Category: Learning to Sing

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Learning to sing isn’t just about hitting the right notes—it’s about building technique, confidence, and vocal health from the ground up.

In this section, you’ll find beginner-friendly articles that cover everything from finding your natural voice and improving tone to structuring your practice sessions.

Whether you’re just starting out or picking up where someone else left off, these guides will help you sing smarter—and stronger.

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Why Women Struggle to Sing with Power and Stability

I’ve written about vocal mechanics from a number of different angles, but here I want to hit a specific issue directly.

The number of women who come to me wanting to “fix” their break or find more power is striking. Some arrive with issues around pitch or stamina, but for the vast majority, the primary driver is stability — specifically the desire to sing higher without the voice becoming thin, breathy, or flipping into a weak head voice. Whether it’s Pop, Jazz, Musical Theatre, or Soul, the goal is remarkably consistent.

Women from 18 right through to 70-plus get in touch wanting to unite their registers. The good news is that this is completely doable. But to do it properly, we need to understand what the real obstacles are — and how they are fundamentally different from the challenges men face.

How the Female Voice Is Built

To understand the problem, we have to look at the architecture of the registers. A woman’s first bridge (the transition zone between chest and head voice) usually begins around A4, extends to B4, and is fully exited at C5 (High C). They generally don’t encounter their second bridge until around E5.

By contrast, men hit their first bridge much earlier (E4 to F#4) and are immediately confronted with a second bridge at A4. Because men are forced to navigate a more expansive chest voice from day one, they often don’t struggle with chest voice to such a degree as women.

Continue reading “Why Women Struggle to Sing with Power and Stability”

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Why Men Struggle To Sing High Notes?

Why Men Struggle to Sing High Notes

I’ve written about this topic from a number of different angles, but here I want to hit it directly.

The number of men who come to me wanting to improve their range is striking. Yes, some arrive with issues around pitch, stamina, or general vocal weakness, but for the vast majority, the primary driver is range — specifically the desire to sing higher, often to match their vocal heroes. Classical, rock, pop, R&B, soul — the style varies, but the goal is remarkably consistent.

Men from 18 right through to 70-plus get in touch wanting to dramatically extend their upper range. The good news is that this is completely doable. But to do it properly, we need to understand what the real obstacles are — and how they’re actually overcome.

How the Male Voice Is Built

Most men have around one and a half to two and a half octaves of usable range in their chest voice. Chest voice is the lowest register of the voice and typically extends up to Eb4/E4 — the E above middle C on the piano.

Continue reading “Why Men Struggle To Sing High Notes?”

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Do singers get bored of singing the same songs?

An astute question was asked by a singer this week. They noticed something in their own practice that prompted them to ask “do singers get bored of singing the same songs?”.

Here’s the usual process

The process they experienced is possibly something you’ve noticed yourself

1) You decide to learn a favourite song. It’s an exciting song you’ve always loved.
2) The melody has to be learned first, so you have to spend time learning the song. Slow going but enjoyable.
3) You then sing it a few times badly. This is a bit painful, but you persevere with the promise of a better sound just around the corner.
4) You sing it many more times less badly, and it becomes smoother, but not perfect. Getting there.
5) You now broadly consider that you can sing the song, but you need to keep polishing it

And in the polishing process you discover… you’re getting bored?! What? But you LOVE this song, you’ve spent HOURS trying to learn and refine this song… why are you getting bored of it?

Answer: It’s likely not a song with a lot of depth

Just because a song is incredibly popular, this does NOT make it a great song. It just makes it catchy product.

When most people first start singing, they have to go through a process of both
– self-invention; and
– self-discovery.

You have to both learn to build your instrument, and at the same time, discover what it likes/doesn’t like to do.

The beginner’s voice, as an instrument, isn’t built yet. With proper training they will acquires HEAPS more range, power, tone, etc… so they can’t decide a song is “beyond them” too early.

As a result, most singers with limited training actually have not cultivated any taste or discernment in what it FEELS like to sing songs – how could they? If their instrument is not built more fully, they’ve never been able to sit in the driver’s seat of a more capable voice and note what feels good, what doesn’t feel good, what feels rewarding, what feels punishing to try and deliver. And this is truly a never-ending experience.

To borrow an analogy

It’s a bit like only ever having watched Formula One racing, then thinking you can understand what an easy vs difficult course must be to drive. Even driving fast road cars doesn’t prepare you for it.

It’s only by starting training, and incrementally increasing both your vocal capability AND sensory experience of that capability, that you can start to understand songs more fully.

Hence at the beginning, people often tend to pick very cool sounding songs, but that are not terribly enjoyable or manageable, even for trained voices.

Psssst

If you’d like a list of songs I regularly recommend that have good depth but are approachable by many fledgling singers, here are the top three songs I recommend the most.

How does it FEEL

As people progress through their vocal training, their ear and sense of feel about singing improves. They start to recognise that certain songs FEEL more enjoyable to sing, something about the melody and the way it lies across their voice is incredibly favourable. Those songs become a self-reinforcing loop.

Songs that FEEL good to song, invite the singer to sing them more and more. The act of training becomes almost becomes self-fulfilling: we stop training merely to sound good (or even cool), we train to make it FEEL as good as possible, and that in turn engenders the best quality sound.

I’ve had singers start off wanting to sing hard rock, then they discover just how unpleasant a lot of hard rock is too sing. Even great technique doesn’t make typical rock melodies *feel* any more enjoyable to sing.

Many of these singers slowly metamorphose into lovers of other genres and other singers, whose music is sufficiently challenging but also feel far more enjoyable to sing. Singers like George Michael, for example.

When such singers voices become capable enough, singing such songs created a dramatic sensation of “Woah, this feels amazing”. That’s not to say they sounded perfect immediately, but that sensory feedback loop become noticeable.

They have locked into this sense that the best songs have a depth of feel they can tap into. These typically maps beautifully onto how voices LIKE to function, and it becomes a pleasure to stay locked into songs with such depth.

Brief example

I recently learned “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by Sting and the Police. Fab song to listen to, and I sing it well if I do say so myself. And yet, so much of the catchiness of that song is in Stewart Copeland’s drum parts, and the variety of backing textures.

Sung solo with piano/guitar, it lacks somewhat… and I got bored quite quickly. I still sing it, but I’m not going to flog a dead horse. Maybe I’ll reinvent an arrangement that works and elevates it, but for now, I’ve put a pin it.

Conclusion: Some songs have more depth than others

You get bored on some songs, because some songs are genuinely boring once you get to know them.

Sometimes the melody is pretty repetitive. Maybe the song’s anthemic feel is more down to the soaring symphonic strings in the background. Or perhaps it’s a beautiful but subtle harmony is lifting the lead vocals to make it pop more than it does when you’re singing it solo. If you’d like a list of features that make songs REALLY difficult to song, I’ve got a ten item list for you right here.

But there’s more songs out there that you just have to get out and explore. I often make recommendations, but it’s highly dependent on whether you like the songs I suggest. Think of it like clothing and fashion. You can browse all you like, but you have to get the piece and try it on for size for a bit to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

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The Three Notes Every Singer Struggles With

Today I want to talk about the three notes that every singer struggles with.

A few caveats:

  1. Individual singers will typically only struggle with ONE of these at a time – Because if they are struggling with the first of these, they won’t be doing subsequent ones any justice at all.
  2. These notes are the lynchpin root causes of vocal problems – Once I state the notes, singers reading this will say “ah well, I am personally fine with that one, it’s the note one above/below that I find hard“. That may well be their interpretation of what they think they are noticing, but these are merely symptoms of the underlying issue. The root causes of people’s perceived vocal limitations are these specific notes.

The Notes

The notes are: E4 – A4 – E5.

These are grouped for men and woman as:

  • For men: E4 and A4
  • For women: A4 and E5

What are these notes?

The way the voice works, is that to sing low notes the vocal folds contract and thicken. To sing high notes they stretch and thin. The sound emitted by the vocal folds is shaped by the vocal tract, which is the length of your throat above your larynx (Adam’s apple).

These two components acoustically interact with each other to generate a phenomenon we call ‘vocal bridges’ or passagi/passagio. To sing with any meaningful range, we need to be able to cross these bridges – at least the first bridge, and ideally the second also.

The Bridges

For men the first bridge is E4-F#4; the second is A4-B4.

For women the first bridge is A4-B4; the second is E5-F#5.

You’ll note that the male second bridge maps exactly onto the female first bridge.

The bridge exists over several notes, rather than just one note. It’s a transition zone from one register of the voice to the next. Hence, the three key notes are E4, A4 and E5.

However, the challenge I’m focusing on today is the difficulty in ENTERING each bridge cleanly. Landing the E4 to enter the first bridge for men/the A4 for women, is CRITICAL.

So many tend to either struggle to land that note at all, or they are technically hitting the note, but they are hitting it so hard they’ve not actually ENTERED the bridge. When excess force or imprecision exists in the vowels, they are just slamming their voice hard enough to force the vocal folds to hit the right pitch… but this does not mean they’ve made the acoustic transition INTO the bridge properly.

If the singer is not entering the first bridge cleanly, they cannot exit it cleanly to hit higher notes with ease and power. Think of it like clipping the first hurdle in a hurdle race. If you can’t even clear the first one cleanly, you’re not going anywhere well.

What about the second bridge?

The first bridge only provides the transition from chest to the first register within head voice. The second bridge is the next transition zone above that. Many more skilled singers (e.g. Bono of U2), actually have reasonably good first bridges, but they struggle at their second. This is why so often singers will lower songs when performing to put top notes on an Ab4, to avoid the A4 – that’s the second bridge revealing itself.

The same is true for women dealing with their first and second bridges. Often younger women have more facility at their first bridge than younger men, so they ‘vault over it’ and enjoy the range between the first and second bridge. But over time the deepening and thickening of their voice causes them to struggle with a clean entry/exit to the first bridge, so they can feel like they’ve lost a load of range in later life – often by their mid 30s.

Proper vocal training resolves this

These are only the reasons why people struggle with these notes, and correspondingly find higher notes than those hard to consistently sing.

Proper vocal training is all about co-ordinating the vocal folds and vocal tract, to co-ordinate the voice to smoothly cross those bridges, such that they become invisible to the singer and the listenable. This is all entirely solveable, to unlock ever increasing range, with greater ease and wonderful tone. it just takes time and concerted effort. Which is why most singers never reach it. It seems far ‘easier’ just to keep jamming your voice and forcing your way to that note that is 50/50 whether it comes out.

But now you’re at least equipped with knowing WHY you find specific notes difficult in your voice. It may feel like you get stuck at a note above or below the ones I’ve mentioned, but I can assure you that the mechanical and acoustic reason you find any part of your voice tricky, is because of these bridging notes.

If this echoes with your experience in your voice, and you feel you’re clipping any of these notes, you can book in via the work with me button below.

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Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Singing Lessons

There are things I wish I knew before I started singing lessons. If you have ever started down a path of learning in a given discipline, I’m sure there’s things you look back on and think “I wish I had known THAT back at the beginning”. Those moments that make you slap your forehead and wonder — why did no one tell me this at the start? How much time would have been saved? Where could I be now if I had known that?

That’s the intent of today’s article. Or at least, I’ll share the five things that stand out to me as worthy of note to my personal journey.

1) Never Force It — Why Power Isn’t Progress

We’ve all been there. Wanting to hit a given note, maybe we are struggling to make the note or maybe we are AT the note but it needs a bit more oomph. So we lay down the hammer and hit it harder. Even in my own voice, I remember for years trying for notes and just giving it a few percent more power to make it sound bigger. But this is a dead end in the medium- and long-term.

Why? Sure, it may feel satisfying physically to hit notes harder, and in more skilled singers further application of air pressure and power to get a fuller and more powerful note is critical… but far too many beginners and intermediate singers apply far too much power, far too early in their development.

This compromises the quality in the moment, like someone forcing out a rep at the gym with bad form and too much weight. They might make it in the moment, but it damages the body, reinforces bad habits and neurological stress, that we then need to unpick in training. This needless tensing of the instrument at the earlier stages of development can add years of extra time to correct training.

2) It’s All About Finesse — Learning to Do Less, Better

This is a natural follow on from point 1. If we recognise that an appropriate level of force is critical at every level, then the natural position to adopt is one of finesse. Not simply to “NOT force”, but to move to a more refined and finessed approach to moving through the voice – in exercise and in song.

Many reading this may nod in agreement, but I really do mean finesse. As in, it feels more like gentle, light movement through the vote, not big heavy, lumbering steps through the voice. This is especially true the higher we want to sing in our voices.

The difficulty is, it doesn’t FEEL sexy to do this. It FEELS like something is going wrong, especially for the male singer. It can feel like it’s all a little light, or not solid enough. Yet this is 100% necessary to both build technique, but also to build neurological ease into using the voice. We want the body to get a sense that singing is meant to be smooth, fluid, easy, mechanically light to do… and this is very hard to accept for many singers.

3) How It Sounds vs. How It Feels Inside Are Often Divergent

This is also a natural follow on from point 2. Once we accept we cannot force things, we are to move from THAT end of the spectrum to the other end – the end of finesse.

In doing so we then have to face that how it feels and sounds inside our head, vs how it sounds out front, can be wildly divergent. When we start to reject excess force, embrace finesse – however it feels – we will have to face that feeling of “are you SURE this is right?”.

The finessed approach doesn’t feel quite as rewarding physically as hitting the note harder, and may often feel very counter-intuitive. There are times in lessons I’ll actively tell people to pull back the intensity at critical entries to bridges, and there is look of confusion on the part of the singer. Surely to make this sound and feel right, I’ve got to hit it at least a LITTLE harder?

Sure, sometimes, but only after relative mastery has been acquired. In the first instance, to accept that goal of finesse, we have to accept that how it feels and how it sounds out front are often divergent.

Which leads us onto point 4!

4) Record Yourself and Listen Back — The Mirror for Singers

So we’ve established that hitting the voice harder isn’t right, and finesse therefore must be our goal. That then leads to accepting that how it feels versus how it sounds can be very different, how can we verify and slowly reconcile the two?

The answer: record yourself and listen back CONSTANTLY. Using your phone, your computer, dictaphones, etc, to record yourself singing individual lines all the way through to complete songs. Then listen back. Then go again.

Professional dancers rehearse in front of wall to wall mirrors so that they can reconcile how they THINK a move feels/looks, with what it ACTUALLY looks like. Recording ourselves and listening back is the vocal equivalent of this. This is the only way to slowly acclimate ourselves with how we think something sounds, with how it actually sounds.

And doing it once isn’t enough. Dancers will do it every day, repeatedly. We must do the same. Over time our internal sense of calibration will slowly shift to mirror what is actually happening out front. This then makes it easier to self monitor without always having to record and listen back.

And yes, this is a deeply painful experience. To have to listen to yourself, warts and all, and hear how you actually sound over and over. But it is essential – the longer a singer puts off doing this, the slower their vocal development.

5) It Takes Time — The Long Game of Vocal Development

The final point to make is that building a voice takes time. Hitting the voice harder isn’t a path to success – there are no shortcuts.

Instead, finesse is a very slow refined angle to approach along. Every day we must try to create a more and more precise movement in our voices, across helpful exercises, and then deploying that along challenging songs.

Recording ourselves on helpful songs is also time-consuming, and the many reps this takes also takes time.

Overall, we can make MASSIVE strides in giving someone initial access to a new level of vocal function within just one session. But making sure that someone trains in a way that instils and ingrains that behaviour in a finessed way, that feels and sounds congruent and natural to them… that takes time even when done correctly. If we stray off the path and try to hit things harder, avoid critical listening, this can massively increase the time it takes to improve a voice to the level they want to sing at.

Take heart: the progress is worth the patience. Every singer who learns to do less, listen better, and stay the course discovers a voice that not only works — it lasts.

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The Psychology of Booking Your First Singing Lesson

The Psychology of Booking Your First Singing Lesson

Most singers don’t hesitate to buy a mic, a new guitar, or even a software plugin. But when it comes to booking your first singing lesson, the pause is different. It’s not just about the money — it’s psychological. You’re not just buying a service, you’re making yourself vulnerable in front of another human being.

Here are three common factors that cause people to hesitate before booking their first singing lesson. I’ll also cover how best to frame these in your mind to help you take the plunge.

1) Fear of Exposure

Ultimately, you ARE going to have to open your mouth and sing in front of someone that you barely know.

Continue reading “The Psychology of Booking Your First Singing Lesson”

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Singing Lessons for Professionals: Taking Your Voice Beyond Good to Exceptional

Singing Lessons for Professionals: Taking Your Voice Beyond Good to Exceptional

You’ve already mastered the basics. You can sing in tune, maybe even perform on stage or in the studio. But you know there’s another level above “good” — the kind of voice that captures attention and performs consistently under pressure. That’s where professional-level singing lessons come in.

I’m Mark — a Certified Vocal Coach and one of the UK’s leading singing teachers. I work with singers across Nottingham, the UK, and worldwide online.

My speciality is helping serious singers transform their voices with clarity, stamina, and power — so they can move from good to exceptional.

Who Takes Professional Singing Lessons With Me?

  • Gigging and recording singers who want to raise their standard.
  • Semi-professional or ambitious amateurs ready to invest in long-term growth.
  • Performers preparing for auditions, tours, or demanding studio work.
  • Amateurs who harbour a desire to have the best voice they possibly can.

What unites them? They’re serious about improvement and ready to commit to regular, structured coaching.

Why most singers plateau and never reach their potential

Honestly, most singers today are performing far below the standard they’re capable of. In many cases, they don’t sound their best — and often, they don’t even sound that great.

Continue reading “Singing Lessons for Professionals: Taking Your Voice Beyond Good to Exceptional”

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The Hidden Costs of Cheap Singing Lessons

When it comes to singing lessons, price is often the first thing people look at. A quick Google search will show you plenty of cheap singing lessons — some offering lessons at £20 or £30 an hour, while others charge much more. At first glance, the cheaper lessons seem like the obvious choice. But as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. You can read more about how much singing lessons cost here.

In fact, cheap singing lessons often carry hidden costs that make them far more expensive in the long run — not just in money, but in wasted time, missed opportunities, and lasting damage to your voice. Below, I’ll outline three of the biggest hidden costs I see in singers who come to me after months or years with “budget” lessons.

1. Wasted Time and Slow Progress

Most singers who come to me after trying lower-cost lessons have one thing in common: they’ve been stuck in place for years. Their voices sound the same, their problems never improve, and they’ve wasted hundreds of hours repeating the same mistakes.

  • Poor diagnosis: Many cheaper teachers don’t have the technical expertise to identify the real cause of a vocal issue. They’ll give surface-level tips that don’t address the underlying problem.
  • Endless repetition: Instead of breakthrough progress, you get “busywork” — scales and exercises that make you feel like you’re working, but don’t move the needle.
  • Lost years: By the time many singers find me, they’ve spent two, three, even five years in this cycle — years they could have been building confidence, range, and performance power.

If you’d like to see how we break singers out of this cycle, have a look at Kirsty’s success story — she transformed her voice after years of plateauing elsewhere.

2. Vocal Damage and Bad Habits

This is the cost nobody talks about — but it’s one I see all too often. The wrong kind of singing lessons can actually make your voice worse over time.

  • Strain and fatigue: Without correct technique, singers often push, shout, or over-sing. The result? A voice that tires quickly or even becomes hoarse.
  • Embedded bad habits: Once poor habits are built into your muscle memory, it takes far longer to undo them than it would have to learn correctly from the start.
  • Risk of lasting damage: Some singers develop nodules, tension, or chronic issues that could have been avoided entirely with proper guidance.

I go into more detail about this in Why someone’s voice can weaken. It’s a clear example of why cutting corners early can have long-term consequences.

3. Missed Opportunities and Confidence

The final hidden cost isn’t always visible — but it’s devastating for singers who are serious about their craft.

  • Auditions and gigs lost: If your voice isn’t reliable, you miss opportunities you might otherwise win.
  • Confidence eroded: Singers who spend years in ineffective lessons often begin to doubt themselves — wondering if they’ll ever improve.
  • Starting over: Many come to me frustrated, saying they feel like they’re “back to square one.” But they’re not — they’re starting from a weaker position than if they’d invested wisely from the outset.

For a real-world example, see our Vocal Misconceptions guide — it highlights how common misunderstandings can stall a singer’s entire journey.

The True Cost of Cheap Singing Lessons

When you add it all up, the bargain lesson isn’t so much of a bargain. Wasted years, vocal strain, lost confidence — these are costs far greater than the £20 you save on the day.

High-quality coaching isn’t about the hourly fee. It’s about getting clear, fast, lasting results that save you time, protect your voice, and open up opportunities. That’s why singers travel to work with me from across the UK and beyond — because they realise the real cost isn’t the fee, it’s the years wasted without progress.

If you’re ready to break out of the cycle of cheap singing lessons and start building a voice that works, you can book your initial consultation here.

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Mark JW Graham Vocal Coaching Studios

130 Wilford Crescent West, Nottingham, NG2 2FS

Mark is the Midlands’ leading Certified Vocal Coach, providing singing lessons in Nottingham and worldwide via online sessions.

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