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Comment by dsmurrell | Hacker News Reader

I'm not great at any of these things. I do agree with you... do you have links to good resources in this regard? Maybe I can start by linking to them, and then later building the features that make sense into the app.

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I like Dan Callaway on YouTube. Jeff Rolka is another good teacher. However, singing is complicated and choosing which exercises you'll use to teach folks ... You need 1. Vowel alignment 2. Coordination of voices 3. Breath support and vocal tension management 4. Mouth shape, tongue placement.

And then there's "how to read a song", deciding which words are emphasized, where to breathe, modifications to fit your voice, etc.

Thanks, will check these out!

If you're willing to elaborate - For what goals and stages, do you require these?

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Background to my question: I was looking for music teachers for myself and my kids (guitar and piano), and I found two types:

1. Royal Conservatory Curriculum, Lesson 1, Page 1, firmly, formally, and without deviation: You MUST learn notation, theory, and proper everything, first. THEN, 5 years later, you get to have fun :)

2. Let's have fun! If you like it and stick with it, we can tackle advanced topics in a customized manner and see where it takes us :)

I find approach #1 is only valid for people who know they will go far and stick with it (either because their parents force them, or for some other, rare, intrinsic motivation); but it hugely discourages huge number of people who don't have such long-term motivation and dedication yet - it postpones the rewards and makes the initial curve super steep.

So my question is: For a completely casual, random person who sings terribly and wants to get "a little bit less embarrassing / dip their toes"; isn't pitch training usually the first step for them to enable their hearing, rather than the complex vocal techniques?

I doubt you'll get an answer here, and people in "type 1" don't want to talk about type 2.

My take, without directly addressing your questions: "have fun" doesn't go very far, and you'll discover that if you want to be good at anything, you'll need to put in many hours of practice with endless repetition and go through setbacks and self doubt, none of which is fun. And for sure there are singers and musicians that never go through formal training, including at the highest levels, they are few, when most musicians you know have been learning music since they were kids.

Absolutely agreed that effort is needed to reach ranks above beginner; my main point/peeve is the steepness of the curve from "nothing" to "beginner", not the work definitely required to go from "Beginner" to "intermediate" let alone "Expert".

My approach, from "nothing" to "beginner", is to give a taste of the "target" - how fun and rewarding it can be. A 7 year old kid who learns how to play Mario Galaxy theme on piano, gets motivated and excited, and then goes through the effort; vs the 7 year old who's sent to music lessons and they spend 2 months on perfect finger positioning for C-major scale. Similarly for adults and guitar - I find teaching them 4 simple chords and strumming which cover 40% of pop songs in 2-4 weeks, gets them hooked and willing to then invest the effort, vs starting with notation and theory and picking hand positioning etc on day 1.

As specific to singing matter at hand, it is my understanding that pitch training will have an immediate, early, quick, and lasting benefit (which is, however arguably, benefited by the app in the post), vs saying "well you can't sing if you don't also do these 5 intermediate-level things right away" (unfair representation, but I've been on the receiving end of it:).

I have a close friend who's an opera singer, and absolutely did proper training from early age, daily, for years -- but, most of us aren't and won't be; my primary point is that early stages of training/learning shouldn't necessarily be the same.

No. Pitch is not super important (and almost certainly will iron itself out as the ear improves) and can be a marker of the other issues.

I completely agree with OP that breath management is the number one issue I hear in a beginner.

In my experience, the people who subscribe to type 1 are afraid that a potential Mozart or Beethoven won't reach their full potential because of bad habits and bad instruction. And the people who subscribe to type 2 are afraid that some kid won't have the pleasure of making music because they can't even start making music for years under strict type 1 tutelage.

There are many more people who never make music because it wasn't fun when they tried than potential Mozarts and Beethovens.

I've added links to these two in a new Beyond Pitch section of the site: https://singonkey.app/docs/beyond-pitch

Thanks for mentioning these!

0.2.0 is also out now https://singonkey.app/changelog

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