and control over their music. Playing a guitar or piano as an accompaniment to your voice means you get to learn and experience all the chords in your favourite songs, and be able to play them with any rhythm you desire, and chop up or remix a song however you like.

Added to that is you remove the limitations of only singing acapella or having to sing with a backing track. Playing an instrument means you can play in any key. The final sound of an acoustic cover is also a very raw feel, and can only be obtained by playing an instrument. Acoustic covers are very popular on their own and create a new emotion to a song.

Learning an instrument is absolutely not necessary to learn to sing – it is a different skill entirely – but being able to play is very fun, and the fact that you can be your own backup, just by sitting it at a piano, or picking up a guitar on the lounge, is very empowering. Personally the sound of the guitar hit me hard, when I first played, and I haven’t dropped it since.

Balancing Act

Singing a straight or still note (two different ways to describe the same thing) is literally a balancing act. Maybe you learnt to ride a bike – same thing – you had to practice over and over and over to learn to ride in a straight line, without falling off to the left or right or veering to the left or right.

Singing a steady, non-shaky note is the same concept. There is a strength that you have to develop when you are on that bike. There are muscles which are learning to work together at the same time, and gradually get stronger at holding the upright, straight position. Your singing voice will need the same development. You don’t need to consciously think of the muscles – the same way you don’t think about it much when learning to ride a bike. The feelings inside your throat and lungs is very subtle – the same way the balance feelings of a riding a bike are very subtle.

Same for driving, handstand, floating in water, walking on a balance beam and any other skill where you need to balance.

Beginners and even some intermediates really struggle to sing even a single note steadily, for more than even a half second. So when a beginner tries to put a sequence of multiple notes together to sing a line of a song, the likelihood of it sounding shaky or unsteady is very high. This shakiness is perceived as being off pitch or off key. Off pitch is the better term, as the singer may be aware which note they are singing, but they just don’t have the strength to ‘balance’ the note and keep it steady/still/straight.

Learning to steady every note

First, you must start with one note, and be able to comfortably keep it steady for at least 3 seconds, then you work up to longer holds, up to 20 seconds (the most anyone usually holds a note in a song).

You learn to do this across your entire range, from low to mid to high, as well as in your falsetto. You will notice your voice sounds more beautiful as the notes get steadier.

How can you tell if you are steady? I have developed Singing Pitch Trainer, to allow you to see exactly where your voice is in relation to a target note. The straighter the line that represents your voice is, the steadier you are. This takes dozens to hundreds to thousands of repetitions to build into your ability. You didn’t learn to ride a bike or hold a handstand in a day – a baby doesn’t learn to walk straight in a day – and neither will you learn to sing steadily in a day. It will take persistence and patience for several months to years.

Singing songs requires you to sing steadily across a wide variety of note sequences. every line of a song has a unique sequence of notes (made of a variety of intervals) and a unique set of lyrics to sing those notes on. This is why your training will take time, and will need to be specific to the songs you are training. It’s not enough just to train your note accuracy on scales and non-song exercises. You must train on the exact lyrics and melody you are actually attempting to sing.

This is a complicated process, but I have removed the difficulty out of it as much as possible with the creation of Singing Pitch Trainer. You program in the notes of a line or verse or more of a song, using the sheet music (which is always correct, and the same way people learn instruments), and then you proceed to sing each note of the phrase at a slow speed, gradually improving your stability of every note, learning to ‘balance’. Once you are able to do it slow, then you gradually make it faster, while still checking you are steady across the note changes.

The more you do this, the more confidence you will have in your ability to sing notes accurately and steadily, and be more aware of the changes your voice has to make for every upcoming note.

Another similar analogy is learning to read a map, and gradually not needing the map anymore. If you are going somewhere that requires lots of changes in directions (like a song does), you will require a high number of repetitions to get to the point where you don’t need a map to assist you anymore.

Other reasons for shakiness

Sometimes sing shakily because they are attempting to recreate a vibrato that is happening in a phrase. If the singer is not capable of a vibrato that is at the same speed and width that the song is doing, they will sound off. This can be perceived as out of control, shaky, wobbly, uneven, off-pitch or off-key. Vibrato is a skill that must be developed on it’s own, after a singer can comfortably hold a note for a few seconds at least.

Sometimes a singer is trying to hold a note that holds a bit longer than the notes around it. Because a singer hasn’t developed their steadiness, they start to shake.

Sometimes a singer hasn’t taken in enough air at the beginning of the phrase, so they start to shake at some point in the phrase, as their air is running out.

Sometimes a note or phrase has or high notes that the singer is not as comfortable with as the other notes in the phrase – these higher notes are harder to stabilize and also require more air – another major reason why so many people struggle to increase their range – they can’t isolate their weaknesses correctly in order to work on them in isolation.

You can straighten out your notes and sound more beautiful, no matter your starting point. Good luck in your singing journey.

Thanks

Rached

Using The Success Of Instrument Methods

People are very successful at learning to play guitar, piano and other instruments – even without the help of an in-person teacher. Students can usually get to a decent level on an instrument, using website articles, YouTube videos, books, video courses or software. An in-person teacher ofcourse will be much faster, and guarantee that you have no plateaus – but you will still learn songs if you are dedicated enough, without in-person.

This is not true to the same extent with singing. Even with an in-person teacher, you still might not achieve success with your singing. Personally, I have taught many students that have come from a background of lessons, and have gaps in their singing which their prior teachers were unable to address. These students were dedicated, paying time, putting in the practice, but not seeing as much results as they could have seen.

The reason why success in singing is much more difficult to attain, than success with an instrument, is because measuring how good you are at an instrument is easy to do, whereas, measuring how good a voice is, is way harder.

Measuring an instrument versus measuring a singer

It is easy to tell if you are playing an instrument properly. You simply have to press a note done on a piano, or press a fret down on a guitar. If you don’t, the note won’t play. If you do, the note will play. If you play the wrong note, it is clearly visible. You don’t even need a teacher to tell you – you can easily look at a guitar tab, or at sheet music and see what note you are meant to play. There is no guessing.

So playing a phrase or section of a song is simply a matter of learning where every note is, and then pressing all those notes down hard enough, and then memorizing where the notes are. Anyone can do this without a teacher. They just have to repeat it hundreds of times, and gradually can learn a full song.

The harder part that a student may not be able to learn on their own, is rhythm. Rhythm is the time a note starts and ends, which also means how long a note goes for. All notes have a precise time they must be played, and must be ended. This is very hard for a student to learn on their own. It is possible – there are many books on rhythm and tools such as metronomes. But when it comes to trying to learn any song you want on your own, this can be a very difficult task.

Rhythm is the point where many self-learning students give up, or stick to easier songs and never advance. For example, a guitarist can play the chords and strumming or fingerpicking pattern at the same time. So they quit, and stick do basic sounding down strums or finger plucks. A pianist has to play arpeggios or chords rhythm with the left while playing a melody rhythm with the right hand – so they quit, because this is super hard to do without any guidance.

But with guidance, it is fairly guaranteed that no matter how bad you might be at rhythm, a teacher will be able to break it into small enough chunks that you learn it. After all, you can watch your hands play, and the teacher can easily see where you are playing to fast or slow, or the wrong note.

Back to singing – singing the right note is the part that is hard to measure – because the learner can’t see their note – and neither can the teacher. The teacher can see the note in their mind, and have a close idea of whether a singer is too high (sharp) or too low (flat), or on the wrong note entirely (off key). But this is hard for a teacher to communicate clearly to the student, because the degree to which the student is sharp, flat or off key can vary greatly. They could be a tiny bit sharp, or very sharp.

This literally is never a problem with a guitar or piano. You are either playing the right note or you aren’t. Simple. Nothing in between.

This fundamental stage – singing the right note – is why people struggle to learn to sing to an advanced level in all aspects of singing, on their own, and even with a teacher.

A solution for singers to learn more effectively

The strategy for learning instruments is already proven successful – so let’s keep using it. Using sheet music or tabs to learn one note at a time, and gradually adding more notes, using metronomes and music player to play at different tempos to bring up your speed on those notes that you are learning – until you can combine all chunks of a song into one final professional sounding piece.

Let’s keep all that, because it’s a measurable strategy that works gradually, and is fun.

But it’s not measurable or fun when it comes to singing. The solution I have created is to see the notes of the voice, the same way you see the notes of a piano or a guitar. If you can simply use the same notes from the sheet music, put them into Singing Pitch Trainer, and then learn to sing them accurately with the feedback that Singing Pitch Trainer gives you in a real-time, you know have a way to measure yourself, as opposed to guessing what you sound like, or relying on a teacher to try to communicate with you how sharp, flat or off key you are, and then them having to demonstrate to you the correct note with their voice or on a piano over and over.

Now you can know how you are going, every single time you sing a note – the same level of certainty that you have when you are learning an instrument – meaning you will get the same level of success.

To learn more about Singing Pitch Trainer, please see the menu on this website. Good luck with your singing journey.

Thanks

Rached

When we try to hit a pitch, we are trying to hit an exact sound, that falls on a particular note, which can be found on an instrument, such as a piano.

Notice that instruments need to be regularly tuned – except for electronic instruments – as they are tuned at the time of creation only.

If you don’t tune a piano or a guitar to the exact note, what happens? You get an OFF pitch sound. This means the instrument has been tuned to a pitch that is not accurate (or it has fallen out of tune over time by itself).

People use tuning tools to aid in getting the right pitch – for example an electronic guitar tuner to tune guitars, or a pitch pipe to help choral singers get their right starting note.

So if a note is not in tune when you start to play an instrument, every time you play the off pitch note, it will sound wrong, by the degree that it is off pitch. The degree that it is off or on pitch is what I call pitch accuracy.

It could be tuned to a completely different note, making it off key, or it could be tuned to the right note, but a little too high (sharp) or a little too low (flat) and variations of ‘a little’ to ‘a lot’.

This is exactly what happens when you attempt to sing a pitch in a song. If you don’t hit that note in exactly the right spot (hertz measurement – which is what the guitar tuner or pitch pipe does for us), you will sound unpleasant as you sing a melody.

Now picture this – a song has approx 300 notes – that means you have 300 times when you might sing a note with less than perfect accuracy (flat, sharp, or wrong note entirely).

Because a song moves so fast generally, the lyrics are changing at a quick pace for a beginner or intermediate who is unaware of how to hit a note accurately – the likelihood of sound unpleasant or average is high.

Usually to counter this, and learn to sing with a high level of pitch accuracy of every one of those approx 300 notes per song, you need to spend a lot of time with an instrument – listening to the notes of a song, and then ‘tuning’ your voice against those notes, the exact way you would when tuning a guitar with a guitar tuner.

This process is difficult for a voice, as a guitar tuner tells you where the note is that you are playing on guitar – so you have a guide as to whether you are flat, sharp or on the wrong note entirely.

With voice, it is not the common teaching method to for a student to see what their voice is doing. This is because we didn’t have this technology available in the past, so singing well and getting lessons was reserved for those that already had a certain amount of pitch making ability, as a gift from birth most likely – part of their genetics.

Now that we have this technology, anyone can see the note they are singing.

I have create software which allows you to input entire melodies, from one note to many notes at a time – and sing along with each note, while a graph accurately depicts your level of pitch accuracy. This way, you can learn to ‘tune’ your voice to a melody with a visual guide, as opposed to just having to guess if you are singing the right note with a singer, teacher or piano.

So get started tuning your voice using your favourite melodies and watch the difference it will make to your overall sound. People mistakenly think that tone is a magical element that we have or don’t have. In reality, your tone is sculpted as you tune your voice. Notice how a guitar sounds beautiful (when in tune) – even a cheap guitar. This is because it is the perfect pitch accuracy which gives a sound it’s pleasant tone (from the tuning of the guitar with a guitar tuner tool).

So too will your vocal tone sound pleasant as you gradually become more and more pitch accurate on every one of those approx 300 notes in a song.

This is not easy to do – it takes persistence and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of repetitions – but using this tool, you can know for sure how to direct your repetitions, instead of being unaware of your accuracy.

Thanks

Rached Hayek

From teaching students of all levels, beginner to advanced, the one thing that all singers have in common is their inability to ‘see’ a note or set of notes from a phrase in their mind.

This is a skill which can be learnt. You could also say that a singer is unable to ‘hear’ the note in their head. This is an extremely important skill to learn, as it allows you to be sure of what you intend to sing, for every single note in a song, start to finish, no matter how fast the notes are, or how many there are.

For a beginner, they will not be able to notice notes that are the main part of the melody; these notes don’t even go by quickly necessarily – but a beginner can’t hear or see them clearly in their mind – therefore, they have no chance of singing those notes properly.

For an intermediate singer, they can usually sing a melody on their own nicely, but there will be a few notes here and there that they are unsure of – usually quick slides at the beginning of a line, fast vibrato embedded in phrases or at the ends of lines, or quick runs that go by too fast for the intermediate to clearly hear or see in their mind; meaning they can’t execute them smoothly.

For an advanced singer, they can usually sing an entire song at a professional level; but when it comes songs which have more elite level skills, such as notes that are extremely fast, usually in runs that are 5 or more notes in length; and also in complicated melodies that have key changes, or intentionally use notes that are not in the scale/key of the song (chromaticism), such as classical music, musicals and jazz music.

So you can see that the fundamental issue of not hearing a note is the same for any level of singer. The only difference is the difficulty of the song.

The good news is that the process to teach a singer to see or hear a note which they currently can’t pick up on their own, is to use chunk the difficult section, slow it down, and use a visual pitch guide, so the singer can clearly ‘see’ and ‘hear’ (with a piano or instrument sound) the notes that they are attempting, and the note they are producing, and compare them to each other.

For example, if a beginner is singing a phrase and they aren’t sure if the notes are correct, they could enter the phrase into the software, and then sing along with the piano notes, while watching a chart graph their voice to a high level of pitch accuracy.

This way, singers of all levels can see and hear their hits and misses when it comes to their pitch/note accuracy, and can self-correct, in real time, as they get the real time feedback from the software.

I have created this software for you, as after teaching for many hundreds of hours, the same problems creep up, and I designed a tool and strategy to automate the manual process I used to go through with students to help them see and hear their notes in their mind. This automated process via software is much more powerful and efficient, as it contains no emotion, is able to be used by the student when they practice alone, is never wrong, and never gets tired.

Teachers and students can now learn to see and hear their notes, by inputting their favourite melodies and testing themselves. Ofcourse you could never ‘see’ your notes with traditional teaching/learning – sitting by the piano and ‘listening’ closely to hear if you are matching the note’. This software allows you to ‘see’ your note – which is previously impossible, and the reason for the reality that so many singers who love to sing, but are unfortunately tone deaf (can’t tell notes apart).

This will change the way you practice, and will open the doors to so many students who were frustrated with their inability to match pitch and get accurate feedback from others.

The trainer is available on my website under ‘Trainer’ in the menu.

Thanks,

Rached Hayek

Sing Slow To Sing Like A Pro

What does ‘sing slow’ mean?

When you hear me say “sing slow” it might sound weird. You could think that I’m asking you to sing a slow song. But I’m not. What I mean by “sing slow”, is to take your weak spots from a song, and sing those parts slowly enough, I like to use the one second rule, (which is one second per note), to make sure that you actually know every note that is happening in that part of the song.

The reason singers sound like beginners or intermediates, instead of sounding advanced, is highly due to a lack of pitch accuracy. What does pitch accuracy mean? It means every note has to be highly accurate, or it will sound average or of low ability. The way to make sure your pitch is accurate is to – you guessed it – slow down.

How do you know when to slow down?

This is a great question. You only have to slow down when you are making a mistake, and it needs correcting. A mistake is where the pitch is not accurate. If the pitch is not accurate it will sound less musical and more talk-like, or if you are singing accurately on pitch but you are singing the wrong pitch, it will sound off-key. If you can’t tell when you are off pitch or off key, you need a mentor who can. Only someone who has a better ear than you, or is a better singer than you will be able to tell you for sure where you are making mistakes. This is why it is important to get someone who is able to tell you your mistakes, so they can give you the right feedback, so you know what you have to work on.

Once you know what you have to work on, this is whether slow down method comes in. Slowing down means being able to sing every note within a weak spot, or phrase for approximately half a second or one second (what I call the one second rule) per note. If you can’t sing each notes in a phrase for a second per note, it means you aren’t sure what the notes are, which proves that you are unlikely to hit the notes accurately while singing at normal speeds. It’s kind of like being able to spell a word. Let’s say a word is a phrase in a song, and the letters that make up that word are the notes that happen in a phrase. Just to be clear, when I say word, I’m not talking about the lyrics of a song. If you know how to spell a word in your head, you can easily spell it out loud. Same thing for a musical phrase. If you know what the notes are, you will be able to sing them one at a time for one second each comfortably.

How do you learn to sing slow?

You have to mix two methods. The first method is by getting feedback from someone who can tell you where you make mistakes i.e. where you are off pitch or off key, and the second method is by slowing music down using a app or software. With the first method, someone sings the notes that you are singing incorrectly for you, slowly, i.e. half a second or one second per note. You then attempt to sing it back, and go back-and-forth with the mentor repeating this process until every note which you are singing wrong becomes right. Doing this for thousands of repetitions over dozens of lessons will gradually get you to the point where you can recognise a mistake in yourself, without needing the mentor. The second method is what you use in between lessons, as this method cannot give you any feedback. This is where you practice using an app such as Amazing Slow Downer, or Transpose Extension for Chrome, and slow the parts where you think you might be making mistakes or where your mentor has told you you are making mistakes, anywhere between 25 and 100% speed, an attempt to listen to, sing along with, and then sing alone, the part of the song for dozens to hundreds of reps and see if you can notice notes which you are not noticing previously.

Some analogies to understand why singing slow works

Let’s say you wanted to learn the guitar, piano or any other instrument. You would need to learn one note at a time. You can’t magically jump ahead. The problem with singing though, is that because everyone already has learnt how to read and knows language, they assume that they know the notes of a song as well. The mistake here is that every note of a song has to be a particular pitch, and if it isn’t it sounds wrong (this goes back to pitch accuracy). On a piano there are no lyrics, so the entire focus is learning one over time and then combining those notes to create a song. When it comes to singing, singers learn the lyrics and the rhythm of a song, but don’t realise that every single syllable has a pitch which it is being sung on, and it has to be highly accurate to sound advanced. The only way to learn every note in a song on a piano, is to slow right down, and go one note at a time. Doing the same thing with your vocals will guarantee that they sound as perfect and pitch accurate as the original singer who you are trying to copy. Same goes for learning to drive a car, learning to write, learning to read, learning to spell, learning a language et cetera et cetera. Every skill requires slow movements first, before they can become fast, or they will never reach a high level of proficiency.

How often should you practice slow?

Every time you are learning something new, challenge yourself to sing each note in that phrase for one second per note. If you can’t, that you means you need to do slow practice, with an app and guided with a mentor to ensure you are practicing correctly. I personally do slow practice every single practice session (which is every day). Slow practice also works as a fantastic ear and vocal warm up, getting you ready for the full speed vocals. I guarantee that slow practice is the most important factor and biggest game changer when it comes to a creating a fantastic voice. Good luck 🙂 Check out the apps I use on my apps page.

Rached Hayek

RnB Singing Lessons.com