If you’re a musician, you should be singing. It’s the most effective way to train your ears. However, many of us are nervous about singing and have worries about being “tone deaf”.
When you open your mouth to sing a note, do you know what note will come out? Is it always the one you intended to sing? Does your pitch waver as you sing?
Do you know whether it is your musical ears or your voice which is to blame?
Unfortunately these kinds of doubt often create a negative spiral: you can’t sing well – so you’re nervous about singing – so you don’t sing much – so you can’t sing well…
Amy Nielsen is a singing teacher in Utah, U.S.A. who has taught many students to sing in tune. She was one of our three featured experts when we wanted to find out how you can teach someone to sing in tune.
Now Amy has compiled her knowledge and experience into a new course, “Tune It Up”, which can help you train both your ears and your voice for perfect confident pitching.
The “Tune It Up” course
The Tune It Up course is designed for beginner singers. You don’t necessarily need any prior experience with music or singing and the course will take you to the point of singing simple songs in tune with confidence.
There are five modules in this introductory course, covering:
- What is Ear Training and Why Do It?
- Singing “In Tune”
- Matching Pitch
- Steps and Skips in Pitch
- Introduction to Solfa
As you can see, the lessons cover each key aspect of learning to sing in tune in a methodical way based on Amy’s proven teaching methods. Amy was trained in the Kodály approach which includes using solfa to help musicians connect their ears to their voice and develop an instinctive sense of relative pitch. Knowing solfege helps you to sing with confidence, as well as building your sight-reading skills and helping your play by ear or improvise on other instruments.
Each lesson is a combination of:
- A video of Amy explaining the material
- Listening examples for practising singing, for male and female voices
- A quiz to let you check your progress
This really brings the material to life and gets you started with singing quickly. There isn’t a lot of reading or studying required – Amy has you using your voice from day one!
How to take the course
Tune It Up is provided through popular online education site Udemy.com. This makes it easy to purchase the course safely, and then access its lessons online using your computer or on your mobile phone or tablet device, picking up wherever you last left off. You can take the lessons at your own pace and revisit them any time.
Through Udemy you can get a short free preview of the course to explore its content and decide if it’s right for you. If you decide you want to take the course you pay to purchase it and then can access it forever and use the material however and whenever you like. Amy has currently set the price of the course at a generously low level (less than a single in-person lesson with a singing teacher, in fact) so it’s fantastic value if you want to learn to sing in tune.
Amy’s also been hard at work extending the course. The Tune It Up course on Udemy is perfect for beginners but once you graduate from that course you’ll be keen to learn more! That’s why she has been building out an extended version of the course which will lead you on to more advanced material and even more proficient singing. Find out more at: tuneitupcourse.com
Here at Easy Ear Training we believe that using your voice is a hugely powerful way to train your ears and become a better musician. We have tried the Tune It Up course and found it to be excellent. We recommend it to anyone who has concerns about their singing and that’s why you’ll now find it listed on our “Recommended ear training courses” page.
If you’ve ever been nervous about your singing, head on over to Udemy and get your free preview of Tune It Up!
