A "pitch perfect" singing voice

Grannyknot - Personally my favourite singer is Nat King Cole. I love his velvety liquid chocolate voice. Matt Monro had a lovely voice but I found him a bit boring. Quite a few others with amazing voices too. Dean Martin, Vic Damone, Mel Torme, Buddy Greco, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Darin to name a few and of course Frank Sinatra. Nowadays I suppose Michael Buble, Harry Connick Junior, Lionel Richie and not sure if you've heard Seth McFarlane (who does the voices for Family Guy cartoon and is brilliant) and Kevin Spacey sing? They are excellent. I'm sure there are many more. Look them up on YouTube.

In tune, out of tune, pitch, octaves, keys - I don't 'get' what people mean. Last week I was at a choral society concert and I thought the choir sang amazingly well - truly exquisite singing; so imagine my surprise when I was later informed the the pianist had had a couple of 'blackout' moments and that the choir had been completely thrown. I didn't notice a thing!

Maybe my lack of critical understanding is why local choristers are usually glad to see me in the audience.

It is like art, ga You can enjoy the effect of a painting or a performance without knowing the detail of colour mixing, completely ignorant of primary and secondary colours, saturation, hue, tints and shades and so on. If you are doing it as a career it is a bit different, and if you are teaching someone else to do it you need to be able to describe to them just what they need to change to get a different effect.

I suppose perfect pitch is like being able to achieve an exact unadulterated colour match with no traces of unwanted cast. That is not an easy task, as different pigments have different qualities. Mixing them can give a result you were not bargaining for.

Some of it is down to experience, but a lot is in the ability of the ear (or eye) and the brain to perceive a difference, and the vocal cords and oral configuration (or the selection of pigments in the paintbox) to reproduce it

I can sing more or less in tune but my voice isn't melodious. I joined a choir where it was stressed that being able to sing was not a criteria. I stuck it out for three sessions but gave up when the woman next to me and another woman sang in perfect pitch voices and sounded like angels.

When our group does a gig, we are very rarely pleased with our performance and have a post-mortem afterwards. However hopefully our audience doesn't notice. Our trouble is that once we get a number off perfect, we get bored with it and try something more complex.

Falconbird, as said before, having " perfect pitch" just means you can sing any note on demand, not how nice your voice sounds.
Our chorus master could listen to a choir of 150, and say that someone in, say, 2nd sopranos was singing an A natural instead of an A sharp. If the miscreant put their hand up, no more was said, but if not, he'd name and shame ( in the nicest possible way!)
One of my party pieces was sung unaccompanied, but I always had to get my starting note from the pianist. She also used to pointedly play the note I should have finished on, as I was usually just a teenie wee bit off! So, no perfect pitch here.

pease thanks will check out the Family Guy guy.

Apparently Michael Jackson had perfect pitch, as did Ella Fitzgerald. And Jimi Hendrix, who kind of "learned" it through practice.

Another thing which makes for a good performer is holding the beat. My son in law's mother, a music teacher, said that was the best judge of whether a child is musical, as from the age of one some babies can clap and keep perfect time.

When you sing in a choir a good choirmaster can sing A and the choir goes up and down the scales. HE/She has to be able to do it.
Nothing makes an ordinaary voice melodious but this voice without a very good sense of pitch will never develope.

Apart from Pavarotti there was Ella Fitzgerald and of course Michael Jackson. his timing was marvellous.

Yes, there are other things involved in being a good performer than perfect pitch, and a good performer doesn't always need perfect pitch.

I remember our piano tuner who was blind - when he had finished tuning the piano he would play the most marvellous scales and chords right up and down the range. However, when I (as a small child) asked him to play some tunes he said he couldn't play music, he could just ripple through the scales and manage the chords.

For all you so called "non singers who think you are supposedly tone deaf, it's probably not the case and you just need to "practise" more Tone deaf people speak in a monotone voice and it's very difficult to teach them to sing. I'm sure I'd have difficulty teaching Andy Murray to sing. As for you others, just sing and enjoy it!

Celeste22, I always remember our music teacher at school telling us that very few people are tone deaf, and she gave us your example!

You mean Andy Murray was around when you were at school, Daddima?

Ana, after I'd written it, I realised my mistake!

( Mind you, I am only 27, so it's possible!)

I'm not tone deaf, but tell that to my voice. I can sing in a group, it's either that having someone sing in tune next to me helps or, most likely, I just get drowned out. (a couple of pints help)

If I can tell that someone is slightly off-key does that mean I have perfect pitch, even if I can't sing?
[hopeful]

If you are concerned about being tone deaf, take this test :-

tonedeaftest.com/

Thanks Wobbly - I'm a 100 percent NOT tone deaf but I don't have a lovely singing voice. I wonder why this is.

100% not tone deaf
but I still can't sing

I can hit the right note but do not have a nice clear voice!

I can hit a note, but which one ????

My MIL apparently has/had a pitch perfect singing voice. Personally, being able to achieve every note up and down the scale smoothly sounds much nicer. She trained to sing opera and thought she was the bees knees bless her, it sounded ruddy awful to me personally and warbled rather than sang. I guess that's what they were used to back then though.

1974cookie >>Will someone please explain why it is so wrong for a woman to whistle <<

Does anyone remember the girl who used to whistle on Crackerjack? She was on quite a few times. I think her name was Jackie (like mine, which is why I remember)

I don't know why it is wrong - I used to whistle a lot when I was a child and DM used to recite that rhyme to me mentioned above:
'A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men'

It sounds as if men want the monopoly on whistling.