Sometimes we encounter a challenging part of a song and need to work on it separately.
But if we try to keep this in mind when singing the first part of the song, it will affect the other notes. Here’s what I think is happening.
When first learning a song — with or without sheet music — there often comes a point where you hit a difficult or unexpected interval.
It may be one of those tricky chromatic semitone runs, or you’re just not going high enough on the top note.
In rehearsal, you may spend extra time perfecting this section before returning to the beginning of the song.
The trouble is, your brain will have registered “There’s a part coming up that I’ve been getting wrong. I must remember that the interval is smaller than I thought.”
If you keep that in the forefront of your mind, you may unintentionally make other intervals sound smaller than they should be.
There might be a “blues note” later on in the song (I.e. a semitone interval), but you’ll find that you’re making all the other notes slightly flatter than they should be.
Conversely, if you know that there’s a big interval ahead and you’ve not quite been hitting the high note, you’ll end up singing the notes leading up to it slightly sharp.
The secret is to stay in the moment. Think only about the next note.
The key is to stay present and focus only on the next note. Trust that you’ve practised the challenging section and let it go.
Easier said than done!
Chris Rowbury
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