App Ed Review
By: Liam Flynn (posted April 28, 2020)
Some people are naturally gifted with incredible voices. Others must work pretty hard to be able to sing even adequately. While lots of people believe they cannot sing, it’s usually not true. Unless you are totally tone deaf, you can sing — you just need to develop the muscular and vocal control that signing requires. Whether you want to pursue music professionally, impress someone you love, or just develop a fun hobby, singing is a great ability for anyone to have. It can bring a lifetime of fun and satisfaction if practiced regularly. With that in mind, below are some of best apps for singers available.
Voice Memos
That’s right, one of the best apps for singers is already installed on your phone! Believe it or not, simply singing and listening back to yourself is one of the best ways to get better. While it can be awkward or even painful to listen to yourself sing, doing it regularly is one of the best ways to become comfortable with it. Using voice memos allows you to analyze where you are on or off key and make adjustments as necessary.
Sing Karaoke
This app is by no means a professional vocal app — but it is a lot of fun. While there are a ton of great methods to improve your vocal skills, one of the best ways is to sing often. The easiest way to do that is to sing songs that you enjoy and are fun for you. This app comes pre-loaded with a ton of popular karaoke songs and is updated regularly. Singing karaoke helps put your vocal practice in a fun and lighthearted mood — which is essential for long-term success. One of the quickest ways to sabotage your progress is to take yourself too seriously.
Vocal Ease
A good vocal warmup can do wonders for any vocalist. If you have never taken formal voice coaching sessions, you probably don’t know how to warm up properly. This app takes care of that by providing you with a handful of helpful exercises from a renowned vocal coach that help you warm your voice up quickly and safely.
7-Minute Vocal Warmup
This app does exactly what it claims to do — warm up your vocal cords in 7 minutes. The free version allows for two routines to go through, while the paid version has more. The user interface isn’t as pleasant as Vocal Ease, but it still gets the job done. Practicing in quick, efficient time blocks is one of the best ways to stay consistent with your vocal warmups.
BACKTRACKIT
This is one of the most helpful apps for creating covers to songs. You can view and download backing tracks from a ton of different genres as well as view the key and chord progressions. Perhaps most helpfully, you can change the key and tempo to fit your voice the best. It also includes a metronome to help you stay on beat. Singing along to music helps give context to your singing and helps you better understand how your vocals interact with music as a whole. Most of the time, you won’t be singing acapella.
Perfect Ear
Perfect ear is an app designed to help you recognize music theory in action and adjust your voice accordingly. Most importantly, it helps you practice by playing tones for you to sing along to. The app helps you recognize scales, notes and chords, as well as rhythm intervals. There’s also a pitch trainer and a built-in note match trainer that will listen to your voice and indicate whether you are singing the right note or not. Being able to recognize notes and intervals is a crucial step for any intermediate or beginning singer.
Sing Harmonies App
Harmony can be extremely tricky to master. It’s hard to practice with other people outside of a formal class context. This app allows you to practice with a four-part harmony and mute or increase the volumes of each harmony. Harmonies help you better understand how your voice functions in a musical context and and how to utilize your voice in a more efficient way.
Vox Tools
Another great basic vocal training app, Vox tools offers a handful of the most fundamental exercises and allows you to practice with scales. The app will play through a few scales on a piano and allow you to sing and match the note to the piano.
Singing Lessons
While it does not have built-in recording software or true warmups, this collection of video tutorials by Howcast is a great resource for anyone looking to increase their skills. The tutorials offer great advice that can be harder to find on the internet.
Vanido
Vanido is one of the most unique vocal apps on the list. It helps you determine your vocal range and voice type, which can be massively helpful for many people. In addition, it offers an alarm clock that signals you to practice at a certain point in the day. When you practice, the app helps you develop your chest, head and foundation voice. The app takes you through scales either on a piano or with a vocal example for you to follow.
Conclusion
I hope you make good use of these apps to aid you on your vocal journey. Whether you are an experienced singer or a total beginner, each of these apps should have something useful to offer. Whichever method you choose, practicing regularly is the best course of action.
Lots of people become discouraged because their voice does not sound like their favorite singer. However, the uniqueness of your voice should encourage you! Some of the world’s most notable artists are those who have owned the unique qualities of their voice. However your voice sounds, own it! Make it the best it can be while still sticking to its original form.
-Liam Flynn, Founder and Editor of MusicGrotto.com – an online music instructional blog.
