Hello Tarabytes! Today, we’re talking about how to effectively sing acapella without losing your key. Many auditions will require you to sing a cappella, so this tutorial is focused on helping you nail those performances with confidence and consistency.
Step 1) Know Your First Note
In order to perform a cappella, you’ll have to know your first note. When practicing, you can use a piano (or a piano app on your smartphone) to identify the starting note that works best with your voice for the particular song you’re planning to sing.
Then, before you’re ready to perform, you can use a pitch pipe or a free piano app for your smartphone to hone in on that starting note just before you hit the stage! Hum that note in your head until you’re ready to sing.
Step 2) Figure Out How to Stay in Pitch with Safety Markers
One thing you may experience at first when trying to sing a cappella is that you’ll get off-key at some point during the performance. This usually happens during the high notes of the performance when you may have a tendency to sing those notes flat. As a result, you may accidentally finish the song in a different key than that in which you started.
To first find out if you’re having this issue, perform the entire song from your starting note and then play that note again at the end to test. If you’re not in the same spot, you’ll have to work on fixing the issues in your performance that are causing you to sing off key.
When you’re practicing, record yourself so that you can listen back to identify the part of the song where you lost track. Then, find the note that you’re struggling with on the piano or piano app of your choice. Practice again, starting from your first note, but this time be ready to hit that problem note on the piano when the time arrives to see if your vocal performance matches up!
This mid song note will serve as your safety marker to ensure you start and finish in the same key and that you’re on pitch for the entirety of your performance! The better trained your ears become, the better your pitch will be…so be sure to practice as much as you can to dial in your a cappella performance.
