Disclaimer: The following article contains my thoughts and opinions. This is not to be construed as medical advice or the only way to think about these concepts. There are as many ways to teach voice as there are voice teachers, and all of them are valid. 

Interested in beginner singing lessons? If so, one of your key concerns may be learning how to sing in tune. You may even be worried that if you can’t naturally sing in tune, there’s nothing you can do about it. This is not true!

In my Fort Wayne voice lessons and virtual voice lessons, I have helped many students with this specific issue. Confusion about how to sing in tune can be one of the most emotionally difficult issues for singers, but with the right routine, you can learn how to sing in tune. It’s been my privilege to watch students go from having no idea how to match a pitch to accurately singing a song. Here’s how they learned how to sing in tune—and how you can as well.

​Why do so many people have to learn how to sing in tune? While it’s true that some singers know how to sing in tune naturally, many others can’t quite figure it out. That’s because the physical process of singing in tune is pretty complicated.
There are quite a few things that have to happen in order to accurately sing a pitch. Here’s the basic process of how to sing in tune:

1. Hear a note
2. Correctly mentally process that note
3. Figure out how to emit that specific pitch with your voice
4. Correctly coordinate your breath, onset, and other factors to accurately reproduce the note.

Yikes! If you can’t naturally figure out how to sing in tune, I hope this makes you feel a bit better. As students in my Fort Wayne voice lessons quickly learn, this is a complex process that involves multiple steps. That’s why, to learn how to sing in tune, you have to keep this muti-step approach in mind. ​

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Before you try to sing accurately along with your favorite tunes, there are a few skills you’ll want to work on. Here are the ones that often come up first in my Fort Wayne voice lessons.

Hearing the Note
This step has nothing to do with your hearing and everything to do with concentration. Your first step is to really focus on listening to the pitch you are trying to match. Try to imagine it in your mind before you attempt to sing it. If you’re in beginning singing lessons or practicing this on your own for the first time,, do this one note at a time at first rather than with an entire song.

Learning to Navigate Your Voice
For many singers, singing out of tune isn’t a result of not being able to hear a note; it’s a result of not knowing how to vocally reproduce the note. That’s why a big part of learning how to sing in tune is actually just learning how to sing well.

To help with this, as you practice matching pitches, pay attention to patterns. If you have trouble singing in your head voice in tune, for example, you’ll need to practice singing in your head voice in general before you can try to match pitches in the top of your range.

On that note, students of my virtual voice lessons and Fort Wayne voice lessons quickly learn that it’s easiest to sing pitches that are within their comfortable range. When you’re learning how to sing in tune, stick only to notes that are easy for you to sing. Don’t try to match extremely high or low notes at first. That’s why practicing your pitch accuracy by trying to wail out Ariana Grande or Let It Go isn’t a great idea.
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Figure Out If You’re Flat or Sharp
When you do sing a note incorrectly, use it as an opportunity to figure out in which direction you’re off and by how much. Are you too high (sharp) or too low (flat)? Are you just a half step off, or are you a larger interval off? You can use tools to help with this at first, as you’ll see below. Gradually, as your musical ear improves, you’ll instantly be able to tell if you’re flat or sharp and be able to correct it. 

We’re lucky to live in a digital age when virtual voice lessons and other virtual tools are available to help us learn. For beginning singing lessons focusing on pitch, I suggest leveraging these tools along with more conventional methods to improve your ability to sing in tune. Here’s what I recommend:

1. Karaoke Apps
Many karaoke apps now let you see exactly when you’re accurate and when you’re not. Not only is this fun; it’s an invaluable tool for helping you learn if you’re flat or sharp as you sing. For the most success, choose music that is within your comfortable range (if it feels like you’re screaming, it might be best to pick something else). Some apps also allow you to change the key of a song if it’s too high or low; don’t be afraid to tweak keys for a more comfortable—and accurate—singing experience.

2. Pitch Matching Exercises
This isn’t as fun as karaoke apps, but a few minutes a day of pitch matching exercises can work wonders on your ability to sing in tune! For this exercise, you’ll need a keyboard (physical or digital) and a tuner app. Simply play a note in your comfortable range while looking at your tuner. Listen, then sing the note on an “ooh” vowel. Were you able to sing the note accuracy? If you were off, were you flat or sharp, and by how much? Repeat the note until you’re able to sing it correctly, sliding up or down to correct your pitch if necessary.

When you’re able to sing one note accurately most of the time, try two-note sequences. Work your way up to three or four notes at a time.

3. Choral Singing
Choral singing is amazing for practicing pitch accuracy because you’re surrounded by other singers who can help you stay in tune. Whether it’s a community theatre chorus, volunteer choir, or your church chorus, consider joining to sharpen your skills. 

As you work toward learning how to sing in tune, keep these three tips in mind.

1.Consistency
Pitch accuracy doesn’t happen overnight. Much like exercise, this is something you’ll need to do on a daily (and I do mean daily!) basis for at least three weeks to see results. You don’t have to practice for hours on end, though. I often tell students in my Fort Wayne voice lessons that even a few minutes in the morning and a few in the evening of concentrated practice will do the trick. Quality over quantity definitely applies here.

2.Gamification
Practice is more fun if it doesn’t feel like practice. That’s why the karaoke app is such an important tool. This also applies to your other practice as well. Can you challenge yourself by trying to figure out where your pitch accuracy veers off when you’re singing along to your favorite song in the car? Can you make a game out of the pitch accuracy exercise by seeing how many notes you can remember in a row? Make it fun, and you’ll be more likely to stick to it.

3.Patience
Any beginner singing lessons teacher will tell you that it takes time to improve. Try not to get frustrated with yourself if you don’t see results from your virtual voice lessons right away. Instead, focus on having as much fun as possible while you consistently practice, and recognize that even baby steps (like being able to hear when you’re out of tune and by how much) are a form of improvement.

Need a better explanation of something I mentioned in this article? Ready to sign up for Fort Wayne voice lessons or virtual voice lessons? Please feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you and help you learn how to sing in tune once and for all! ​

 
​Disclaimer: The following article contains my thoughts and opinions. This is not to be construed as medical advice or the only way to think about these concepts. There are as many ways to teach voice as there are voice teachers, and all of them are valid. 

 If you’ve ever been in a choir, signed up for an online singing course, or watched virtual singing lessons on YouTube, you might have heard the advice, “sing from your diaphragm.” While this phrase is often bandied around, a lot of folks actually have no idea what it means. While teaching my Fort Wayne voice lessons or online students, I’ve had people tell me the diaphragm is located near the pelvis, is positioned vertically through the torso, or even floats freely through the body. No wonder these people have trouble breathing for singing—they don’t know what equipment their body has or how to use it!
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That’s why I decided to write this article. In it, you should learn exactly what the diaphragm is, where it’s located in your body, how it moves, and how you can breathe from your diaphragm and sing from your diaphragm. I hope this solves the case of the mysterious diaphragm for you once and for all and lets you breathe easily!
 
What the Heck Is a Diaphragm Anyway?
The secondary definition of diaphragm from the Oxford dictionary is simply “a thin sheet of material forming a partition.” This gives us a really good idea of what the anatomical diaphragm is. It’s a big, flattish muscle that separates your torso horizontally into two parts. On top, you’ve got your lungs and your heart; underneath are all your gooey digestive organs (viscera).

"Lynch - Drawing Anterior chest landmarks - no labels" by Patrick J. Lynch and C. Carl Jaffe, license: CC BY. Green and red lines added

The Function of the Diaphragm
Ask any first grader what organ is responsible for breathing, and they’ll likely tell you it’s the lungs. The problem is that the lungs are not made of muscle. They’re basically empty air sacks that have to be inflated by the muscles of inspiration (inhalation). That’s where the diaphragm comes in.
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The diaphragm is our largest inhalation muscle, which is why if you’ve dabbled in an online singing course, this is the one you’ve probably heard of. When your diaphragm is at rest, it’s kind of lumpy, like a flattened “m.” When you activate your diaphragm by inhaling, it becomes flatter and wider, moving downwards to expand the lungs. In the image above, the red line shows the diaphragm at rest and the green line shows the diaphragm in action.
 
Engaging the Diaphragm When Breathing
This may all seem well and good in a picture, but you can’t exactly see your diaphragm when you breathe. How can you be sure this is happening? The answer is that when you breathe “from your diaphragm,” or fully engaging your diaphragm, you get some helpful external movement as well. Your belly moves! This happens for a few reasons:

• Your diaphragm moves down, pressing on your viscera (gooey digestive organs), which then move out of the way to make space for the air. Gross, but true.
• Your abs relax to allow your torso to expand.

Because you have this helpful physical cue of belly movement during diaphragmatic breathing, some people actually call this type of breathing “low breathing” or “belly breathing.” Just remember that your belly is not filling with air—the belly movement is just sympathetic movement as your lungs inflate.
Now, how can you work on engaging the diaphragm when breathing? In my virtual singing lessons and Fort Wayne singing lessons, my students focus on using the senses of sight, sound, and kinesthetic awareness (body awareness/feeling) to improve their skills. Here’s how this applies to the diaphragm (although, since breathing is silent, sound doesn’t come into play here).

Sight: Work on breathing in front of a mirror. Is your belly moving?
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Kinesthetic awareness:

1. Place a hand on your belly and make sure it moves when you breathe. Pay attention to how this feels, then try to recreate the movement without your hand on your belly.
2. Link your hands to form the shape of the lumpy diaphragm at rest in front of your torso. Move your hands as you breathe, forming a flatter, lower “diaphragm” when you inhale. Use this to give yourself a picture of what’s happening internally.

Engage Your Diaphragm, Relax Your Chest and Shoulders
Diaphragmatic breathing engages the lower torso, but you may notice that when you breathe, your chest and shoulders move too. In my Fort Wayne singing lessons and virtual singing lessons, my students learn to breathe exclusively from the lower torso without engaging the upper torso. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Shallow, high breathing is associated with physical exertion, panic, and fight-or-flight response. It’s not particularly efficient and can even lead to dizziness and panic attacks. This gets worse if you have any issues with stage fright. If you’re properly engaging your diaphragm, there is no reason for your upper chest and shoulders to try to muscularly “help” with the work of breathing.
2. Any online singing course will tell you that it’s important to relax your neck and face when singing. If you’re squeezing your shoulders and chest to try to breathe, it’s basically impossible to relax your neck. This type of high breath won’t set you up for successful singing.

 
The moral of this story is simple: in addition to working on breathing from your diaphragm, work on relaxing your chest and shoulders when you breathe. Your voice will thank you!
 
How to Sing from Your Diaphragm
Now that we’ve covered inhaling, it’s time to talk about the diaphragm’s role in singing. When you sing, your muscles of inhalation don’t just zoom back to neutral. Students of my Fort Wayne singing lessons know that singing is a form of exhalation, but it’s a controlled form of exhalation. That’s why, when you sing, your diaphragm doesn’t get to relax—it has to stay engaged.

In both by in-person and virtual singing lessons, I call this concept “fighting the collapse.” A more common term for it is “breath support.” By preventing all your air from rushing out at once, you’re supporting your voice as you sing.

Physically, it’s pretty easy to tell if you sing from your diaphragm. After getting a good breath from your diaphragm, start singing. Does your belly immediately zoom in? If it does, can you try and keep it suspended as you sing instead?
 
Learn How to Sing From Your Diaphragm and More with Fort Wayne Voice Lessons
Sometimes the concepts are easy enough to grasp, but putting them into practice is a little more challenging. If you need help to learn how to sing from your diaphragm and a pre-recorded online singing course just isn’t cutting it, consider signing up for my Fort Wayne voice lessons or online voice lessons. I’d be happy to help you figure out how to sing from your diaphragm and much more!