Changing the key for a beginner

[Pinthetail]

Hello, I'm new here and hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I have always enjoyed singing but without the guidance of a singing teacher I'm a bit stuck atm. I just want to get friends and family together for a sing along at some point. Christmas would be nice but we'll see where the virus takes us.

To explain things, when I am singing along with other people, say, happy birthday, the women sing a few notes too high for me but the men sing a few notes too low for me. (I am female btw) How can I find something that works for me? It's easy enough to change the key of the song but I seem to have difficulty finding where I should be singing, maybe I need to increase my range? I feel happier and enjoy singing more when I sing lower. Also when I do change the key of a song I find it tricky to sing without playing the vocal line first and then it takes some time to sink in properly. Is that something that will come with practice or am I missing something?

thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope I've explained myself properly 

[Felipe Carvalho]

Hello, it comes with practice, the essential part is to keep trying to find your way to it, playing the line first and trying to get it right on the context of the harmony is a good practice for it.

The issue is, when you are singing with others you will all have to be on the same key, otherwise it is going to be chaos, so a good idea would be to study the idea of musical scales and transposing the melody line within the scale, this way you can sing a 3rd bellow for example. And this is very different for our perception compared to moving the whole harmony up/down.

I hope it helps!

[Pinthetail]

Hello, thanks for your reply. I will see what I can find about transposing within a scale and I guess I need to practice more too. The more I try to learn the more I realise I don't know!

Is you tube a good place to go or are there other resources I should be exploring? I have always kept my music to myself and I think this has limited my learning, even as far as knowing where to look for the information.