Have you ever had the experience of feeling like you are singing perfectly in tune when you practice but as soon as you get up in front of the band you wander out of key? Perhaps you just find it hard to stay in tune when you go for the high notes.

Either way, it’s not at all uncommon and there are some straightforward things you can do to help prevent it from happening.

Getting your reference pitch.

In this article I’ll talk about how to establish a basis for singing in tune when you are playing with amplified instruments in a band setting. If you are used to singing completely acoustically then you may find it quite difficult to make the transition to performing with loud guitars and drums banging away behind you!

When performing with a band the single biggest problem is hearing yourself properly. Usually you will have some sort of foldback device like a wedge or a side-fill speaker box with your vocal coming back at you. Your natural instinct will be to keep turning up the volume of your voice in the foldback until it is big and fat and you can hear every nuance in your voice.

While it is true that for good control and preservation of your voice you should be able to hear yourself properly it also has a serious trap. The problem is that the louder you are the more the other band members will tend to turn their instruments up to hear themselves better. The drummer will hit harder, the guitar player will turn his amp up and so on. This is all because of Performing Law number 1. ( My own laws that I have invented to explain things like this)

Performing Law 1 states that in most bands the individual players tend to mostly listen to themselves, not to the other players. This is because when you practice outside of the band you are only usually listening to yourself and you are looking to have that same clarity and definition in the band setting. This is almost always not possible. The reason is that when you practice singing alone you are listening to a voice which is not masked by other sounds.

The mere presence of a piano, guitar, bass or drums will cause some masking- that is, some of the frequencies produced by other instruments clash with or cancel out some of the natural tones of the human voice. This is a well known principle to studio engineers who use a deep understanding of how masking works which allows them to produce great mixes where there is an excellent balance across all the instruments and parts to a song.

All this makes it difficult to sing in tune sometimes when performing with a band. Believe it or not the cure is actually to do the opposite to turning up your voice in the foldback.

When you are singing live you must train yourself to sing with far less aural feedback than you are used to getting when you sing by yourself. Try these things to help overcome live singing tuning problems : – Get used to the overall sensation you get when you know you are singing in tune. A way to try this out is to get a backing track ( without vocals in it) and play it really loud on your stereo and sing along with it.

Do not try to out-sing your stereo !!!

Have someone else stand a few feet away and listen to you singing in your normal voice to a track which is almost drowning your voice out. Ask that person if you are singing in tune. (Make sure it is someone who can tell the difference !) Resist the temptation to change the way you sing in this test. Do not try to project your voice more than you normally do. The idea is to get used to what it feels like when you have far less aural feedback of your voice and to develop some confidence under those conditions.

After you have done this a few times try doing the same thing in a rehearsal with your band. Deliberately give yourself far less foldback than you would normally like to have. Listen very closely to the other instruments and sing to them, not yourself. Get your pitch from what the others are playing and try to become more familiar with the sensation of singing in tune without hearing yourself. It’s entirely possible to sing with almost no foldback.

You will discover a nice little side benefit from doing this. As you become harder to hear in the onstage mix other members of the band will not turn up and possibly even start to turn themselves down. If they don’t turn down and still play really loud, point out to them that they should be listening to you more. They will soon get the message.

Remember that performing live is all about making use of what you have, not wishing it could be better. Unless you become a huge star and can pay for unbelievable foldback you will always have to deal with performing conditions that are sometimes far from ideal.

Lastly, this is what it takes to be a professional. You must learn to adapt and not always focus on yourself. Performing in a band is not an easy undertaking. It takes lots of practice and a willingness to try new things, sometimes things that you actually don’t want to try. If you have an open mind just about anything is possible.

Michael Oliphant