Advice to learn singing and develop hearing

Hi everyone!

I registrated on this page to ask for some advices!

I have a friend who is trying to learn singing, and I try to help her. She always heard from other that she hasn't got a good voice, but I actually really like the tone of her voice. 

Although... she doesn't seem to have good control over her voice, and her ears can't always tell what is a correct tone. The interesting thing about her is that she can sing almost perfectly everything that she listens to a lot (and obviously if it is in her range). But every new stuff she tries to sing is just way off.

An other stunning stuff is that she can comfortably and almost perfectly sing along with some tracks (she listens a lot), but if I accompany her with a piano and sing with her, she just loses the correct notes. 

One exercise I tried with her is the Perfect Ear application. The app plays one note, and you have to sing back that. At first she seemed to seek a lot the notes, but after a few months she can sing those notes 85-90 percent correctly. 

What would you recommend for her? Maybe some ear trainings to learn to hear when she is off. I think she has something worth developing, but as a person who wasn't into music in childhood, maybe it is a little more challenging. I am looking forward to hear you some advices, exercises!

Thanks in anticipation!

I applaud you for encouraging and helping your friend! I agree that an ear training app or chromatic tuner is a great tool for her, since it can show in real-time how close she is singing to the intended pitch. Some apps I recommend are Tenuto (from musictheory.net), EarMaster, and Vocal Pitch Monitor. 

Since it sounds like she can match what she hears, but struggles when the pitch reference is gone, I recommend gradually turning down the volume of the lead vocal, using vocalremover.org. She can also consider practicing with an instrumental cover before "graduating" to a karaoke track or other accompaniment. An instrumental (piano, or violin for example) cover will still have the melody played by an instrument!