Can You Teach Yourself to Sing?
I had a call with a prospective client the other week, and they asked whether it was possible for someone to teach themselves to sing. Now, whilst every single client I teach is technically “self-teaching” when they practise at home with our session recordings, whether singers can “DIY-build” their voice in isolation is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about… and also trying for myself, in fact.
Self-teaching is exactly how I started out. I used DVD courses, online lessons—even the early days of YouTube. Surely those avenues could work well for self-tuition, right?
Well, as I found out, self-building your voice doesn’t really work that way. In my opinion, this is for three primary reasons:
1. A Guitar or Piano Is a Finished Instrument—Your Voice Isn’t
When we learn a traditional instrument, even an inexpensive one, it’s already complete. A guitar has frets, strings, tuners. A piano has keys, hammers, and has likely been tuned before delivery.
But when we try to learn singing, the “instrument” is incomplete. The voice hasn’t been taught to transition through registers. Many people don’t even realise such registers exist, let alone how to coordinate them.
So when someone thinks they can self-teach voice the same way they taught themselves guitar, it’s a flawed comparison. The voice must be built and played at the same time. That’s a massive difference.
2. Building a Voice and Using a Voice Are Two Different Skillsets
Continuing the analogy: the person who builds a guitar (a luthier) is not necessarily the person who plays it. The same is true of singers and coaches.
When someone says they want to “DIY-build” their voice, they’re effectively saying they want to be both the instrument builder and the performer. That’s a huge undertaking. As a professional coach, I can tell you most people grossly underestimate the physics, physiology, acoustics, and psychology involved.
Even getting a grip on the basics requires a huge investment of time and study. It takes the skill of an experienced singer and coach to guide someone to the right coordination.
3. You’re the Only Person Who Doesn’t Hear Your Voice Accurately
We’ve all heard recordings of our own voices and thought, “That’s not how I sound.” That’s because we hear ourselves through a combination of air and bone conduction—and it’s misleading.
It takes a lot of time and experience to mentally override this distortion. Even then, it’s a trick your brain performs—not an accurate perception. That’s why it’s so hard to self-monitor your voice effectively. You need someone on the outside who can hear what you’re doing—and what you’re meant to be doing—to give targeted feedback and correction.
If You’re Serious About Your Voice, Get Help
Just like you wouldn’t DIY your own surgery or legal defence, you shouldn’t try to DIY your vocal development.
Find someone who knows what they’re doing. It will save you a huge amount of time, effort, and frustration. I’ve gone down that road, and I’ve worked with many others who tried to as well. It’s a cul-de-sac.
Learn More: Related Articles
Recently I wrote an article about reasons why so many singers are just yelling.
This was not aimed as a rant about performers who are just bellowing on-stage in lieu of actual singing, but a frank and honest look at various reasons why. I hinted in one passage that there’s also cultural reasons for this, and I wanted to dive a little deeper into this today. It’s a thought-provoking subject, but if you’ve started to notice a difference in quality between singers of today vs yesteryear, then I would encourage you to have a read and a ponder for yourself.
1) Who do we look up to?
Quick history lesson: Once upon a time, high male singers did not sing high notes with great power.
Above chest voice, they would switch to a much lighter headier tonality, not entirely dissimilar to the sound of falsetto. This was after/alongside the period where castrati were also important for much of high male vocal work, but this is not within the scope of this article.
Then, in the early 1800s, an opera singer (Gilbert-Louis Duprez) sang a C5 (tenor high C) in a sound not unlike full chest voice. This was in a performance of the opera Guillaume Tell (or William Tell).
By all accounts his rendition was not of supreme quality, but the power he demonstrated there paved the way for powerful high male singing. Continue reading “Shouting Masquerading as Singing: More reasons why more singers are just yelling”
I was having a conversation with a client recently about riffing: what it is, why it’s useful, and why it seems difficult to many.
For the ease of discussion let’s say that anything that extends the melody beyond the original for dramatic/musical effect is a ‘riff’, and that riffing is therefore the act of extending the melody in such a way.
I’d say that most singers want to get better at riffs/riffing, but that they find it hard to do. I’d also say that a lot of singers who think they are good at riffing are not as good as they think they are, and typically repeat the same old basic tricks over and over. But why is it hard to do? And could it be made easier?
The simple answer is yes, but there’s some important logic and understanding behind that answer. Let’s break it down. Continue reading “Learning to Riff: Why most people find it hard & why it can be easier than you think”
In one of our more recent voice intensives, an important question was raised around the challenge of “trying to find my own sound“.
Finding your sound
It’s an all too common experience. Experienced and inexperienced singers alike, in a search for their sound, go on a mammoth journey trying on different vocal “fashions“. They try manipulating their voice this way, or that way; they’ll try singing like singer X or singer Y; singing with more air, with less air; more volume here, less volume there; etc… all in repeated attempts to find “their sound“.
Searching for internet experts on forums or on Youtube often follows. Singers end up looking for self-help suggestions and how-to videos then discover tips advised by online personalities. Raise your larynx for high notes, lower your larynx for lower notes, sing harder, sing lighter, more or less nasal resonance, stick your tongue out, pull your tongue back, and many more weird and wonderful instructions.
— NOTE: If you’re confused or bewildered by these ideas, I’m not surprised!
Your own journey
If you’re reading this article, you likely relate to the above experiences, and may still be going through this mammoth journey trying to “find your sound“. Continue reading “Finding your sound”
