When the sopranos are so out of tune
  • Ceci
    Posts: 1
    So I started in a new post, and the choir is very depleted - a lot of the good singers in the female sections left when I started unfortunately. I have 3 sopranos but they are very out of tune - one lady should be an alto but she is refusing to move - she says she 'cant sing low' but when she tries to sing high it pulls the other 2 down. I'm trying to recruit new members but no luck so far. Am feeling pretty downhearted to be honest - everything we do sounds awful. Am thinking maybe do 3-part things and join the altos and sopranos in a mid-range. Any advice gratefully received!
  • TCJ
    Posts: 1,034
    If the sopranos are truly out of tune, maybe it's time to focus on pitch control rather than practicing specific music. When I took over one of my choirs, half the people in it had serious pitch control issues so I spent a lot of time each practice working on that. It garnered much better results for Sunday singing than purely focusing on the music at hand.
  • francis
    Posts: 11,175
    How many members and members per part? Do you have full SATB?
  • Musicguy57
    Posts: 22
    Check their breathing and work on placement. If they are singing without support and/or are not connected to their "head voice", they are sure to be out of tune. When this happens, the singers don't hear that they are out of tune. There are some simple exercises that you can use that can be fun (and funny) that could help.
  • AbbysmumAbbysmum
    Posts: 105
    I also agree that working on placement and tuning vs learning repertoire is probably needed.

    Is it the upper part of their range that is always out of tune i.e. are they mostly in tune in the lower part, in their mixed and chest voices? If so, selecting different repertoire until you get it sorted out (or in a different key if possible, depending on how much it impacts the other sections) might be a good idea.
  • monasteryliturgistmonasteryliturgist
    Posts: 508
    something I found that really helps is telling the them to look down when trying to hit a high range and look up when trying to hit a low range. I dont know why but it works. For some reason, naturally we do the opposite and in effect, I find that when hitting high notes we tend to go higher than we should and in low notes, lower than we should and this is especially an issue with soprani for one reason or the other.
  • marta_866
    Posts: 3
    If it's still working, as others have said, working on your placement is crucial. Sometimes, if you're not an expert, it would be a good idea to seek help from a vocal technique teacher. But look for the head registers in both highs and lows, to prevent them from falling (calamento).

    Anyway, if there's no solution, or while you're looking for one, a last resort could be to transpose the songs slightly, a half step or a whole step (I hope you don't have perfect pitch, because if you do, this could be very difficult). This way, even a contralto (though it would be necessary to determine if that's truly the case or if it's simply a lack of technique; with practice, vocal range always increases) could reach soprano notes.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • probe
    Posts: 62
    I moved a piece down a tone (PIMS Fr. Robert Mehlhart starts Sanctus VIII on F, we start at Eb) because the majority of my chant (not SATB) group are altos rather than sopranos. It helps a bit but I'm just beginning and need to revise all the lessons I once had on breathing and support to help pitch stability. A problem of being an amateur conductor is that I don't notice when pitch gradually falls during an unaccompanied piece, only when I play the starting note again at the end. Pragmatically, if there's no pitch disagreement in the choir, chant is monophonic and the congregation are not going to have absolute pitch, so as we say here, it's not a mortaller.

    Earlier advice:
    https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/11837/choral-pitch-going-flat-advice/p1

    Many choir directors have blog posts on this topic, eg
    https://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2013/10/help-how-to-deal-with-choir-members-who.html
    Thanked by 2Abbysmum CHGiffen
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    Another problem is that many voices that are assigned to the soprano parts are mezzos, which is the most common female voice register, rather than true soprano or contralto. (There's a mirror image of this with baritones assigned to tenor parts in men's voice register.)
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen MatthewRoth
  • rvisser
    Posts: 81
    One thing I have noticed with older female singers is that moving them from soprano to alto isn't the viable solution that I thought it was (I'm assuming your out-of-tune sopranos are older...if not this might not be relevant). The aging voice is a real thing, and they do lose part of their range, especially in the bottom register. I tried to get one of my sopranos to move down to alto, but discovered she doesn't have notes in her chest register. I am mid-30s, but I recently had a conversation with my mom, who is in her 70s and sings in her parish choir, and she has also completely lost her alto range and can only sing in her higher register (but not above the staff). She is a competent organist and singer, but the notes just aren't there anymore.
    My solution is to pitch repertoire where my sopranos can sing it comfortably, which means I mostly avoid notes above a D or E, and ask them to omit any notes that are uncomfortable. I also have a few boy sopranos in my choir, and I let them sing them high notes while the rest of us look on in amazement as they sing above the staff with no effort at all, lol...
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen Roborgelmeister
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