Fear of Flat Notes

Sometimes I think that the single greatest fear a singer has is singing flat (more singers go flat than sharp when they sing out of tune.) Which is crazy, since it really is easy to sing out of tune, when you look at the forces that can pull you off pitch: lack of sleep, allergies, menstruation, no breath support, and bad sound systems, to name a few. I know all this and I don’t care: I just want to sing in tune all the time.

Maybe it’s a spiritual thing, maybe that magical locking in of voice to instrument in perfect tune is akin to living life perfectly gracefully. But life ain’t perfect and neither is my intonation. I know when I’m singing or listening to other singers that soul, heart and feel are paramount. Still, if I hit a flat note I expect the earth to open and swallow me for my sin.

Let’s talk about auto-tuned vocals. There may still be a few of you who are unaware of it-- it’s a technology by which out-of-tune vocals are fixed digitally. Sometimes you can hear that the vocal has been processed, sometimes you can’t. For awhile the overly auto-tuned sound was a fixture only in pop music, but now the overly auto-tuned sound, with that weird robot frosting on it, is everywhere. I expect to hear it on classical recordings any day now. T-pain singing Aida, anyone?

When I listen to great singers who lived before the advent of auto-tuning, singers like Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, I hear them each hit a clunker now and then. Not the end of the world. They’re still magical singers. But now the vast majority of recorded vocals we hear are processed and perfectly in tune. Our ears are used to it, and we’re starting to expect that kind of perfection from everyone. It’s not just from the Beyonces of the world being auto-tuned. That down and dirty scratchy voiced soulful indie singer-songwriter you love has probably had a few notes “fixed in the mix” as well.

Used to be that all the pitch correction happened after the vocal was recorded. Now on-board pitch correction allows someone singing live to be pitch corrected before the voice goes out through the speakers to the audience. I wonder if soon there will be a little neck implant personal pitch correction device, so we never have to worry about singing out of tune, whether we’re singing at a stadium or in the shower. I’m afraid I would rush out and get one immediately. Because I’m as obsessed with singing in tune as most singers. I freak out when I hear my recorded voice singing a flat note, and I rush to auto-tune it away before anyone else hears it. The knowledge that technology can fix my occasional out note is no comfort, it’s more like a like a slap in the face. I know that I must be a lesser human being because of my reliance on technology.

Last year an astrologer gave me a free reading to thank me for a singing method of mine that he’d gotten from the library. In the middle of the long, detailed reading, while he was telling me something about my health, he suddenly blurted out “...And you, know, just go out there and sing, and so what if you hit some flat notes, it doesn’t matter, just go do it!”

So I will heed his advice, after a reasonable amount of practicing, that is. I will go out in the world and sing, and hit some clunkers, and sing anyway.