TakeLessons Presents Simple Steps for Perfect Pitch

Online, January 17, 2012 (Newswire.com) - It turns out a lot of fans want to be someone like Adele when it comes to the karaoke stage. According to Lucky Voice, an online karaoke simulator, two of the singer's hit songs, "Someone Like You" and her cover of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love," ranked as the two most sung karaoke songs in 2011. Out of the 3 million karaoke performances tabulated through the website, one in four singers chose "Someone Like You". "Rolling In The Deep" also placed high on the list.

To help with the next karaoke performance, TakeLessons (http://takelessons.com), the nation's fastest growing music lessons provider, shared a few exercises for singers to help stay on pitch. The following is an excerpt from the TakeLessons blog post:

"Landing Gently:
Sometimes we are off pitch when landing on a particular note because we land on it too hard, too fast, or with too much tension.

To combat this, first emphasize the problem. Imagine a heavy basketball bouncing down a stairway. Sing the difficult phrase as if your voice is that basketball bouncing down (or up) the stairway of the notes in the phrase. Try to land hard on each note - you will probably overshoot pitch.

Now, do the opposite. Pretend your voice is a ghost floating gently around the stairway. Sing the difficult phrase by floating gently from note to note, rather than bouncing. You may need to slow down fast phrases - that's fine!

Now, find the happy medium between the two, where your pitch lands gently but accurately on each note.

Avoiding Overshooting High Notes:
Individual, short high notes can be particularly tricky - they are easy to overshoot since they are psychologically far away. To increase your accuracy of such notes, first hear the pitch in your mind first, before singing it. With practice, you can learn to do this even while singing the preceding notes. Next: If the note isn't staccato, slide up to it so that you have a chance to calibrate your ears with your vocal cords. In practice, sing the note by itself (be sure not to strain). Notice where you feel the pitch. Does it feel like it's behind your eyes? In your nose? In the top of your head? Mark this location so that you have a physical reference for where to aim when singing this note.

Repetition to Ingrain Muscle Memory:
This approach is especially helpful for fast pitch transitions, such as quick vocal embellishments. Quick embellishments don't allow time for pitch adjustment based on hearing, so using muscle memory to ingrain the feel of the intervals will allow you to let your body take over and sing the intervals easily based on familiar feel."

By sharing the tips with blog readers, TakeLessons hopes to continue engaging current students and help with any musical goals they may have. Readers are invited to share their thoughts by commenting on the TakeLessons blog, where they can also read tips for taking music lessons as an adult, and comments are also welcomed on Facebook (http://facebook.com/takelessons).