For total beginners, matching pitch can be an issue. If you don't know what matching pitch is, its singing the exact same sound as you hear. So that can be singing the same sound as a piano or another singer. Learning to match pitch by yourself can be hard, so I do recommend taking lessons if you have this problem, but here are some methods for practicing and what causes them. I'm going to organize this by the cause of the inability to match pitch
Harmonic Hearing
Harmonic hearing is an issue with how you hear the pitch. Its actually a good thing once you teach yourself to match pitch with it as you can hear harmonies better. Essentially, you hear the overtones/harmonics within a pitch louder than you hear the actual pitch. To discover if this is your issue, use this site: click here. If the site plays the pitch C and you sing an in tune F or G. You have harmonic hearing. Similarly, if it plays D and you sing A or G its the same. Notice its the notes to the left and right of the pitch across from the note in the circle.
To fix this, the goal is to identify the actual pitch by ear. Listen to the pitch on that site and focus on what you hear. Do you hear a note that is higher or lower than the one you hear the loudest? Try singing that one. You may need to attempt this multiple times as sometimes the actual pitch is not the first or second loudest. Additionally, you can slide your voice up or down until you do match the note and see if you can notice that note being present in the sound you hear. This will take some time to get used to.
2. Missing Frequency
Sometimes, singers simply do not yet have the control to move their voice up and down enough to match pitch. If you can clearly identify that the note you are trying to sing doesn't match the note you hear in your head or externally this may be you. Typically, people with this issue reliably able to match pitch in a small range and just unable outside of this small range. So if you can match two or three notes every time and cannot the rest, this is also you.
In order to fix this, you must change how you sing the notes. Opening up the inside of your mouth can help you reach lower notes. It may not sound good, but the first goal is to match the pitches. Narrowing your mouth or adding breathiness will make your voice match higher sounds better. Essentially, anything that makes your mouth larger or longer will help low notes and anything that makes your mouth smaller or shorter will help with higher notes.
3. Disconnect of ear to voice
Another possibility is that there is no neural pathway built up between the parts of your brain that hear a sound and the part that creates the sound. This will be you if the pitch you try to match is randomly wrong and all over. Additionally, if you can think a pitch in your head and match that, but cannot hear a pitch and then think the same pitch this is you. If you don't know what I mean by thinking a pitch, its like when you get a song stuck in your head and you can sort of hear the notes. If you are unable to think a pitch, that doesn't necessarily mean this isn't you, but it will be harder to fix.
To address this is a long process. Essentially, you must simply repeat the process of singing a note and sliding up or down until you match a note. Using the site linked above will help. Make sure you think the note while you sing it as it will help speed this process. You can even try sliding the note entirely mentally and just see if you can get the pitch to match in your head before singing it to see if its correct. This is such a long process because its not just solving a problem but actually working to rewire things in your head. Once you learn how to do this though, you won't lose the ability.
I do strongly recommend lessons if you have issues with any of these as working with someone can make things quicker and easier. If you'd like to try lessons with me, sign up by clicking here!
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