Estimated reading time 4 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Are you having issues with singing in tune? Do you want help improving your choir intonation? One of the main features of choir music is the beautiful harmonies. However, they only stay beautiful when you sing in tune. Keep reading to learn how to improve your choir intonation.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission from purchases made through the links. I’ll only recommend products I use, use in lessons, or ones my students or colleagues have recommended.
How to Improve Your Choir Intonation: What Is Intonation?
It’s when you fine-tune your pitch so it sounds correct with the other vocalists.
[Intonation is] the degree to which pitch is accurately produced in performance, especially among players in an ensemble. (The New Harvard Dictionary of Music 402)
Choir intonation has two components.
- How you tune melodies is different from how you tune harmonies.
- Why? Because you can directly compare notes when locking in your harmonies. However, melodic intonation is a function of your memory, because you can’t directly compare notes in a melody.
- Therefore, you need two ear training routines to help master singing melodies in tune.
How to Improve Your Choir Intonation: Harmonic Intonation
How do I match pitches?
- Get a short run of PVC pipe or a short garden hose and put one end to your ear while singing into the other end.
- Why do this? Because bone conduction will make your pitches sound lower when traveling through bone rather than the air.
- However, the PVC pipe will help you hear the correct pitches without bone conduction complicating things.
Try this pitch matching exercise.
- Click the soundtrack button below and sing your pitch against the keyboard’s note using an oh vowel.
- Next, swing your note above and below your target pitch, narrowing your swing until you can match your target pitch.
- The ‘wah-wah-wah’ sound between your voice and the soundtrack is called beating.
- Listen for the beating because it’ll help you fine-tune the note.
- Make the beating disappear, and you’ll be in tune.
Keyboard Tone:
Good choir intonation is a vital component of choir blend.
- The next step is to learn how to sing notes within the choir’s harmony.
- When vocalists lock into the notes of the choir’s harmony, it makes the ensemble’s tone color sound vibrantly alive.
- Developing good listening skills is an essential first step toward being able to harmonize effectively.
Use the specially tuned sing-along soundtracks at these links to help you master harmonizing.
- Singing Exercises with Harmony
- Ear Training Exercises for Harmonizing
- Singing Major and Minor Harmonies
- How to Harmonize in Minor Keys
- Singing 7th Chords
As you sing with the soundtracks in these posts, make sure you practice without vibrato, because vibrato covers over beating. However, it’s fine to use vibrato at a performance.
The flipside of the coin is that controlling your tone color (i.e., your vowels) will help your intonation.
Singing with the soundtracks in these posts will help you produce vowels that will improve your tone and tuning.
- Performing Schwa Vowels
- Performing Tongue Vowels
- Performing Lips Vowels
- How to Produce R-Controlled Vowels
- An Easy How to Guide for Performing Diphthongs
In addition, the “singing into the mask” exercises will greatly aid your vocal tone regardless of which vowel you’re producing.
Mobile users: for best results viewing the videos, rotate your screen 90o to the right.
Video: How to Sing into the Mask
How to Improve Your Choir Intonation: Melodic Intonation
You can use solfege to help improve your melodic intonation.
- Solfege doesn’t help with learning how to harmonize, for which you’d need to directly compare notes between different parts.
- However, it does help you establish your mental pitch template for melodies.
- It does this by helping you remember the distances between the notes of a scale.
For more information on solfege:
Also, it’s important to learn how to sing with a supported tone.
- Put your hand on your stomach. Can you feel your stomach expand and contract?
- This is your diaphragm muscle, which controls your breathing.
- This muscle allows you to have enough air to support your tone as you sing.
This is why you need to reach low when you go for the high notes.
Likewise, you need to be able to have a high soft palate.
- The soft meaty part at the back of your throat is called the soft palate.
- It doesn’t matter which vowel you’re performing. You need to have an open space at the back of your throat.
- However, be sure that you don’t tighten up your throat as you try to expand your soft palate. Keep it high but relaxed.
Video: Pitch Accuracy and Vowels
These books will help you be a better vocalist.
Final Thoughts
Takeaway Points
- How you tune melody is different from how you tune harmony.
- Therefore, you need two ear training routines to help you be fully in tune.
- So, it’s recommended that you work with the sing along soundtracks to improve your ability to harmonize, and work with solfege to help your melodic intonation.
Have fun performing!
Related Posts
- How to Sing Elegant Opera Arias
- 10 Elements that Impact Singing in Tune
- What’s The Basic Difference Between Falsetto and Chest Voice?
© 2025 Geoffrey Keith
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