We’ve written about how to measure singing improvement: for example pitch accuracy and range. This conversation is about things measurement can’t capture. Linor Oren is a professional singer and vocal coach with more than twenty years of teaching, and the author of Sing Anyway. The answers below are drawn from that book and approved by Linor.
What “good singer” actually means
Let’s start with the big one: what makes someone a good singer?
When I ask someone to name a singer who gives them chills and tell me what makes them great, nobody ever says “the way they engage their pelvic floor.” They say: they’re so real, they make me feel something, they’re completely committed. A good singer, to me, is someone who sings a song like they mean it and lets the audience decide what to do with it. Technique matters, because it clears away the things that block that. But it’s the means, not the point.
Most people assume a good singer is someone who sings in tune. How do you view that?
It isn’t the whole story. Plenty of people sing perfectly in tune and leave a room cold. While plenty of singers with a slightly wobbly note move everyone to tears. So pitch is far from the whole story. For beginners it’s harmful to attach their identity to pitch. Too often, they hear one off note and decide they can’t sing. Such a shame. Again, the audience doesn’t necessarily care. And second, you can improve singing in tune, as Singing Carrots knows all about.
What’s the difference between a technically good singer and a singer people actually want to listen to?
An agent who represented opera singers once told me she’d interviewed jury members after a run of auditions. They told her they didn’t hire on flawless execution but hired the singers who had moved them. Humans are empathetic creatures, even professionals in a jury, haha. If you feel it, they feel it.
Even the jury admitted they didn’t hire opera singers based on flawless execution.
Pitch, the most measurable part
How much does pitch actually matter?
It matters, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. And it’s one of the three things almost everyone struggles with, alongside high notes and a voice that feels small. But in my experience pitch is rarely the actual problem. It’s usually a symptom. When a note comes out flat, the question I ask isn’t “how do I push it up?” It’s “what’s tight?”
What does “singing in tune” really mean? Is it black and white?
The note is correct or it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean you should be aiming at it like a target. I tell this all the time to my students, and it goes against every instinct: don’t correct your pitch in real time. I call the part of your brain that controls pitch “George,” and George is not under your conscious control. The moment you think “that was flat, push it up,” you’ll likely engage throat muscles that have nothing to do with pitch, and you create tension around the very spot George is trying to work. Learn the melody cold, trust George, and if a note’s off, ask what’s tight around your throat. What about your posture could you improve.
If someone takes a pitch accuracy test and scores poorly, what should they take from that?
Take it as information, not identity. One reading on one day is just that: one reading. Do not conclude you’re a bad singer, and please don’t conclude you’re tone deaf. In over two decades of teaching I have never met a truly tone-deaf person. If you can hear that you’re off, you’re not tone deaf. What a low score usually tells me is that something’s in the way. Tension somewhere in your body, or you’re singing in a key that’s not right for you, or it’s a melody you don’t fully know yet. All of that is fixable. Your score is a starting line, not a diagnosis.
Editor’s note: Linor’s “one reading is one reading” has a data-side companion. Sergey’s guide to how to measure singing improvement explains why a single pitch score is noisy — it shifts with warm-up, fatigue, and your microphone — and why the trend across weeks, not one number, is what to trust.
When someone struggles with pitch, is it usually a hearing problem or a control problem?
Almost always control. Look up Pfordresher and Brown, or Hutchins and Peretz. They find that people who sing off-key usually hear the pitch just fine. The breakdown is between the ear and the vocal cords. As I said, in my experience, the culprit is almost always muscle tension stopping the tiny muscles inside the voice box from doing their job.
Editor’s note: That’s the short version. For the full breakdown — the research, the physical causes, and what to do about each — see Why do you sing out of pitch?.
Is a pitch accuracy test a useful thing for a beginner to do?
Yes. If pitch awareness is a bigger challenge for you than the occasional off note, you need to train ‘George’ alongside your technique, and a tool that shows you on screen whether you’re hitting the note turns that into a game. One caveat: do it in parallel with working on freedom and tension, not instead of it. The test tells you where you are. It doesn’t tell you why.
Editor’s note: The tool Linor describes is the Singing Carrots pitch accuracy test. It’s free, takes about two minutes. It gives you the baseline she’s talking about; it doesn’t diagnose why.
Range
Does having a big vocal range make you a better singer?
Nope. Range is a feature, not a grade. Some of the most inspiring singers work in a narrow band and make every note count. Think Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. What matters is being comfortable in the range you have.
Still, most people’s range is bigger than they think, because tension is shrinking it. High notes aren’t physically high; you don’t reach for them, you stop reaching. I should also mention the bridge here, a source of worry for many singers. But everyone has a bridge: those two or three notes where the voice isn’t sure which gear it’s in. Adele and Lady Gaga have a bridge, it’s not a defect. The way through it is counterintuitive: let it crack on purpose a few times, so the fear of it leaves your system. If you don’t know what’s going to come out, you’ll try to control it. But control is exactly what makes those notes unstable.
The way through your bridge is counterintuitive: let it crack on purpose a few times.
Is your range fixed, or can it change?
It changes as tension leaves. My own mother, for example, always “hit a ceiling” during warm-up. The sound just stop. One day she kept going through the silent notes instead of gripping, and the sound came back. She hadn’t found new notes, she’d just stopped blocking herself from going there.
Is it worth knowing your range? And what should you do with that knowledge?
Yes, for one very practical reason: so you can put every song in the right key for you. You’d be amazed how many “pitch problems” vanish the moment a song sits where your voice lives.
Also: there’s no rule that says you must sing a song in its original key. Freddie Mercury shifted keys on his own songs. So find your range, then use it: if a song feels too high, lower the key; too low, raise it. And another thing. Don’t get hung up on the labels soprano, alto, tenor — unless you’re auditioning for opera. Your voice type becomes obvious once the instrument works properly. Until then, labeling it is like judging the color of a car before you’ve washed the mud off.
Editor’s note: Find your range in about a minute with the vocal range test, then use it exactly as Linor says — to put songs in the key that fits your voice.
Timbre and tone
What is timbre, in plain terms? And why do you think it matters so much?
Timbre is what makes a voice sound like your voice — and what makes it that is resonance. Think of the vocal cords as strings: on their own they make a buzz. What turns that buzz into something with color and warmth is the space it resonates in, mainly the pharynx, at the back of your throat.
And timbre isn’t one fixed thing. The same note can come out round or thin, airy or rich, bright or dark, depending on two things: how much space the sound has to resonate in, and how much air is in it. That’s why timbre matters more to me than range or pitch. It’s the part that’s totally you, and the part you have the most room to play with. It’s also the part most beginners are unknowingly shrinking.
Can you change your timbre, or is it just the voice you were born with?
More than people think. It goes in two stages. First you uncover it: your timbre is already there, and tension hides it. A clenched jaw, a tongue creeping back into the throat, shoulders trying to help — each one closes the resonating space and the sound gets thinner and more effortful. Remove them and the voice you already have comes through, fuller. I find it endlessly surprising that doing less gives you more richness.
Then, once the voice is free, you can shape it. If you want a rounder, richer sound, you want a little less air in it and more space around it. The space comes from keeping the center of the instrument hollow and open; the “less air” comes from a touch of twang. That’s the bright, more focused edge. And a round tone isn’t just depth. It’s depth and brightness together, hollowness and twang at the same time. Once you can make a note several different ways, you get to decide, phrase by phrase, which one the song wants. Timbre then becomes an expressive choice.
How can someone hear the actual quality of their own voice?
You can’t completely, from the inside. You hear yourself through bone conduction and sinus vibration as well as through the room. While your audience hears only the room. That’s why recordings sound strange and thinner than you expect.
Two things help. Record yourself and listen back, however much you hate it. And, more importantly, stop judging by sound and judge by feel. The first question I ask a student after any sound isn’t “how did that sound?” It’s “how did that feel in the throat?” If it feels free and easy, you’re probably on the right track, even if it sounds odd in your head. If it sounds great in your head but your throat is tight, something’s wrong — no matter what your ears say.
Authenticity and intent: what no test measures (yet)
What separates ‘ordinary’ singers from pro singers?
Well, it’s not being on pitch, lol. it’s commitment and the lack of hesitation. Hesitation is the real enemy. It’s the “here we go” pause before the first note, the running commentary while you sing (‘that was bad’). This all manifests as tension, and tension shows up in the voice. Pros just continue, no matter what happens in the world or in their own mind. It’s a projection of success, in a sense.
A friend of mine was at a Plácido Domingo concert where the great tenor ran out of air on the final note of an aria. Instead of breaking, he held the pose — mouth open, eyes blazing, body still completely committed — as if the note were still ringing. My friend didn’t even realize he’d stopped singing until seconds later; the audience saw a man pouring his soul into the music and erupted. That’s the whole thing. He’d stopped making sound and it didn’t matter, because he never stopped committing. Most singers do the opposite — they’re technically fine, but they flinch at the first imperfection and the flinch is what everyone hears.
What do you mean by “intent” when you talk about singing?
Knowing what the song is about, and meaning it. Not the plot but the emotional core. Is the character longing? Protesting? Surrendering? Then you find a real memory of your own that matches, and you hold it while you sing. Your face, your breath, and your voice adjust without you trying.
I had a student, Jim, a gigging musician in his sixties, who was singing at his audience. I asked him to hold a thought of his wife while he sang a love song. Afterwards he said: “People always say I have passion, but I think I just felt it for the first time.” That’s intent.
What does authenticity sound like? How do you know when a singer has it?
You don’t hear it so much as feel it — and so does everyone in the room. Good actors don’t “act”; they find a real feeling and channel it, and the audience believes it because it is real. Singing works the same way. You can’t make an audience feel something. But if you’re genuinely moved by what you’re singing, they’ll be moved too. If you’re having fun, they’ll have fun alongside you. The courage to be vulnerable is what makes a performance unforgettable.
Can a beginner have authenticity before they have technique?
Absolutely! And they can have just as much or more than the trained singer. Leading with technique creates the very tension that stops technique from working. When you’re in the moment, feeling the music and not monitoring yourself, your jaw relaxes and your throat opens on its own; about half of what a teacher would ask for starts happening by itself. The beginner who sings a simple song like they mean it is closer to good singing than the student thinking about tongue positions.
How much of what sounds like “bad singing” is really fear or self-consciousness?
More than almost anyone realizes. I call it the Little Mouse Syndrome: living your life on mute, because somewhere along the way you decided your voice wasn’t worth hearing. It usually starts with one comment — a teacher, a parent, a friend who said it laughing. 74% of the singers on my channel remember that one negative comment vividly.
And the fear doesn’t just stop you singing; it lives in the body, as a tight jaw and held breath, and that is what people hear. Nerves themselves aren’t the enemy. I still get a racing heart before I go on, and if that vanished, so would the meaning.
Consistency, practice, and the path
What separates someone who keeps improving from someone who plateaus?
The ones who keep improving can tolerate what I call the Limbo Zone. When you’re working on one thing, everything else still calls for attention: you’re fixing your jaw, and the sound is still airy. The temptation is to jump ship and fix the airiness, abandoning the jaw work halfway.
Don’t. Work one thing at a time, tolerate the mess, and you’ll often find the other problems have improved on their own, because the muscles are connected. And build from bright spots — find the one thing that already works and multiply it, instead of hammering at what’s wrong. Confidence comes from one little piece of success after the other.
What’s one thing a beginner should stop worrying about — and one thing they should start paying attention to?
Stop worrying about how it sounds in your head, and about getting it “right.” Both create the tension that ruins everything. Start paying attention to how it feels: is your throat free, is your jaw loose. And can you feel the cool spot at the back of your throat when you breathe in? That coolness is your built-in sensor that the resonance is open. Feeling free is a far better guide than sounding good to yourself.
Closing
Can anyone become a good singer?
Barring a rare neurological condition, yes — and “rare” is rarer than people think. The research puts true tone deafness at maybe 5% of people; in more than twenty years I haven’t met one. Age isn’t a cliff either: a 2022 study of nearly a thousand people, aged six to ninety-nine, found singing accuracy stays high right through adulthood — what changes in older singers is muscle control, and muscle control responds to training. My oldest new student was eighty.
Editor’s note: For the science and the real stories behind that answer — what the research says about tone deafness, adult learning, and the beginners who went from zero to one — see Can “Bad Singers” Learn to Sing?.
If someone reading this has been told their whole life they can’t sing — what do you want them to do next?
Put the label through the shredder. Whoever said it — a teacher, a parent, someone laughing — was wrong, or at best describing a seven-year-old. Then make one sound today. A hum, a “brr” with your lips, a line from a song you love. Badly, on purpose. Just to prove you’re allowed. Nobody takes a crayon out of a kid’s hand and tells them drawing isn’t for them. You’ve been holding back something you love. Sing anyway!
Read more
- How to Measure Singing Improvement — the measurable signals, and how Singing Carrots measures them honestly
- Why Do You Sing Out of Pitch? — the causes behind off-key singing, and how to fix them
- Can “Bad Singers” Learn to Sing? — the science and the stories
- Can AI Replace a Vocal Coach? — what an AI coach covers, and what it can’t
- Try it: the pitch accuracy test and the vocal range test