The Singing Blog http://thesingingblog.com Just What a Singer Should Know Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:40:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4 Singing Lessons- The Fairy Godmother Syndrome http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-the-fairy-godmother-syndrome/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-the-fairy-godmother-syndrome/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:17:01 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=95 Singing lessons are the best way to improve your singing, hands down. And you would think that if someone was paying their hard earned money to be trained in all the philosophies, techniques, exercises, and skills that would make them a better singer, they would do the work necessary to get great results. However, what we notice over and over again is that many students sit back and do next to nothing. Yes, they attend their lessons, but they don’t practice on a regular basis. It’s as if they believe that all they have to do is show up for their lesson and they will be magically transformed into a great singer. As if their own personal Fairy Godmother was going to wave her magic wand and produce some amazing results. Or even worse, that their voice teacher is this fairy godmother and, wand in hand will turn the student into a powerful and talented singer.

Singing Lesson Expert, Rebeca RandleIt is more than clear that if you don’t know how to do something very well, given a basic amount of talent to start with, the way to improve is to learn everything you can about how to do what you want to do. This makes perfect sense and is completely true when it comes to singing. Students seem to accept that they have a lack of knowledge and bodily control and that’s the reason they came to take lessons in the first place. So what is it that makes them not practice?

Are they too busy? We are all busy. It seems like we are all attempting to cram two or three lives into one; fitting fifty hours into a day. When you take lessons, it’s important to not just allocate the hour or half hour per week for the lesson, but to schedule a block of practice time each day while you’re studying. Are they too lazy? Well, they were motivated enough to sign up for weekly lessons, so it’s hard to imagine that laziness is the true reason. Are they afraid? Maybe we’re on to something here. But which demon is it that they’re afraid of, failure or success? I know when we’re dealing with fear, the student is in an emotional state and rational thinking kind of goes out the window. Yet if we examine the failure side of the equation, not practicing creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. If the student is beginning with a lack of knowledge, technique, and control, and as a result seeks out voice lessons and finds a highly qualified and gifted voice teacher, then to fail to practice insures that they don’t internalize the expertise and are destined to fail. Who would logically follow that path?

What about the fear of success side of our question? There are thousands of books on human psychology and/or the philosophies of personal growth that claim that contrary to our desires to thrive, grow, and improve in the areas of our lives we are skeptical about the possibility of our own greatness. Is it really possible that we can fear the very thing that we appear to long for? There are thousands of success stories out there. Pick up a few biographies of people you admire and see what they did to overcome fear; to put one foot in front of the other, day after day and do the things necessary to reach that amazing goal of yours. What that means to a singing student is to practice, practice, practice; every day following the instruction of your awesome vocal coach, unless you have a fairy godmother in your pocket.

When you’re ready to do the work to achieve greatness and want to study with one of the best vocal coaches, do yourself a favor and contact the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing- Make The Song Your Own http://thesingingblog.com/singing-make-the-song-your-own/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-make-the-song-your-own/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 22:29:00 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=76 Singing is all about presentation. Be the character. Tell the story. If I tell you to make the song your own, what does that even mean? First of all, what is the song. What’s its energy? What does it have to say for itself? Is it more about the tune, the words, or the rhythm? Or do all the components play their own part? An even better question is who the heck are you? Do you have a style? Do you stand for something? Is there a story you need to tell?

Singing Lesson Expert, Performance Coach

The happiest of marriages between singer and song is when essence matches essence. That’s pretty easy to do when you are the songwriter, but that’s for another article. For right now, let’s just say there’s a song you’ve always wanted to sing. Why? Obviously you’ve heard it. Did you love how that singer sang the song? Was it all in their presentation or did aspects of the song leak out all through the performance. Sometimes a song just captures us because of what it is, regardless of any performance of it. It has essence, or personality to use a different concept. Yes, a top level singer can create a rendition of a song that takes your breath away, but that is their interpretation. That interpretation is not the song, only an artist’s version of it. You would never want to simply duplicate an existing rendition. There is no reason for it. The song has already been sung and recorded that way.

What we want to look at is how you and the song are in alignment. What about the lyric is something you’ve always wanted to say? What about the melody let’s your emotions soar? What about the rhythm makes your body want to move, or your heart to expand, or turn you thoughtful or introspective? I will say here that the very best performance coaches are incredible at helping you figure out the answers to these questions and more. Is the song something you want to yell from the highest mountain or whisper in your lover’s ear? Does it help you vent your anger or does it awaken you into being a better person?

When you know who you are, what the song is, who you are when singing the song, and how its story is one with your own, you are ready to start thinking about the arrangement (instrumentation and style) and energy you want to portray. A parade of people will come into your life whether you are a major label artist, record for a small indie label, or have a recorder in your basement, who can assist you and give insight into how the song can be recorded. Ultimately, how you sing your song is up to you. Hopefully, you’ve thought about what you’re doing.

If you need a performance coach who can help you find the silver lining in that song you’ve always loved, we recommend calling the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing- Your Dream vs. Your Self-Talk http://thesingingblog.com/singing-your-dream-vs-your-self-talk/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-your-dream-vs-your-self-talk/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:49:00 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=57 Singing can be a perilous experience. You have hopes and dreams. You invest your heart in some amazing fantasies. There are icons out there who you idolize. You’ve seen them in concert, listened to their Cds, watched them on TV, heard them interviewed, and you want to be just like them. Can you do what it takes to get there?

Each and every artist who you idolize did not get there overnight. Just the making of their CD took a year or more and it probably wasn’t their first recording. They’ve had coaching, very specific training, and usually a group of individuals helping to lead them to that successful location where you and millions of others noticed them. They have worked hard to reach that height and it usually hasn’t come easy.

So when you commit to a dream, to a lofty goal, let some realism in. Create a timeline that is doable. This is not the stuff of Fairy Godmothers and magic wands. It is the result of voice lessons, performance coaching, dance lessons, maybe some acting lessons, and not for just a few weeks, but over a significant amount of time. I’m talking about years not months. It is a lot of work. It is also worth every minute of it.

Along the way, however, you’ve got a job that is more important than all the hard physical work. It’s harder than daily vocalization and technique training, working on body awareness and gesturing, or learning how to project yourself out in space to fill a room and become a larger-than-life presence on the stage. During all your hard work, assuming you don’t believe you are going to daydream yourself to success, there is one consistently challenging element you will face, and please don’t minimize it. That element is yourself, your mindset. We’ll call it your self-talk.

What you truly believe about yourself is more important than any work or training that you do. And when I say believe, I don’t mean what you attempt to talk yourself into, but what you really believe at the core level of your being. If your dream is to be a music performer and recording star but down deep inside you don’t believe you could possibly accomplish that, then you probably won’t. Your self-talk will trump a hope or dream every time. So what do you do when your dream and your belief are out of alignment with each other?

One of the interesting things about how our beliefs are wired is that we are very susceptible to demonstration. Each time we slightly exceed our belief or expectation, that belief or expectation stretches or grows. That gives us an amazing opportunity to blow through our limiting thinking, but it probably can’t happen overnight. While there are situations in voice training and singing lessons where a student had no idea how incorrectly they were doing something and a minor correction created an almost immediate improvement, most breakthroughs are earned through hard work. Slow and steady wins the race.

The important point here is to give yourself room within your self-talk to grow through an apparently limiting situation. Your biggest enemy is the thought, “I can’t do that.” Almost everything that a human being can do, we didn’t do as well the first time we tried it as we did the 100th time, or the 1000th time. The more we try it, the better we will get, especially if during our trying we incorporate some very specific and focused training. Our singing teacher will show us the best way to do everything related to singing, and if we have the talent, the hope and dream, the positive self-talk, the drive, and the willingness to work, everything is possible.

If you are looking for a teacher who can help you coordinate your talent, dream, motivation, and self-talk, we recommend contacting the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing Lessons- Lead Singing vs. Background Singing http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-lead-singing-vs-background-singing/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-lead-singing-vs-background-singing/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:41:07 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=46 When you take singing lessons, you want to become the best all-around singer that you possibly can. You have no idea in advance of all the opportunities that could present themselves to you. That is why it is so important to find a voice teacher who has gotten the complete download. Because there is a massive shift in techniques that you would use depending on the function you are attempting to fulfill. If your teacher is too one-dimensional in their approach, you will miss out on some great stuff that would have kept you in constant demand in the music community where you perform.

The dream is to be the star, the focal point, the “it” factor. And toward that end, singers are working tirelessly to get an edge. Something unique, something quirky, something that will make them stand out. They play with their voices, developing affected sounds, asking the world to “look at me,” all the while weakening their true talent for actually singing. I would never deny the singer their shot at the attention that they crave; however, I want to tell the other side of the story.

As a record producer, I have worked with many different vocalists over the years and I acknowledge that an edgy, unique sound can “cut” through the production and that it can be a desirable aspect to someone’s “sound.” The challenge is that not every gig that you get hired for will be as the lead vocalist, no matter how good you are, and now all those years of training yourself to cut through are wasted. Because the main thing a producer or arranger is looking for in the backing vocal tracks or the secondary harmony to the lead line is “blend.” An edgy lead voice stands out like a sore thumb in backing vocal tracks. It is so important as a background singer to discern what the other voices are doing and sing in such a way as to match that timbre or tone. You must be able to control pitch flawlessly as well as control tone and phrase volume to match the other singers and give the producer what they want.

Even greater in importance is the ability to sing without vibrato. As beautiful as vibrato can be on the lead, solo line, it is a curse for the background singers. Since everyone has their own unique rate or speed at which their vibrato cycles, imagine trying to get a tight three part harmony backing vocal to sound good with three totally different vibrato speeds. It creates the “wow” from hell. If you haven’t studied and mastered the ability to modify your tone, sing in pitch, blend and match the phrase timing, and most importantly, learned to sing well without vibrato, don’t bother showing up for a background vocal session. You’ll just get sent home.

However, if you have a desire to be master of your sound, your chops, and your fate, find a vocal instructor who can help you learn both lead and background singing. It really is part of being the best that you can be. And even if, as a lead vocalist on your own recording, you end up sing all your own backgrounds in the studio, you’ll be ever grateful you acquired these skills.

If you want to develop a complete singing skillset so that you can further your singing career, the Singing Lesson Expert is your best choice.

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Singing Lessons- Is Cost All That Matters? http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-is-cost-all-that-matters/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-is-cost-all-that-matters/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:14:47 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=43 When considering taking singing lessons, you’ve got to consider your goals. What do you want to get out of your lessons? Are you just playing around and any slight progress you make will be OK? Or do you really want to test the water and see how good you can be? A big part of the equation is the natural talent that you bring to the table; I won’t deny that. If you believe that you have great ability, you’re going to want to attract a great coach. However, you can’t be sure where you stand with regards to your natural ability without a professional evaluation of your voice. Just like the old body building stories of the 98 lb. weakling who turned himself into a chiseled he-man, amazing things can happen when you put your mind, heart and soul into it. There are countless stories in the world of athletics of late bloomers who initially didn’t set the world on fire. Michael Jordan comes to mind along with countless others. What does that have to do with singing, you ask? Well, singing really is a quasi-athletic endeavor. You are learning how to master very specific muscles in your body and you deserve the best possible trainer for that task, no matter what your objectives are.

The tragedy that I see is that when students are shopping for voice teachers, the number one criterion on their list is price. That is an ill-conceived strategy. Voice lessons are a bit of a buyer-beware industry. I don’t mean to scare you, but there is no regulation out there regarding teacher quality or training. Anyone who wants to put out their shingle can say they are a voice teacher and it’s up to you to sift through the lot and separate the wheat from the chaff. Please hear this clearly. The best teachers are not the cheapest. It doesn’t work that way with any other product so why would it work that way with singing lessons? You get what you pay for.

There is one more important thing to consider for the bargain hunters. In all my years in music education, what I see over and over again, is that when students have scrimped on the amount they were willing to pay for lessons, it has cost them way more in the long run. At best, they ended up being trained incorrectly and developed such bad habits that it took two to three times longer to untrain the bad habits and retrain the proper techniques. At worst, they learned such bad techniques that they strained their voices or even developed nodes or nodules (lesions) on their vocal chords. This is the ultimate in being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

My recommendation is to remove money as the number one factor on your list. If you can’t afford a great teacher right now, wait until you can. Save up your money so that you can work with someone who can get you where you want to go. The alternative is really disappointing. Because I believe you have talent or you wouldn’t have received that inner nudge to go do something about it. What I ask is that you seriously consider how valuable it really would be for you to train with the best, and like I explained earlier, quite often the best ends up being more cost effective in the long run.

If it’s really your heart’s desire to sing and sing well, we highly recommend that you contact the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing Lessons- Understanding Acting Improves Your Performance http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-understanding-acting-improves-your-performance/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-understanding-acting-improves-your-performance/#comments Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:45:33 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=39 Singing lessons can be quite complex due to the number of elements that must be mastered in order to become a high level performer in your own right. Expert singing teachers not only train your physiology and work out your voice’s musculature, but they help you select your repertoire and lead you through the process of interpreting the songs you choose to the highest degree. It’s all about delivering the goods and those goods are the emotional essence of the lyric and the story behind the song, its subtext.

Rebeca Randle in performance

Most singers, whether they be pop, rock, folk, musical theatre, or fill in the blank style performers, are not the songwriters for the songs they perform. Therefore, they are in the interpretation business. What does the writer mean by what he/she wrote? What does the song communicate? What moods are expressed through the singing of the song? And even deeper, what about who I am makes this song resonate with me? What connection can I make with the writer, the subject, the awakened feelings, and my own inner vision of what the song is about in order to make the hearing of the song meaningful for all my listeners? This goes for both live performances and recordings.

The type of questions we are asking here are very much like the questions an actor must ask about their character, their character’s motivation and emotional complexity, and how to best polish the window so that viewers are in touch with all the writer intended us to understand from that character. Actors are well schooled in a variety of introspective exercises that help them get in touch with an expansive emotional palette. It is the results of those exercises that are combined with the actor’s innate talent and giftedness to render a character that is believable and moving, that has the power to transport us.

The very best voice teachers have backgrounds in all those same elements of acting, if not actual acting classes themselves, which allows them to coach and train the emotional, interpretive part of their singing student in such a way that their student becomes skilled at bringing out all that the song they are singing has to offer. Since the delivery of a spoken phrase has such a different signature characteristic from singing a phrase, there is profound work to do on the part of both the master voice teacher and the willing student. All of the emotional qualities that an actor might express while reciting the lyric need to be folded into the rich tonal presentation of pitches with their accompanying resonance that the singer has learned how to deliver. It is that marriage of producing the breathtaking sound of a human voice sustaining a musical note with the provocative emotional context of language and all the meaning contained within it, that moves us all and has caused cultures of all types to value their storytelling through great singers.

When you pick the voice teacher you intend to study with, make sure they understand not only what this level of mastery is all about, but also that they can help you achieve it. For an opportunity to learn and master all the elements of singing, we highly recommend the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing Lessons- a Focus on Body awareness http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-a-focus-on-body-awareness/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-a-focus-on-body-awareness/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:45:47 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=33 Singing lessons with a master voice teacher include so much more than just the techniques to create a good vocal tone. It is important to become completely aware of the fact that the instrument you are playing (singing through) is your own body. Therefore, a predominantly unspoken and under appreciated aspect of singing lessons in all forms of vocal instruction, is care and maintenance of the physical body. Once that door has been opened and the process of body awareness has begun, there are a massive number of quality points and tips that can aid you in becoming a better singer.

Singing Lesson Expert, a pastoral performance

At the forefront of your new body awareness is adequate hydration. Drinking enough water is incredibly important for the body on so many levels. Water helps function in the body chemistry to create energy. It is one of the most important body lubricants. Holistic health practitioners suggest drinking roughly half your body weight in ounces of water. In other words, if you weigh 120 lbs., you need to drink 60 oz. of water. I know very few people who drink enough water and in addition to that, wet drinks are not only not water, but also often increase our need for water. Coffee and tea are diuretics and every ounce of diuretic you drink subtracts an ounce of water from your storehouse, so for every eight ounces of coffee or tea you drink, you need an additional 8 ounces of water to offset it.

One of the biggest obstacles to creating good tone in the resonant cavities of the body is inflammation. Inflammation in the bodily tissues greatly increases mucous, which is an acknowledged enemy of singers. Unfortunately for your sweet tooth, the biggest cause of inflammation in the body is the ingestion of sugar in all its forms. If you want to reduce the presence of inflammation in your body, cut way back on your sugar intake.

The last thing I’d like to discuss in this article is becoming vigilant about what you eat. This is more than for the obvious reason of fueling your body with the optimum in nutrition so that your health and vitality are at the highest level. There is a much greater reason for vigilance than choosing good food to eat. It’s also about avoiding substances that have no business being in your body. We’re talking about toxins here. The lion’s share of all the processed food products out there are laced with unpronounceable chemicals whose purpose is to preserve a product’s shelf life, or add or enhance color, or replace more expensive ingredients with affordable chemical ingredients to keep prices low. Regardless of the reason for their use, none of those chemical ingredients have any justification being in your body and they only increase your toxic load, which leads to a higher incidence of illness, which can’t possibly help your singing.

If you want to increase your health and vitality, raise your energy levels and help to keep your body clear of congestion and mucous, I suggest drinking plenty of water, avoiding sugar like the plague, and eating whole, organic foods without those insidious additives. These suggestions will help your body to function in the best possible way to support your dream of being a great singer. Wow, it sounds just like something grandma would have said!

If you need a voice teacher who fully understands the role of body awareness in your singing development, we recommend contacting the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Singing Lessons- The Anatomy of a Great Lesson http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-the-anatomy-of-a-great-lesson/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-the-anatomy-of-a-great-lesson/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:05:34 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=27 For singing lessons to be as effective as possible, they must have three very strong components to their design. Those three components are concept, exercises, and implementation. If your teacher is not delivering all three, you are being short-changed and you might want to consider finding a better voice teacher, one who could be considered a master teacher.

Singing Lesson Expert, Rebeca Randle

The first of the important design components is concept. A great voice teacher designs your singing lessons in such a way as to know exactly where they are taking you and the exact best way to get there. It is so important for the voice teacher to communicate the design and scope of their lesson program to their student. Everyone should understand that it is critical for students to practice to get maximum benefit from their singing lessons and the way for them to choose to practice the most is for them to have total buy-in as to the reasons for each element that they are asked to practice. A student who is excited about what each aspect of their curriculum is designed to help them achieve will work harder on their assigned tasks and will improve at a much more rapid rate.

The second component is the exercises. Many of the pieces of good vocal technique involve muscular control. Just like an effective workout routine that is designed to develop your body’s musculature, many of the exercises that your teacher will give you are designed to increase command of the muscles involved with the process of singing. Control of your breathing, commanding the air column, developing vocal power and range all come from these exercises. In addition, these exercises help you to become aware of placement and volume control. Several of the exercises that are built around mastering certain vowel sounds are designed to allow you to sing optimally without regard to which vowel or consonant sounds you might be singing at the time. The practice of the exercises is imperative for the development of tone and power.

The last of the design components is implementation and it is the one that far too often is missing from the average vocal training process. I have seen far too many cases of students who can make a good tone doing a vocal exercise who haven’t got a clue about how to apply that tone to the singing of an actual song. This is truly where the rubber meets the road. Controlling the breath, increasing and taking out volume, knowing when to use vibrato or not, knowing how to connect through both the vowels and the consonants in order to make the words being sung intelligible, and ultimately interpreting the lyrics being sung so that there is profound emotion being expressed in the performance, are all the reasons you’re taking lessons in the first place.

Please do yourself a favor and when you interview a voice teacher to see if they are the right teacher for you, make certain that they have a concept, that they are master of all the vocal exercises, and especially that they know how to have you integrate all of that into actual top level performances that implement all that you have learned. Your future success as a vocalist depends on it.

You can count on getting all your vocal instruction needs met with the Singing Lesson Expert.

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Purchasing Voice Lessons- How To Get The Most Value For Your Money http://thesingingblog.com/purchasing-voice-lessons-how-to-get-the-most-value-for-your-money/ http://thesingingblog.com/purchasing-voice-lessons-how-to-get-the-most-value-for-your-money/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:33:29 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=16 A great voice teacher is worth their weight in gold. The best teachers have years of training, not only about what makes the voice work and the steps to go through to work your own voice into singing condition and heighten your awareness about how to use it, but even more importantly, how to assess where you are at this very moment and the exact, correct steps to take from where you are to get to where you want to go. There is a large gap between voice teachers who simply hang up their “shingle” because they can sing and they suppose they can probably tell you what to do to sing yourself, and the well- schooled, lifelong teachers who really know what they’re doing and who won’t teach you to push and other ill-advised strategies that are ultimately damaging to the voice.

The challenge here is that most of the best voice instructors are remarkable voice teachers and are not usually good entrepreneurs, lacking the knowledge or desire to market their services and get out there to the world. Over the last five to ten years has come the advent of some opportunistic marketing companies who, as music lesson companies, “handle” all of the administration of coordinating teachers with students. Don’t misunderstand stand me here. Overall, that is a much-needed service. Students are desperate to find a good teacher and teachers are hungry to find students that they can teach. Unfortunately, in these arrangements, only about 25% of the student fees actually get to the person doing the teaching. So for those of you looking for an extraordinary teacher, I ask you to consider the following. The very best teachers have a rate that is what they charge based on years and years of experience. They rarely take a student below that rate and they usually have some sort of studio or training center, sometimes in a music store or stand alone commercial facility, but just as often out of their own home.

Most of the music lesson marketing companies charge the same rate as the master teachers, and while they tell you that you are getting a great teacher for the money you are paying, I can just about guarantee you that the acknowledged top teachers in your area are not working for these companies. Just think about it. If you were a top professional in your field, would you take a 75% discount on the fee for your services in exchange for the convenience of them doing a little marketing for you?

I urge you to ask professional entertainers in your area who they study with. Or ask the universities, or music stores. But please, do yourself a favor and find a great teacher who you can work directly with. You will get so much more lesson for you dollar and you will not regret it.

You can begin your search for a great singing teacher at http://www.singinglessonexpert.com

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Singing Lessons Are The Surest Way To Learn To Sing Better http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-are-the-surest-way-to-learn-to-sing-better/ http://thesingingblog.com/singing-lessons-are-the-surest-way-to-learn-to-sing-better/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:46:36 +0000 David Randle http://thesingingblog.com/?p=11 First of all, we need to explode the biggest myth out there regarding singing, and that is that singers are born and not made. While it is true that there are a variety of physiological gifts that may give one person an advantage singing over another, never underestimate the importance of hard work and training. You would be surprised to learn how many of your favorite professional vocalists have had substantial lessons, coaching, and training. If you will allow a sports analogy, every athlete is born with varying degrees of talent in their chosen area. Yet, it’s not always the most naturally gifted athlete who has the most success. At the professional, Olympic, collegiate, or other serious levels of competition, everyone has at least one coach, and often several. Yes, Michael Jordan had a coach, and every other major star you can name did as well.

If you watch shows like Dancing With The Stars, there is an amazing transformation that takes place from the beginning of the series where virtually no one has highly developed skills, until the end where, after weeks of diligent training under the tutelage of expert teachers and choreographers, a polished dancer emerges.

The same thing is available to those looking to become singers at any level. Whether you want to just be a better shower singer, rock your friends on Karaoke night, or break into the business as a professional singer, there are definite steps to take and the first one is to take singing lessons, voice lessons, vocal lessons, or whatever you choose to call them.

You see, when you sing, you are the instrument. Things like posture, breathing, tongue location, tone placement, thinning or thickening of the vocal chords, all involve a degree of muscle control. It is almost impossible to believe that an individual could have mastery of all the elements of vocal performance without coaching, training, or lessons. Even if a singer is amazingly naturally talented, they can become so much better with instruction. In addition, a great teacher can assist the student in developing an understanding of how to create good tone and substantial volume without pushing, which will preserve the health of the voice and help the student avoid developing nodules or “nodes” on their vocal chords.

If you want to really present yourself in the best light, making a great sound is not enough. Singers are entertainers! At least that’s what the public is expecting. So being a great sounding singer who stands on the stage like a lump, not engaging the audience with their eyes, not knowing what to do with their hands, not really knowing how to interpret the words they are singing, and not “owning” their position on the stage like they belong there and using their whole being to help interpret the song, will not cut it.

The very best voice teachers know how to help you relax with your vocal tone creation, technically making the best possible sound, understanding the range of your voice and where its sweet spots are and improving its weak spots, finding the music that is the best for your voice to sing, telling the story in the lyrics with the greatest of interpretations, and especially how to use your whole being to share the song and all the magic that sharing entails.

Hopefully the question of whether or not to take voice lessons has been answered.

You can find a great voice teacher at http://www.singinglessonexpert.com

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