The singer of the band has the privilege of having the toughest job. Usually, they are the people who make or break a band. Really, when you listen to a piece of music, instrumentation and beat mistakes can often go by unnoticed, but the vocalists (especially the lead) are often under close scrutiny. Unconsciously, people pay more attention to the person singing than anything else. (Of course you could choose to listen more closely to the drums or the guitar or the piano, but I did say unconsciously) For that reason, singers really deserve a lot of respect.

There are few defining aspects of a singer, and many more criteria (which I shan’t talk about) that must be met for one to be considered good. By my standards, anyone who can sing with pitch accuracy and consistency, is one who can sing. This forms the most basic of all criteria.

I find that people who can accomplish this are rare to come by, so if you know someone who has this ability, you ought to respect him/her a bit more (get him or her to sing for you more). And no, digital enhancement doesn’t count. I have even lesser respect for people who get their voices enhanced when in reality they cannot sing, than people who genuinely cannot sing and still do.

Additionally, I believe that people are born with the above ability. If you’re like me who can’t even fulfil the most basic requirement of singing notes accurately, you’re not destined to sing (so quit trying and embarrassing yourself). At least that’s what I believe. Training only helps improve your current skill, like raising lung capacity, practising pitch variation, etc.

This only makes singers all the more rarer. Indeed there are musicians who are born with natural ability, and they progress rapidly in mastering the instrument. But I estimate about 90% of the time musicians were simply trained or taught their instrument, whether they are naturally good at it or not.

All singers have a preferred range, but I think the really good ones have a large range. Knowing one’s range is important because it determines how the rest of the instruments will play. If you write your own music, that’s fine. But if you, like many start-up bands out there, are playing cover songs of existing music, you’ll need to find music that suits the singer’s range. Alternatively, you could resort to transposing, which is a pain in the … That is why having a large range is convenient, although this is not so much an issue as compared to my first criteria.

I think it hurts one’s ego to find out if one possesses the ability to sing, because most of the time it’s a “no”. The way I found out about my inability was when I recorded myself singing and listened to it again. It was worst than a broken record. It shattered my delusion that I could sing.

Most of the time, when you sing, you can’t hear yourself, and so you think you’re singing in pitch when you really aren’t. Which is why a lot of people don’t feel particularly embarrassed singing, because they simply can’t tell that they are not singing in pitch.

So I learnt that I can’t sing, and I rarely oblige when people ask me to sing to avoid totally making a fool of myself. It is really unfortunate that I cannot sing, but I still find singing to be tons and tons of fun. So when no one’s around, in front of the computer or along empty streets, I’ll be singing. Softly.