ChoralNet Discussion: Pitch Memory

I found a forum post on ChoralNet from last week that was from a teacher who is having trouble with one of her vocal students in the classroom. She has a beautiful tone, and is making the tone properly, but there is one vital issue - she can't remember pitches after she sings them. The teacher has tried solfege work, during which she can match the patterns and repeat them without issue. She has also tried working on non-syllabled pitches and had her match each one individually, and she again, has no problem. However, when it comes to singing in the ensemble, she goes outside the key when they sing a capella. The student loses the concept of Do, and can't find it again after singing for longer than a single phrase. Even when she sings music she knows, she goes off pitch and doesn't end where she should.

Her question to the forum was - how does she help/what could be causing her issues? When she figures out what the issue is, how, if at all, can she improve this concept?

I thought this was really interesting because when singing in aural skills in first and second year, I struggled a lot with keeping some Do pitches in my head by the end of a solfege sight singing. For me, I thought it was because I have a sort of "go to" pitch in my head for when I think of Do. This was for no particular reason at all, but I usually ended up forgetting the actual Do, and going straight to this one that was embedded in my brain. The teacher posted later after many people had commented with suggestions, and she said she doesn't think that reminding her or maintaining the tonic would help, but I would disagree. This is what helped me the most, I think. If the student has to continuously revert back to Do, they'll remind themselves of what they need to do to remember it more and more often. I think this could make a huge difference. I'm not sure why the teacher doesn't think this will help. She thinks the student has no sense of tonality, but if she can sing solfege, she must have some concept.

I think the student is just forgetting where Do is during the piece and needs to work on her ability to go back to Do from any pitch, at any time.

That said, I am not a vocalist by trade, and also have never delved into vocal pedagogy, but given my own experience, I think that continuously referring back to Do and having Do maintained while she sings will help her at least somewhat. If she can match pitch, and sing solfege, she must have SOMETHING she can grasp onto and improve. One other poster suggests that the cause of the problem is a disconnect between tonal retention and vocal development. This is something that, according to the poster, normally go hand in hand with vocal students. However, in this student, they aren't improving at the same rate. I can't tell if anyone thinks that the student can improve, but I do.

Dr. Dunsmore, previous director of Choirs at MUN, said that singing is 90% brains, 10% talent, and I think this comes into play here. There has to be a way of helping this student. She's not completely hopeless if she can do some aspects of singing, there's just a disconnect that needs work.

What do you all think?