Archive for the ‘education’ Category

Pitch voice is a term used when describing the vocal frequency accuracy of a singer. If the frequency is below the intended pitch, then the pitch voice is considered flat. If the frequency is above the intended pitch, the voice pitch is said to be sharp. It may be surprising for many to discover that all singers sing off pitch and have trouble with pitch voice, whether they realize it or not. There are many complicated factors in this area, one of them being intentional vibrato. With vibrato the singer intentionally raises and lowers pitch in a cyclic rhythmic pattern that is intended to added emotional expression.

Vibrato can be implemented with virtually any instrument that allows shifting of pitch. For example, a piano can not perform vibrato. The idea with vocal vibrato is to have the pitch go above and below the target note the same distance, for the same amounts of time. Before a singer can develop good vibrato, it is helpful if they can learn to sing plain tones accurately. Sing software can help singers so that they understand exactly where their pitch lies. Sing software also helps singers identify patterns in their pitch voice, such as being flat on the third scale degree of a key, or sharp when leaping octaves.

Not long ago the advent of computers led to speculation of enormous gains in productivity. In some ways those visions began reality, yet in other ways technology has taken away productivity and led to an epidemic of ADD. So reading that software can empower anything becomes suspect, but in this case the software combines with interactive training and actually does empower positive results. Singing software takes on many forms from automatically creating harmonies to dynamic pitch correction and hundreds of other specialized recording applications. However, for voice pitch, the most important software breakthrough has been with products that provide visual graph feedback of pitch while the singer performs. What is unique about this software is that it requires active participation and, for yet to be determined reasons, the act of modulating pitch in response to audible and visual feedback trains a singer to improve their vocal pitch. Someday this may be obvious, but for now there is not scientific explanation – and with minimal research dollars, the mystery may not be solved for decades. You can help by volunteering to be part of a singing software to improve voice pitch research program.