Singing Pitch Problems Resolved

Last week we where doing vocal production for a pop project, and had to guide 3 singers to record their voices for a song written to for that lesson. 2 of the singers had pitching issues, and could not hold their own pitch whenever they heard another singer’s voice singing in the background.

This happened whenever the male vocalist heard their female counterpart singing in the recording, even though the female singer was actually singing the same note as them! The recording engineer was quite startled by this, and he looked at us and asked why this was so, because the pitch was exactly the same, and yet, whenever the guys heard the female singer sing, they thought that the pitch was a really high one, and they started singing notes that were much higher.

One possible explanation we have for this is that female voices usually sound thinner and lighter than male voices at low pitches. And so, when the man heard the female singer, they heard something that was thinner and had lesser low frequencies, and so to them, it sounded like a higher pitch.

This, in fact, is quite a common problem whenever we have group classes for singing with male and female participants. The funny thing is, female singers usually do not have this problem! Whenever they hear a male singer sing, and even though it sounds low to them, female singers almost never attempt to sing that low, and they always sing in their comfortable range (which is usually a whole octave above what the guy is singing).

Try to observe the singers around you, and see if you can identify this interesting pitching issue? And if you have other solutions or ideas about it, feel free to let us know!

We will have a pitching exercise for you to try tomorrow so log back in.