Important to consider when singing….

To choose a key or overlook it?! I’m gonna tell you why it matters.

Many times you just need to sing in the perfect key for you! Because even average singers sound better in “Their” key.

A lot of people want to sing. And a lot of people can’t. That’s true. Many more people can sing, but feel pretty average about it. They sing with good pitch control, and tone, and have good timing, but they choose to tackle songs where they don’t adjust the key to more appropriately fit their vocal range. They don’t give themselves the advantage of letting their unique voice shine comfortably. 

I believe everyone can sing. It's really how you're thinking about it. Are you thinking about it properly?  There are low, medium, and high voice registers that people are born with. With proper training a singer can extend the range of their singing ability higher or lower, within reason. If you're a bass singer, you can’t become a tenor, but you’d be surprised how much training can affect. 

Certain songs, with certain notes at certain frequencies(in hertz’s) are going to be easier or harder for any individual singer with different natural ability, skill, or genre expertise. So selecting the proper starting place for your voice is going to be an important pre-requisite of attempting any new song.

*One of the key(no pun intended) aspects of singing well, is selecting the proper key to sing a song in.

I’m not going to go into all the scientific stuff involved in ranging your voice for a particular song. I’ll link an article to that here: https://www.iconcollective.edu/how-to-pick-the-key-for-a-song but I’m going to tell you a personal story as to why it’s important.

Let me tell you about the time I was singing at church and this whole singing in proper key concept came to me. I had volunteered to be on the singing team for a youth group at my church. There was myself(with a male tenor voice(high for a guy) and two other singers, both girls and one a soprano(super high female voice), the other girl was an alto(much lower female voice that I sing higher than). We had already sung a few songs and were coming to the end of the service, but had one more song to go. Now mind you. We hadn’t practiced for this service, it was simply a last minute, “Hey Ben, would you like to come help us sing” kind of thing. And so, with this next song, I didn’t know what to expect, although I knew the song and had sung it before. I thought to myself, “ok, I’ve got this, I've sung this before”. Only one problem. The soprano singer girl had decided to change the song into a higher key than I was familiar with, and given that I had been hanging with her alright all service, I thought I'd just try to match her voice and attack the notes in the chorus of the song the same way. Had I known what was coming, I would have stuck to the low notes on the song and tried to harmonize with her voice. I didn't, however, and when it came to the highest notes of the chorus, I tried to go there, and it became SUPER clear and obvious that I didn’t have the range.  As I attempted the notes my voice started to crack, become weak, and sounded out of tune for everyone within the speakers earshot to hear. It was embarrassing!!! I felt as if I couldn’t sing at that moment. 

This was a hard lesson I had to experience, on choosing the right key to sing in, and how I should sing when I’m singing in a less favorable key for MY voice.  A female soprano voice singing their high notes is the wrong key for me to try to match. Yeah I can sing harmony lower to compliment a voice like that, but never to compete with it as far a high range goes. It's just not how I am wired.

*Key Change Tool: THE CAPO!

The capo raises or lowers the pitch on a guitar's strings allowing a guitar player to easily use the same chord shapes and still change to the appropriate key for the singer's voice.

Here’s an interesting article about using a capo to assist acoustic guitar players and singers:

how-to-use-a-capo-to-make-your-singing-easier

*Get a third party opinion

If you would like to chat with me about a song that you're going to be performing, then I’d be happy to use a guitar, look at the music, and work with your voice to determine the best possible key for your voice in your performance of the song. You can email me at bmusic1770@gmail.com if you're interested.

To wrap this post up:

Don’t be discouraged, be encouraged, not everyone’s voice is the same, everyone’s voice is unique! Start by picking the right key to sing the song in and if it's a must that the song be sung in the original key that it was written and originally performed in(which is not always a big deal), then start there and do some vocal warmups to determine how your going to sing when the song gets to its highest or lowest points, or maybe, sing a lower or higher line instead. Maybe you want to entrust the singing to someone you know. Most of all, just be aware of this!!!! Or maybe just go for it like I did! Facepalm. 

Happy Singing!

Written by Ben Harris, Freelance Music Writer and Musician 9-15-2025