- Most singers I meet want to sing in tune,
and you're probably no different.
But better pitch doesn't just happen, you have to develop
your intonation with intentional activity.
So I've got three singing exercises for you today that I
know will improve your pitch accuracy.
- [Singer] Sound check.
Check one, check two.
- Good day welcome to Voice Essential's
where everybody sings.
My name is Dr. Dan and it's my passion in life to help you
realize the full potential of your singing voice.
Learning to sing in tune is a fundamental skill,
that most singers are working on.
But as we proceed today please always remember that singing
is not about perfect notes.
Singing is about communication.
So while this video is designed to assist and challenge
your pitch accuracy, I want to encourage you to also work
on the ability to emote and clearly communicate the
narrative of the material you are singing.
With that being said we are going to jump straight into
the practical stuff today.
All three exercises we'll cover will be minor in tonality.
I have a couple of other pitch development videos based on
major scales and they present slightly easier
exercises for the absolute beginner.
But the minor scales we'll be doing today are a little more
difficult and come from my exercise collection;
Dr. Dan's Voice Essentials 2,
which you can download by the link I've placed in the
description section below.
The first activity we'll be doing
together is the minor triad.
The only difference between a minor triad and
the major triad is the middle note, the third.
In the major triad the middle note is a major third above
the first note, also called the tonic.
But in a minor triad we drop that middle note one semi-tone
thus making it a minor third interval from the tonic.
Let's sing through it together for a few times.
(harmonizing)
On one level this is a relatively simple scale to sing
because it is only three notes.
But perhaps you noticed that your voice found it challenging
to accurately pitch the middle note.
And I think this is because we spend so much time in our
practice singing major scales that our ear and our voice,
for that matter, get locked in to the major patterns.
So when we come to sing alternate scales,
like the minor triad, the voice has to adjust to correctly
pitch the unfamiliar intervals.
And we can enhance the challenge of the minor triad further
by inverting the structure of the three notes.
The second exercise is called a minor triad first inversion.
Here instead of starting on the tonic we'll commence the
phrase on the third then sing the fifth,
followed by the tonic which is now sung as an octave note.
It's a small change which can offer a significant
challenge to our tuning.
Let's give it a go.
(harmonizing)
How did you go?
You might like to record yourself doing these activities,
playing them back to review how accurately your voice is
moving through each of the scales.
You may have even noticed some inaccuracies in my
singing as I navigated the scales.
And that's because, like you, I continue to develop my
imperfect biology towards better intonation
I've intentionally left my display of the exercises
untouched by post production magic because I want you to
know that we are all wonderfully human.
Which in turn means we are beautifully imperfect.
And I've got one more exercise today so that we can continue
to develop our collective imperfections.
In many respects the minor arpeggio is a combining,
a combining of the first two activities.
The minor triad and the minor triad first inversion.
Let's have a sing of it together.
(harmonizing)
So here we have the tonic, minor third, fifth and octave
combining to give us an extended phrase.
The additional challenge here comes into play when you start
to sing into your upper registers.
If your voice is weak in specific registers then it's likely
to also have poor tuning in those same registers.
If after doing the third activity you find that your voice
is struggling with pitch accuracy the higher you go.
Then click on this video and I'll teach you some exercises
to strengthen your upper register.
I'm Dr. Dan, sing well.