Now your computer can teach you to sing

Anyone who caught BBC One’s Can’t Sing Singers caterwauling their way through countless pop classics will know that the oft-touted belief that anyone can be taught to sing is all just lies. You can at least be taught to sing less terribly, however. But months of private tuition just to get to the stage where you can hold a note is going to cost. Far easier instead to place your musical learning in the hands of a bit of software, so that after a few days of trying you can file it on the shelf next to your teach-yourself-guitar and needlepoint for beginners discs and get on with your tuneless existence.

Carry-A-Tune’s Singing Coach has got all sorts of features designed to let you know just how hopeless your case really is.

A pitching feature shows you just how far away from the correct note you are, while tuition modules give you advice on warming up and the basics of singing – although without someone there to hold your stomach, urging you to “breathe into your abdomen!!,” we’re not sure just how effective that will be. You get given scores for your singing technique, which can then be saved onto a high score board, although presumably you’re only competing against yourself and not the computer. Unfortunately, Carry-A-Tune may help you to hit a note, but it can’t give you Rhythm or Soul. Hopefully those CDs will be out next…

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