Good question, right?
Singing lessons are about you and your voice. Good singing lessons involve:
- Continual diagnosis by your teacher who uses cause and effect to direct the lesson to what you need in your voice
- Taking those techniques and using them in the song of your choice
Right, but what does that actually mean?
Imagine your car has odd noises coming from the engine when you put the car in 3rd gear. So you take it to the garage for fixing and the mechanic starts taking the boot apart, and then he takes a wheel off, then he checks a door and so on. He does all of this without actually driving the car and then tells you he hasn’t a clue what is wrong!
You’re left thinking “what just happened?”
Now picture this. You take your car to the garage, where the mechanic places the car in a test ramp and drives it in 3rd gear. Whilst the car is running he checks the engine and discovers the noise is a broken valve, which he fixes and then the noise is gone.
Spot the difference? The second scenario involved a diagnosis of the car whilst it was running, he found the problem and fixed it by replacing the valve.
So the broken valve was the cause of the problem and replacing the valve effected the problem for the better!
Yeah but what has that got to do with my voice, I’m not a car?
Diagnosis of your voice is the same and its critical. How can we expect you to become a better singer if we don’t actually know what is going on with your voice? The diagnosis gives us this knowledge so we can prescribe the right tools for the job.
We can’t just give you the same exercises week after week after week without continually assessing your voice to see if that is what you actually need. That continuous assessment may decide you need the same exercises, but its an educated choice.
We want you to get better! We want you to improve and to reach your goals and by using cause and effect in our lessons we can make sure that you do get better, and fast!
So what happens in a singing lesson?
Singing, hopefully! But not just singing songs. A good lesson gives exercises that are tailored to your voice and that will help you to improve.
Your teacher should have asked you what you’ve done, what you are doing and what your goals for the future are, then they’ll use this information to formulate a plan for success.
After exercises, if appropriate, we move on to singing songs and working on applying the techniques you learned in exercises to your song.
But why do we do this? Well, if you have a leaking pipe in your house, would you rather stick some tape on it and temporarily fix it, or replace the leaking pipe and be sure no further damage will happen?
Just working on songs is liking sticking tape on the leak, it might fix some of the problems but the chances are it won’t fix everything. A thorough warm-up and vocalising will help to fix the problems, build strength and flexibility in your voice and start you on the path to becoming a better singer.
See you next week!
Rinse, lather and repeat! Singing lessons should happen as often as you can have them. With a good teacher the more you have the better you will become.
Yes, money will be a deciding factor in it, but if you want to become a better singer, how else are you going to do it? You have to invest in your voice to reap the benefits!
What’s your experience of singing lessons? Leave us a comment below and subscribe to our newsletter to get updates!
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