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 100^th time, or the 1000^th 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.

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.

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

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