Category: Singing Myths and Misconceptions

Busting Singing Myths and Misconceptions with Evidence-Based Insight

There’s no shortage of bad advice in the world of singing. This section breaks down popular myths and misconceptions—like needing to “sing from your diaphragm” or avoid certain voice types. We then replaces them with clear, accurate explanations rooted in vocal science and real teaching experience. If you’re confused by conflicting advice online, this is where clarity begins.

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10 Common Singing Myths — Debunked by a Professional Vocal Coach

10 Singing Myths Debunked by Science and Experience

There’s no shortage of opinions when it comes to singing. But many of the so-called “rules” passed around in voice lessons, online forums, and even music degrees simply don’t hold up to what we now know about the voice. If you’ve ever felt confused, frustrated, or stuck, there’s a good chance one of these myths is to blame.

Let’s debunk the 10 most common vocal myths that could be holding you back — and get you back on track toward a stronger, freer voice.

  1. “You have to sing from your diaphragm.”

    This one tops the list. It’s vague, misused, and usually misunderstood. Yes, breath support is essential — but singing is about vocal coordination, not just pushing air. Singing louder doesn’t mean singing better.

  2. “You’re either born with it, or you’re not.”

    This myth stops more singers than it should. The truth? Learning to sing is a skill like any other — one that improves with smart, consistent training.

  3. “Falsetto is the same as head voice.”

    Nope. Falsetto and head voice use different vocal fold behaviors. Understanding the difference is key to developing range and power. Here’s a quick explainer as to what falsetto is, and how it differs from head voice (plus why I don’t like falsetto)

    4. Continue reading “10 Common Singing Myths — Debunked by a Professional Vocal Coach”

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Why learning to sing can feel so hard

Why Learning to Sing Can Feel So Hard

Short Version: You’re building an instrument you can’t see or touch, while also learning to play it.

Long Version:
Singing feels natural — but mastering it is anything but. Here’s why developing vocal skill is uniquely challenging, even for otherwise talented musicians.

You have to build the instrument, and train it to respond precisely in real time, while having no access to its moving parts.

Most instruments give you feedback. You move a key, press a string, shift a valve — and you see and feel something change. You can then try again and again until it feels right.

The voice offers no such feedback.

You sing a note, and you hear what came out a fraction of a second later. Then you try to internally feel what muscles created it.

You can’t see it, touch it, or directly manipulate it. It’s like building a model ship inside a bottle, with chopsticks, behind your back.

The level of precision required is extreme. You need to coordinate several muscle systems, simultaneously and precisely, across a wide range of intensities.

Most people never need that kind of motor control in their daily life. That’s why it feels so alien at first.

Continue reading “Why learning to sing can feel so hard”

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Vocal Myths: Voice Projection

I often receive messages from people having issues with their ‘voice projection’. One common instance is people who require their voice to be strong for their work. This week, I thought I’d talk about one such case so you can understand what they were battling with, and some constructive suggestions that can be made to improve their situation.

This particular voice user

They informed me that they were having trouble “projecting their voice” in a clear way that can be heard in a busy/loud environments, but also in group meetings/conversations. 

They were looking for advice on whether there’s anything practical they could change or exercises they could do, or whether it’s something they were stuck with.

The reply I put together is something I realise that I’ve covered with clients in sessions, but not actually written down anywhere, so I thought I would relay the content of my reply here for you to read.

While this reply is centred around issues regarding being heard in work, the same logic applies if we are trying to be heard singing in bands/groups, or with other instruments.

Issues around “projection” and loud environments

The stated problem is multivariate, as such there is no short answer or simple solution. However, I’ll try to break it down as simply as I can, then provide some practical suggestions. Continue reading “Vocal Myths: Voice Projection”

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Bitesize Singing Myths

3 Common Singing Myths (and Why They’re Wrong)

In my work as a vocal coach, I often hear the same statements repeated by singers eager to improve. Some are valid goals—but others stem from widespread misconceptions. These singing myths often gain traction because they sound sensible on the surface, but when we dig deeper, we find that they’re misleading or outright unhelpful.

Let’s explore three of the most common singing myths I hear—and unpack why they’re mistaken, and what to focus on instead.

Singing Myth 1. “I need to work on my confidence”

I’ve written on confidence before, where our culture tends to prioritise charisma over competence. And sure—how we feel emotionally can affect how we perform. We’ve all had great days and terrible days.

But here’s the trap: many singers now believe that confidence is more important than technical ability. They place more emphasis on emotional readiness than on actual skill.

Emotions matter… but…

Yes, emotions influence performance. But they can’t make up for a lack of technical control. You need to possess the skill before emotion can elevate it.

Take a concert pianist. They don’t rely on “feeling confident” to play well—they train until playing the piece correctly becomes second nature. Only then does emotion take it to a higher artistic level.

The same is true in singing: competence comes first.

Take-home point: True confidence is a by-product of competence. Train your voice until singing well feels almost boring in its consistency—then you’ll find real confidence waiting for you.

Singing Myth 2. “I need to work on my breathing”

Breathing absolutely matters. We need breath to make sound. I give clients instructions related to breathing all the time. But just like with confidence, this area has become mythologised.

Some singers (and even some vocal methods) treat breath as the be-all and end-all—as if mastering it will fix everything.

Let’s consider the mechanics

Air is the fuel—but it’s not what makes the sound. The vocal folds inside your larynx act as valves that regulate airflow. They are the engine that transforms air into sound.

If your vocal folds aren’t trained to resist airflow correctly, the result will be:

  • Too little resistance → airy, weak tone; breath runs out fast
  • Too much resistance → tight, pressed tone; oxygen depletion without full breath use

So when someone says, “I need to work on my breathing,” 99% of the time the real issue lies in poor vocal fold coordination—not the breath itself.

It’s all trainable—but not by “working on breathing” alone

This misconception is especially common in older singers or those trained in traditional musical theatre, where excess airflow was often encouraged. The result? Muscle tone degrades, and vocal efficiency drops.

Take-home point: If your vocal folds aren’t managing airflow efficiently, it’s not your breathing that’s broken—it’s your engine that needs tuning.

Singing Myth 3. “I need to work on my belt”

This one is big in musical theatre circles, but comes up with rock singers too. “Belting” generally refers to singing high notes with intensity and a particular tonal quality—something more urgent or attention-grabbing than normal singing.

The problem

What most singers mean when they say they want to work on their belt is: “I want to yell my high notes, but without hurting myself.”

That’s not how it works.

Yelling regularly is destructive. It diminishes range and tone over time. It’s hard on the voice, even if it feels intense or effective in the moment.

Just ask Idina Menzel’s critics.

A better approach

A healthy belt is the by-product of even, consistent technique. When your voice is trained well from bottom to top—and you gradually increase your dynamic capacity—a strong, intense upper register is a natural result.

Take-home point: Belting isn’t yelling. A great belt comes from control and conditioning—not force.

Final Thoughts

Each of these myths stems from a seed of truth. Confidence, breath, and power do matter. But focusing on them in isolation—or misunderstanding their role—can lead singers down frustrating paths.

If you want real progress, build technical consistency first. That’s what gives you freedom, confidence, stamina, and power in your singing. Everything else flows from there.

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Why Breathing Isn’t Your Problem

The most common self-assessment I hear from people discussing their own voice and who want to improve their singing, by far, is:

“I think I’m doing a good job, I just need to work on my breathing“

Of course, other comments are common:
“I need to work on my tone”
“my vocal quality still needs work”
“I reach the high notes but it doesn’t sound that good”

But these are vastly outstripped (or accompanied) by self-assessments of “breathing issues“.

I understand why this comes up.

Many singers will typically think they sound alright, but notice that they run out of breath during specific lines, struggle to finish phrases, etc.

Typically, they feel like they’ve got full lungs of *something* but physically feel like they have to empty and refill before the next section of the song, etc. Breathing is critically important for singing, but I’ve got news for you: breathing probably isn’t your main problem. In fact, most singers’ breathing is typically fine, and the issue lies elsewhere. Continue reading “Why Breathing Isn’t Your Problem”

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What most singing teachers get wrong about vocal coaching, and reasons why

What Voice Teachers Often Get Wrong About Vocal coaching

Many of my voice clients have had past coaching before ever starting with me.

This is fairly normal. Like with any subject worth learning, we start with someone accessible, then we move forward to coaches appropriate to our improving level over time.

As I receive these more serious and technically advancing clients who have moved through various coaches, I get some insight as to the good and bad attributes of the other coaches out there.

In this article, I wanted to talk about the slightly contentious topic of: what (I think) a lot of vocal coaches and singing teachers generally get wrong about vocal coaching, and the reasons why.

1. They don’t understand how the voice works

This is by far the biggest issue I come across. I would estimate that 60% of voice teachers I encounter simply do not understand how the voice works, at least not to a sufficient degree that they could effectively teach it as an instrument.

How can you spot these coaches? Often such teachers are strong singers in their own right, or they may have a good stage presence that nets them gigs/performances. But they lack any specific knowledge about how the voice works or how to elicit real change and improvement in their clients’ voices.

If you don’t know which component of the voice is responsible for which vocal characteristic (and which exercises are responsible for developing and culturing those qualities), you’re on a hiding to nowhere.

I regularly see or hear of people teaching things that do literally nothing for the voice. Worse still, I see people advising “technique” or key choices that are inclining singers towards vocal damage. This is generally well-intentioned, but ultimately ill-informed.

To train a voice, one needs sufficient understanding of the voice and how it works in order to build it well.

We don’t necessarily need voice degrees in vocal physiology to perform high level vocal coaching. However, one’s understanding can’t be so vague (or absent!) that one can’t answer basic questions about why something sounds a certain way when a student asks.

2. They ONLY possess academic knowledge of how the voice works

This might seem counter-intuitive given my first point, but this is actually a legitimate growing problem in the vocal coaching world.

Many singing teachers initially fall foul of point 1, and then come to the admirable realisation that they are missing something. They then wisely attempt to plug a gap in their knowledge by attending courses, studying more, etc. Of course, I 100% commend this attitude.

However, what is now appearing is a sub-group of vocal coaches who know plenty about how the voice works and the latest science… and that’s about it.

Some even come from a purely academic background with no real singing experience/ability. I’m often surprised by how many set about purely academic development with great fervour and effort, yet attribute little-to-no work into application of this in their own vocal ability.

Deep scientific knowledge of the latest studies is all well and good. Having countless diplomas and a list of speaking engagements are clearly very impressive. However, if that doesn’t translate to making someone sing better – either themselves or a client – what on earth is the point??

Knowledge for knowledge’s sake will inevitably pull one in all directions and fundamentally get students nowhere. This is especially true when we’re talking about a “doing” activity like singing. The rubber simply has to meet the road.

3. They simply try to polish whatever is there

It’s shocking how many people I have met and work/worked with who describe their last teacher(s) lessons as consisting of the following: “We just did a few warmups then sang songs for the whole lesson, and they gave me some tips“.

The goal of a good vocal coach should be to build a voice from the ground up. For those with either a lack of knowledge (as per point 1), or only academic knowledge (as per point 2), many teachers simply try to “polish whatever is there“.

If a singer has come to a teacher for help, the goal of the teacher is not just to get them to force out a couple of extra high notes, or make them louder, or more stylised, etc. Their goal should be to build a singer’s voice from the ground up. They should be aiming to culture the singer AND the voice into a complete performer and instrument.

We need exercises that work with where a student is at to:
a) build their technical facility, then…
b) show them how to take that new facility into song.

4. They are teaching you to manually operate your voice using a variety of disparate techniques

Most teachers who have some knowledge or singing ability will have their own little collections of approaches for specific areas in the voice, i.e. “tips and tricks“. From their perspective.

With such teachers, every part of the voice will (allegedly) have its own little arcane ruleset that’s often incongruent with every other part of the voice, e.g. “when up there, push it harder, open your mouth super-wide“, or “try and flip for the high notes, it’ll be easier“, “get more nasally there”, or other such bizarre instructions.

(SIDENOTE: If you want to read about the more insane singing instructions I’ve heard about, you can read some of those here)

This just becomes a smörgåsbord of incongruent instructions for the singer. Such an incongruent amalgam of rules typically lead to a very broken and inconsistent overall range in a singer’s voice, and general confusion on the part of the singer.

When it comes to building a voice, we don’t want approachES – as in plural – we want a single unified approach that blends all parts of the voice together so that it’s even from top to bottom, with no breaks, flips, breaks or switches. Sure, there might be moments where we need to introduce a singer to a new part of their range in a less finished way, but we must be moving toward a smooth seam-less voice.

This philosophy to building a voice makes the voice far more like a well-built piano, where we can play whatever notes we want, as and when we want (assuming we’ve built it sufficiently).

5. Lack of empathy

This is something I think about a lot.

When each of us is looking for guidance on singing songs, whether technical or artistic in nature, we need someone that can empathise with what we are trying to achieve. I don’t just mean intellectually, and I don’t just mean emotionally – I mean “empathy” in a total sense.

However, many coaches are lacking in this dimension. Sometimes it may be a more obvious lack of emotional empathy with a singer, but in this case I’m talking about something more fundamental and far less obvious.

The issue is this: if a purported coach is not a singer, has a substantially different voice (or even a less capable voice than a given singer), or has no experience with singing even a related type of material/a particular range, such a teacher will have a severely impaired grasp of what the singer in question is going through.

My own experience

I say this as someone who spent many years studying with female vocal coaches, or lighter voiced male coaches, who simply did not understand what the more typical male voice had to experience to build their voice. The extra weight in the bottom end of the voice, the challenge in getting out of the bottom and into the top, to do so in a smooth way. None of them grasped it, as it all came so much easier to their voices.

The lack of understanding and lack of empathy meant they gave directions trying to configure my voice in a way that it was ultimately not built to do, as if it was a lighter voice than it was. It wasn’t till I started working with coaches with more experience working with my weight of voice that the cogs started to mesh fully.

It is this lack of empathy in the actual doing, at the level a singer needs to be doing it, that is hidden from view as being fundamentally unhelpful. But if they have never personally experienced each stop along the journey of technical and artistic development that they are trying to take the singer on, it’s not much more than an encouraging facade.

Even with the required teaching tools, a lack of personal experience in that area means it’s much like trying to describe road directions along roads which they themselves have never travelled.

A good vocal coach needs to have sufficient experience with coaching AND singing that they can grasp not just what the singer in question needs to do, but how it should feel to the singer to achieve that end. This is not just good personal coaching on an emotional level, but utterly critical on a technical level also.

Conclusion

This are just some of the things I’ve picked up as critical things for effective vocal coaching that often seem to be missing to one degree or another. This is not written with any one coach in mind, but rather makes a point of crystallising my thoughts on some of the critical components to good vocal coaching.

Learn More: Related Articles

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Five Vocal Misconceptions – Think you can’t increase vocal range?

Things like ‘I can’t increase vocal range’ are just not true…

To increase vocal range, you just need the right tools, it’s not something you’re stuck with. While we’re on this topic, let me tell you about some other misconceptions…

Here’s another short and sweet post on some interesting points. This one is focusing on five misconceptions about the voice, but I’ve left the more controversial misconceptions for longer posts.

1. I’m stuck with the range I’ve got = WRONG

Range is NOT static – Many insist that the range you have is the range you are stuck with, and that you cannot increase your range – end of. This is simply not true. Singing is a matter of improving the co-ordination of your voice as an instrument, from your vocal cords through to your vocal tract and everything else… but that’s ALL stuff you have already. It’s not a question of strength as much as it a question of ‘balance’ and muscle co-ordination. Since starting to study effective vocal technique my useable vocal range has increased by over an octave and a half, all with quality, and adding to that daily. The same result can be achieved with any singer over time.

2. I struggle with the high notes, I must be an alto/bass = WRONG

Range does not determine voice type – You may know that the bass guitar is an octave lower than the guitar, but they share LOTS of notes in common with one another. Common notes do not make a bass into a guitar, nor vice versa, they sound different. Likewise, many male singers with large ranges can hit soprano notes. This does not make them sopranoes. Similarly, sopranoes share notes with tenors. This doesn’t make them tenors. Just because you struggle with high notes doesn’t mean you are (necessarily) a lower type of voice. Voice type is not determined by range but the specific mechanics of a person’s voice, as these are distinctly different in the separate voice types. You can absolutely increase vocal range from where you currently are, you just need the right tools to experience it.

3. That guy/girl can sing so loud! They must be amazing singers = WRONG

Loudness does not reflect skill – We are all impressed by loud singers. And confidence in (good) singing is a big part of that. However, as we looked at in the explanation in the beginner course on the engine of the voice, loudness can come about not because of skill, but because of a lack of skill. Many singers cannot help but be excessively loud at the top of their range because they lack the balance to control that co-ordination. Now, skilled singers can and should be able achieve a high volume and a true forte in their voice, but volume alone does not reflect skill.

4. I can rely on the microphone and sound engineer to fix my voice = WRONG

Microphones cannot replace correct singing technique – In the same way that a guitar amp reproduces what is going on at the guitar and can complement what is going on at the guitar, a microphone reproduces and complements what the voice is doing… but it cannot compensate for weaknesses in the voice. Don’t think that autotune can fix something where you need to increase vocal range or improve your technique. There is simply no substitute for having good vocal technique and a balanced vocal ability.

5. Wow! That artist sounds amazing on the album, they must sound that way all the time = WRONG

The tape recorder doesn’t lie, but albums do – What we hear inside our own head when we sing is not what the audience hears. When we sing we need to record ourselves and listen back to hear the truth. However, when we listen to produced vocals on an album, we are NOT hearing the truth. We are hearing vast amounts of compression, multiple takes spliced together, and professional mastering on a singer’s voice, that masks and hides many of the problems we might hear in our own voices when we record one-take at home. The message is, we need to record ourselves to hear what we really sound like, but we cannot trust this same principle when listening to recorded albums. Don’t think that your favourite artist sounds that good with perfect pitching and nuance all the time – albums lie. Here’s a video to prove it to you.

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