Inaccurate Singers by Ted Norton

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I have had several personal successes in developing children who could not sing in tune and who many people call "monotones" or "tone deaf" - both very bad names and to be avoided.

First on the terminology: "Monotone" means "one-tone" - in other words, a drone. If a person has any inflection at all in their voice, they are not a "monotone"! If a person can recognize a person over the phone as that person, they are not "tone deaf". "Inaccurate singer" is a much more precise term and certainly more optimistic. So much for terminology.

My credentials: I have worked with my 5 children, some of my 7 grandchildren and have been a music teacher for 44 years including working with student and cooperating teachers on this problem, as I was a Coordinator of Music Education in Houghton College for most of my career.

Two of my children took to singing very naturally and early whereas one had early problems. As a result and because of my career, I developed a real interest in the inaccurate singer problem and how to solve the problem. I have used these techniques specifically with one of my children, two of my grandchildren and with several music teachers in helping them develop ways of encouraging accurate singing. One elementary teacher in particular, was so consistent in using these techniques that by 3rd grade, ALL of her students sang in tune with the exception of those who transferred in from other schools at a late date. Also my wife used these concepts in working with pre-school children and had compliments on how well her 3 YEAR olds sang.

The solution is to realize that in almost every case, the problem is NOT a hearing problem but a vocal mechanism control problem. Therefore the solution is to concentrate on vocal flexibility. Don't worry at the beginning stages that they are not accurate. Flexibility and vocal change is the goal. Thus do all sorts of fun exercises with them such as imitating a fire siren, ambulance sound, the tweet of a bird, calling "YooHoo", pretending to go up a slide ladder and then sliding down with the voice. Another game is to pretend you are a balloon that is rising into the sky and then pops. My wife used this a lot and the kids like to pop the balloon with a hand clap. Let me again emphasize that at the earliest stage, accuracy is not important. And with everything with children, it all needs to be done in short sessions and in the spirit of FUN!!!

We frequently attempted to match pitch and/or make all sorts of kookey sounds with our children while driving in the car. It's lots of fun and helps them to learn how to control and use their voices. That may be why our first two children are the musically strongest ones. When you have 5 kids in the car, any organized activity becomes probmatical. You can start this echoing from their earliest imitation days.

With many children there is a definite break in their voice between the chest voice and the head voice (falsetto) and the goal is to get them into the head voice (falsetto). Gently, don't be satisfied that they just stay in their chest voice. To get them over the break, use an energetic "whoops", listening very carefully that they get OVER THE BREAK. All of these children have that break but many are so inhibited that they have never used the head/falsetto voice. It's so foreign to them that only energy will click them into that register. Once you get them in the high register, the second step is to slide up there and HOLD onto a note in that register. It does not have to be the note that you demonstrated at first. That's the third step - to slide up and MATCH your note. Fourth step is to slide up, hold a note and then MOVE AROUND. Final steps are to MOVE BETWEEN the registers. Be patient but persistent. With the amount of time that music teachers can give to this activity (still doing some in almost each class lesson) and because you are dealing with a whole class of about 25 or 30 it will probably take about 3 years before all the students are singing accurately. With personal work with your own children, the time frame will be much less. But don't give up - and have fun! IMMITATE and develop FLEXIBILITY

We had an interesting situation with two of our grandsons, both of whom went on to get high ratings in NYSSMA (New York State School Music Association) vocal solos in high school. This happened when they were in about 3rd grade. I asked one of them how he liked music class and he gave me a negative answer. On inquiring why, he said that the kids made fun of how poorly he sang. !!! I went into high gear - planning. Since I had been developing a music lab for my college music majors using a PitchMaster Machine to assist in teaching ear training, I set to work to make a tape for teaching the grandson how to match pitches. The machine is tape based in which one track has the background sound and the other track has the pitches or song you are to match. The unique thing about the machine is that electronically as you sing into the microphone, it shows you on a VU meter whether you are above, below or right on the pitch track notes. Also you get another reinforcement in that if you are on pitch you hear the pitch track otherwise you don't. After making the tape I set my grandson to using it and after 10 hours of work he has become an accurate singer. The tape was simply a bunch of long slow notes, then progressing to more movement. That's all it took. One week of two hours each while I worked on other things in the Lab. He is now a fine singer. In fact after later piano lessons and other choral experiences, he reads a mean baritone part easily and accurately.

Ted Norton (Dual member in the Olean and Salamanca Chapters) Olean, NY

"Music washes away the dust of everyday life." Email comments or reaction to tednorton@adelphia.net

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