Q&A: Pitch Perfect

Dear Lis,

I want to work on my pitch but it’s hard to do by myself since I’m not sure when I’m in tune.

George

 

Dear George,

There is a wonderful, inexpensive program called ”Vocal Lab“ www.rustykat.com. Unfortunately it’s only made for the Mac. (If you find a good program for the PC please let me know at lis@thesingersworkshop.com) Click on a note in Vocal Lab and the computer will play it, showing you the note on a line on a graph. Then you sing it into your microphone and you’ll see your sung note on the graph. Is it too low? Does it slide into the line? Does it stay on the line? Start with the vowel ‘oo’ as in ‘tooth’. Then switch to ‘e’ as in ‘teeth’. The hardest for most people will be ‘ah’ as in ‘ma’. This little program does one thing and it does it well. It trains you to hear when the pitch is right because you can see it.