Sing And See is an advanced singing software program that visualizes the voice on-screen as you sing, allowing you to discover breaks in the voice, unevenness in vibrato and pitch and work to correct them with a strong visual aid.
Here’s a video of Sing and See in action:
Sing & See was developed in Australia by a team of scientists and engineers who partnered with singing teachers to put together a practical vocal feedback tool. Singing in tune is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for a singer. Psychological research has shown that the more senses and emotions you involve in learning, the more effective and long-term the learning is. For singers learning how to sing in tune via conventional methods, there is almost no visual component to the process. Sing and See involves the visual area of the brain in the processing of pitch, vibrato and tone. This may seem counterintuitive but in fact musical prodigies often experience a crossover and comingling of the senses, or synaesthesia, which allows them to “see” music in their minds eye.
The Sing And See interface is shown below:
In this interface, you can tell if you’re singing in tune or not by the change in color on the piano keyboard, the stave and also by the graph, which indicates the “history” of your sung note. As you can see, the graph shows when your pitch fluctuates up or down and gives you an immediate visual cue if you are singing out of tune.
As a voice teacher and performer, I firmly believe that every voice teacher should have one of these in their vocal studio. The truth is that many individuals are visual learners and “linking” their ear to their eyes can be extremely effective in speeding up learning and allaying frustration at not being able to hear minute details right away.
Sing and See is also extremely useful at helping you negotiate your passaggio, or vocal break. I personally have experience with this type of software (I don’t know if it was Sing And See in particular). I visited the Florida State University voice department where they have this kind of technology and discovered that I wasn’t making a proper transition to my head voice which resulted in a wide, uneven vibrato and poor overtone profile. This sparked a journey to unify my vocal registers which I’m still not at the end of!
Although they don’t really advertise this fact, it seems to me that Sing and See would be extremely helpful for any musician, singer or not, in improving their musicianship. When you sing an interval on Sing & See, it will show you accurately you make the jump between notes. Do you tend to overreach and sing sharp or come short and sing flat? An example is below:
In addition, you can also play the virtual keyboard on this singing software.
From the perspective of a singing student, my teacher creds aside, I believe that this kind of singing software is a force multiplier in terms of learning singing quickly. Why do I say that? I’ve done a lot of “modeling” of super successful individuals in various fields be it singing, marketing, sports, etc., and one common characteristic that they all share is that they find ways to monitor themselves objectively. In the world of learning how to sing this translates to recording your lessons and practice sessions, getting honest feedback from a competent vocal coach and leveraging powerful singing software such as Sing & See. The person who knows they are making a mistake can fix it while the one who doesn’t may never realize it and wil continue making the error. Honest feedback is golden.
Sing & See costs $49 for the student version and $99 for the professional version and is available for both Mac and PC. Thanks for reading this Sing and See Review!
