Here’s the truth about singing lessons: they suck! Unless you get the right ones. If you’ve ever played sports or learned some complicated coordinated motor type skill, you can appreciate how much it sucks to try and UNLEARN a bad habit you picked up from a shitty coach, lack of knowledge, whatever. But the point is that you have TAUGHT your body that action and it is going to RESIST while you try to reprogram yourself. Welcome to Suckville, you people.
There are many things that an excellent teacher can do to help you improve your singing, while a poor teacher can seriously ruin your voice both in terms of learning bad habits and actual physical damage to your vocal anatomy if you practice bad habits. .
However, I am going to make a bold statement: learning to sing cannot be taught. Not fundamentally. YES, your teacher can point out the things you’re doing wrong, YES, your teacher can suggest a corrective course of action, but everything he tells you is also fundamentally inaccurate. Why? Because singing is invisible. Sense, it is primarily a kinesthetic ability.
“Kinesthetic” refers to your perception of your own body and its movements, both internal and external. In the same way that a musician develops his ability to hear musical details that the layman does not notice, a singer constantly strives to develop a “body map” or interior, self consistentrepresentation of their own physiology. This includes learning to control muscle contractility, how to coordinate extremely fine muscle groups in the larynx, how to breathe correctly (a study in itself), and a million other things that no one else can see (not completely, anyway) but that YOU can learn to FEEL fully. It’s weird because we don’t normally think of this as one of our senses. We say that “touching” is a sense, but actually touching is only a small part of the greater whole of bodily awareness.
So when a teacher gives you some kind of advice, you have to try it out, see how your body interprets and implements that suggestion, TRANSLATE it into your body’s language so it’s internally consistent, and be willing to constantly review it as your body provides you with feedback. Your teacher can’t see this. Even a biofeedback machine can’t see this, but you have this incredibly sophisticated biofeedback device that tells you exactly what’s going on in your body, so learn how to operate it – it will take your singing to a whole other plane.
The best place to look for a vocal coach is your local college or university music program. The reason for this is that many professional singers are on staff at a university to help supplement their income and give them some sort of job stability. Your chances of finding a really decent vocal coach here, as opposed to some midfielder, are high.
When you go to meet your potential new vocal coach, you should ask him lots of questions about his credentials, experience, and even ask him to sing for you. I can’t tell you how many voice teachers I see that when you ask them to sing something, they sound like crap. Out of tune, bad vocal tone, bad diction, whatever. If you come across this type of teacher, stay away because they don’t know what they are doing. Trust your instincts. If they don’t sound damn impressive, they just can’t help you. If they react defensively or evasively to your request to sing, tell them bluntly: I’m not going to take lessons with anyone until I’ve heard them sing. Don’t say it in an asshole way, but be direct; it’s your time and money and remember the saying “garbage in, garbage out”.
I want to leave you with a thought that my grappling coach likes to remind us: you can watch videos, come to class, learn from a teacher, blah blah blah, but ultimately the responsibility to get it right rests with you. Only you can make it happen. Get a partner, punch a move a hundred times, then do it 100 more on the other side. Your coach or teacher could be world class, which of course is better than studying with a bum who doesn’t know shit, but I’ll bet my money the guy studies with a bum and owns the speed of his progress instead that the guy falls. $250 an hour with a decade old Met singer where the student takes no action to get the results.
When you realize, not intellectually, but on a deep level that you literally feel in your stomach, that it’s solely up to you to make it happen in everything you do in life (being good at singing is no exception, of course), that it is the day you will be free Because as long as you count on others to achieve your successes for you, you will be angry, disappointed, and unsuccessful.