How to Sing in Tune: A Practical Guide to Better Pitch.

Use Simple Scales

Pitch is a trainable skill. There is no yes or no to pitch, just better and worse. You can improve your pitch by developing your musical skills, listening more often to music, and doing vocal exercises. Start simple: choose a note, play it on your instrument, listen to it, and try to sing it. Match the note as best as you can with your voice. You don’t need to sing it as loudly as the instrument. Just match the pitch and make sure it sounds close.
Try the next note up and sing that. The wider you make the interval between notes in your practice, the harder it will be for your ear to match them. Build up from there.
Next, use those pitches and sing a scale. Try to sing a simple set of notes in sequence, slowly. If you’re singing a melody, try not to rush. Singing slowly gives you time to:

• Hear what note you’re actually singing.
• Know the pitch you need to start the scale at.
• Know whether your voice is steady on a pitch or not.
  When you get better at these, try going a little faster. Pitch comes from control and that’s easier to accomplish at a slower tempo. Singing scales is useful because the pitches are predictable, as they go up and down a set path. Once you know how to smoothly sing scales, you’ll have a much better foundation for tackling more complex pitch patterns.

Do Not Push Your Voice

Pitch problems might be tension issues, or they might be caused by a lack of pitch control. Singing notes that are too low or high for your voice will cause you to tense up and force your voice. That will make you pitchy and unstable.
If you try to sing a pitch and feel like you’re straining, don’t keep going. If it feels awkward, it probably isn’t a note that works well with your voice.

Practice Short Sessions Regularly

Practice often, but not necessarily for a long time. Rather than a long, exhausting session, try spending a few minutes on matching notes or singing pitch exercises that make you feel in control. Over time, you’ll build up coordination between your vocalization and your ear.
There are two important skills to learn that are connected to pitch: hearing a note correctly and coordinating your voice with that note. These take practice.

Make Pitch Part of Your Musical Practice

If you know a song that works well for your voice and you feel comfortable in control while singing it, try adding pitch in. Start from the top of the song and play a starting pitch for each phrase. Use that note to help you sing the first pitch accurately. Then sing the whole phrase.

• When you drift off pitch, stop singing.
• Go back to the starting note for the phrase.
• Listen to the note on the instrument.
• Sing the phrase again from the beginning.
  This can be frustrating at first, but it will help your ear develop faster if you correct mistakes immediately instead of trying to sing through them.
  Record yourself while you’re doing this exercise. Listen back to the recording and evaluate your pitch. You will likely hear notes that you didn’t notice while you were singing. These notes might have been flat, sharp, or unstable.
  Try singing scales or vocal exercises along with real songs to help you feel what it’s like to sing pitches correctly. When you’re singing without scales or instruments, your brain is calculating pitches without you realizing it. Using this knowledge consciously will help your voice sound better when you aren’t thinking about it as much.

Better Pitch Comes From Training

Pitch is not something you are or aren’t naturally gifted with. Pitch is a skill that gets better with training and practice. You’ll get more comfortable hearing pitch, and you’ll be able to control your voice better when you sing.
Sing along with recordings of other singers. Listen to them and copy their sounds, melodies, rhythms, and pitches. If you can sing a song that sounds really close to the original, you have good pitch matching. You’ll be able to apply this to other melodies and songs with more practice.