KARD Jiwoo Confesses Used To Be Tone Deaf… Here’s How She Fixed It

It’s hard to believe, but KARD’s lead singer Jiwoo used to be completely tone-deaf. Now, she’s opened up about how she overcame this obstacle in order to debut.

“I was tone-deaf, but the real issue was that I cared what other people thought. I couldn’t make the sound burst from my throat; it was blocked because I was scared. And I would think, ‘I can’t sing. Am I even doing it right?'” — KARD’s Jiwoo

“Even when I was alone in my room, I was scared someone would hear me if they walked past so I couldn’t even sing alone. It was kind of an obsession.”

She confessed that her vocal trainer had a hard time with her, as she would constantly look for excuses to get out of singing. Her trainer ended up being extremely strict on her, pushing her to get over her issues.

“When I was hesitating to train because of those thoughts, the people around me would say, ‘Why can’t you utilize your talent even though you’re gifted?’ I heard this a lot and I felt that it was unfair if it ended like this, before even [debuting]. So I started from scratch.”

Jiwoo confessed that until that moment, she never learnt the basics of singing because she’d been too busy practicing for her singing tests instead. She began by learning scales, and wasn’t able to hear or sense the difference in the sounds.

She would press ‘C’ for hours until she could sense the sound. If she got it, she would move on to ‘D’, and combine the two before moving on to ‘E’ and repeating the process. She would practice scales for five to six hours every day. Then she moved on to falsetto and humming.

“I still have some basic skills to learn, like voice control and breathing, there’s still a lot I can’t do well. I want to learn, even though I don’t have much time after debuting I want to change a lot still, like vocalization and so on.”

In November 2017, right before KARD’s comeback song
“You In Me”, Jiwoo confessed that she believed she wasn’t pretty enough to become a star, so never revealed her dreams to become one for the longest time.

But now, she’s become one of the brightest celebrities in Korea and overcome her struggles with singing. Jiwoo’s unbelievable rise to success has only just begun!