Can’t Sing on Pitch? (I have a theory..)

Author

Ivan Lu
January 31, 2025

I have a theory on why you can’t sing on pitch.

And it’s a bit out there.

But hear me out here.

I have been field testing this with some of my clients and been seeing some good results.

So I wanted to share this with you all today and hopefully this can give you another piece of the puzzle when it comes to singing.

Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

So a few weeks ago, I shared with you a better strategy when it comes to learning to sing

And it was this.

When we’re developing our vocal technique

We’re really trying to do 2 things

(1) Learning and reinforcing correct technique or HABITS

(2) Unlearning the INCORRECT habits and allowing them to die off.

But then I got thinking.

What if this APPLIES to being able to sing on pitch as well?

What if one of the reasons you’re struggling to sing on pitch is because you’re so USED to singing off pitch.

Now let me back it up.

For example,

I had this particular student

Where we would try to get him to match a simple scale like this

[EXAMPLE]

And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t do it.

Occasionally he would get it pretty good.

But he’d only be able to do it 10-20% of the time.

Now instinctively I thought. Okay, well if we stuck with it for some time. His hit rate would naturally go up.

The reality though was we were really stuck here for some time and I couldn’t progress him.

But that’s when I started thinking.

If part of being on pitch is a habit.

Sure he’s getting good reps 10-20% of the time, but at the same time he has to fight that 80% times where he’s missing.

His brain is getting mixed signals on what to reinforce. Hence we get stuck in this tug of war of habits.

Solution?

What if we found a context where we could guarantee that he’d be on pitch most of the time.

And basically for the next 2 weeks, we had to find an easier context

As you can see here with his routine

We focused on establishing pitch on a single note.

Now I know it can seem deceivingly simple.

But the cool part here is when we made the context easier.

He started getting it 50% of the time. And each day, each week when he spent his 10-15 minutes establishing this as his home-base exercise.

The following week, he’d come back better.

And soon enough when we moved back to the same scale he tried a few weeks earlier. He was able to get to the original scale of a triad a few times.

So to summarise.

If you’re struggling with pitch.

You might be fighting these bad habits.

And the solution is finding a SIMPLE enough context that allows you to get that hit rate up.

And I want you to drill it in each day for at least 1/2 of your practice session.

From there you can challenge something harder.

Anyway! That’s all. If you found this episode useful, please share or give it 5 star wherever you’re listening from. This really helps spread the word and means the world to me. If you’d like to study with me, links are down in description. Take care!

🌍 Book Private Singing Lessons here: https://calendly.com/singingsimply 

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