You don’t need to be a virtuoso to succeed in a choir. You need a willingness to practice and learn, and “the basic ability to hear and emulate,” says Mira Taferner, artistic director of the a cappella chorus Sirens of Gotham. “That, luckily, is a relatively universal skill.”

Taferner, along with Sirens associate artistic director Kari Francis and visual coordinator Anna Chelak, talked to Lifehacker about the essentials of learning to sing in a chorus — essentials that helped the group win last fall’s Sweet Adelines International Harmony Classic Competition with the performance above.

The iOS Voice training app Vanido just added an important new feature. It can now help you learn to sing Bohemian Rhapsody (or, if you must, other songs.)

Do you have a pair of vocal folds that can produce sound? Can you tell the difference between a higher note and a lower note? Good news! You and about 98.5% of the population absolutely can be taught how to sing.

I loved singing lullabies to my daughter. As a musical theatre geek who suddenly had a captive audience (one that was physically incapable of walking out on me), how could I not? At nap time, bed time, really any time, I'd croon my own renditions of familiar classics. A couple of standouts: "Don't Cry For Me Little Baby" (sung to the tune of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina") and a song I just referred to as "Baby Hypnosis".

iOS: Some people become karaoke gods the minute they pick up a microphone, leaving us mere mortals to wonder how they managed to summon Freddie Mercury from an astral plane. Others... need a little practice. While there isn't one app that will make you the next Australian Idol overnight, Tone (iOS, free) is a great app for practising basic note recognition and tricky intervals.

At the Metropolitan Opera last spring, in a show called "The Exterminating Angel", soprano Audrey Luna sang a high A, setting a new record for the highest note ever sung at the Met. You might be more familiar with the phrase "High C", a very typical high note at the Met - the high A is several notes higher. And it's the first thing Luna sings in the show. She spent years working her voice up to that pitch. So we asked her how she did it.

iOS: If you want to really kill it at karaoke, approximately hitting the notes won't be good enough. A free app called Vanido can guide you through singing exercises, and show you in real time how well you're hitting those notes.