How To Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice

Learning to play new pieces can be difficult, but with the right tools and determination it can be a lot easier than you would think!

Mimicry

When starting out on a new instrument, many people get stuck in a loop of looking for answers outside of themselves, and fail to realize that they have already learned how to play an instrument using mimicry once in their lives: their voice.

You may not “sing” but you learned to make all of those incredible sounds called words in your mother tongue by listening to the sounds around you and copying them through a lot of trial and error, and of course, being immersed in it as a child. Those strings of words include meter, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, and all of the expressions we find in music. The people around you didn’t show you a picture of the inside of your mouth and say, “put your tongue here”. It wasn’t taught visually. You just mimicked. You are already a master copy-cat when it comes to sound. Your brain was perfectly developed and equipped for it by the time you were about five years old. And you can tap into that power to learn whatever instrument you are trying to learn.

If you can sing it, you can play it

In my first year of university, my Jazz 101 teacher made all of us learn to sing solos from various jazz giants a cappella. It didn’t matter what instrument we played. Yes, even the drummers had to get up and sing these solos. He would give us a week to lift a solo, whether it was a sax solo, a piano solo, or a trumpet solo, and then have us stand up in groups of three or four people and sing it without the music behind us. I realized later, as I furthered my practice, just how much power this had. The difference I see between the students who sing what they are trying to learn and those that don’t is blatant. When someone finally starts singing the part they are trying to play, they figure it out a lot faster. Singing the part connects you to your body, and to your aural abilities in a conscious physical way. It engages you in active listening - so that you are really paying attention to what the part is. You can’t sing a part unless you have really listened to it. This helps you to internalize it. If you have internalized it, it is much easier to bring that out of your body again into the instrument you are trying to learn.

For example, if I learn to sing a Miles Davis solo by heart - or even just an 8 bar phrase - I will have listened to it, actively, enough times for me to memorize it so that I can actually sing it. If I am trying to play this on the guitar, I will hear that solo so clearly in my head that I will be able to slow it down and figure it out note by note on the fretboard. Once I have mimicked my voice, by matching the notes on the guitar, I will notice that the way I am playing it on the guitar, assuming I am a beginner, doesn’t sound quite as fluid as the original. So, then I can start to practice it by singing small chunks of that 8 bar phrase and trying to get my guitar to sound the way I think it should sound to most accurately represent the trumpet phrase.
 

Everyone can sing

Some people love to say, “Oh I can’t sing." This is simply not true. You may not like to sing, but you can sing. I have had hundreds of students in the past 12 years, and dozens have told me that they can’t sing, and I was able to get all of them singing in tune within five minutes, with the exception of one. That one particular student was deaf in one ear, suffered from the front of her face being numb so she couldn’t feel the vibration of her lips, and had grown up her whole life believing she couldn’t sing. Her parents didn’t sing. She was told she was hopeless as a child … and we had her singing in tune in ten minutes. Her voice was shaky, and she struggled to find notes in the beginning, but when she relaxed and really listened, she could sing in tune. Her voice was just so unused, and the connection between what she was hearing and what she was trying to sing was so weakened that it just took a little more work. But she could do it!

Take some time and connect to your voice. Go slow. Everyone can sing. Pick single notes on a piano or a guitar and try to find them with your voice. Let yourself “suck” and just try to match what you are hearing.
 

Drummers

"How do I sing it as a drummer?” you may ask. Beatbox. This is how I learned to play drums early on, and I only realized it years later. You don’t have to be a great beatboxer. Just pick sounds in your mouth to match different drum sounds - start with the old "boots and cats” approach if you have never beat boxed before, and maybe one day you’ll be able to do this:

Work out the different parts of the rhythm with your voice first. Sing just the hi-hat part and then figure out how to play that. Then sing just the bass and snare and figure out how to play that, and then slowly put it all together.
 

Technique

Sometimes technique, or rather the lack of it, can feel like the biggest roadblock to this process, but here’s the thing: trying to mimic the sound will change and grow your techniques! If you are playing something and it doesn’t sound like what you are trying to mimic (which you have now learned to sing) then change what you are doing until it does! Stay curious. You will discover new techniques this way; your own techniques. This is YOUR expression of yourself.
 

Start Simple

Pick pieces of music initially that appeal to you, but sound like they won’t be too difficult to figure out. You want to build momentum in your practice. If you pick something that plays a million notes at a million miles an hour, when you are still struggling with the basic techniques of your instrument, you will get frustrated fast. Try to pick something that will challenge you but is doable for your skill level. It may be hard to navigate these waters at first, but you’ll get there.

Just remember, you are already a master mimicker, so just be patient, stay curious, and keep trying new things when it’s not working. Your ears telling you it doesn’t sound right is a good thing! It means you can hear the difference, and soon enough, with tenacity and determination, you will get it sounding the way you want it.