Can Singing Lessons Help a Bad Singer?
“I think I’m tone deaf, can singing lessons help a bad singer like me?”
“I can’t sing—will singing lessons help?”
“I’m awful at singing. My tone is bad and I struggle to even finish songs—can anything be done?”
If you’ve asked any of these questions, you’re not alone. The good news is: yes, singing lessons can absolutely help a bad singer. Like learning any instrument, developing your singing voice involves training, technique, coordination, and tone development.
1. “I might be tone deaf”
Most people aren’t actually tone deaf. True tone deafness means you can’t hear the difference between two pitches—high or low, they all sound the same. But most people know when they’re out of tune; they just can’t correct it easily.
That means it’s not tone deafness—it’s just a lack of coordination. It’s like knowing how juggling works but not being able to do it yet. With practice and the right technique, nearly everyone can learn to sing in tune.
Bonus anecdote: I once taught someone with medically certified profound deafness. With some guidance, they learned to sing mostly in tune—proof that this is a skill, not an innate gift.
2. “My tone is bad”
This is completely normal when starting out. Unlike a guitar or piano, your voice isn’t a finished instrument—you’re building it as you learn to use it. It’s rare to have a great tone straight away unless you’re genetically blessed.
But like any instrument, good tone comes with time and repetition. Tone is something we build.
3. “I run out of breath or can’t finish songs”
That’s stamina—and stamina takes training. Singing well requires managing air pressure, tone, power, and pitch simultaneously. It’s not unlike training for a sport: your voice develops its own fitness over time.
Bottom line: You can absolutely learn to build stamina, sing entire songs with ease, and feel confident in your voice. It’s a process—but a very achievable one.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering whether singing lessons can help a bad singer, the answer is a resounding yes. How far you’ll go depends on your commitment and willingness to train—but almost anyone can learn to sing well and feel proud of how they sound.
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- Are Singing Lessons Effective?
- Famous Singers Who Took Lessons
A student brought in some Mika this week – and I hadn’t heard this song in ages! So I bookmarked it for sharing this week… and as I was mulling it over, the following thought dropped out onto the blog post. This is a really catchy song but certainly not in vogue with current trends and preferences in popular music. It reminds me of certain Queen songs with the melodies, slight aggression, more pristine vocal quality… while also reminding me of some Take That in terms of the emotive feel and production on the track, and still also reminds me of the Scissor Sisters in terms of the slightly eclectic song writing. Mika’s Vocal Styling It sounds a little quirky (note how I avoided the word ‘funny’ there!), but it definitely works. So Mika clearly does not sound like many other artists out there, and clearly isn’t copied by many others, and yet he had (has?) a successful career doing his own material – yet I know 99% of singers would feel rubbish about themselves if they sounded that way or as different as Mika does, simply because they don’t sound like singer X, Y or Z. The Lesson to be Learned This lesson is a really useful one even for me. As someone who hears a LOT of singers every day of every week, I encounter singers with voices that I am tonally envious of. Seriously. It’s the ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome. And it’s 100% normal to feel like this from time to time. The challenge is to not be discouraged by this, but to harness that into pure motivation to keep working on our voices, developing strengths AND weaknesses to create something wholly your own… much like Mika has done – unique and standing apart from many other singers, where others may well have given up. So, are you going to give up? Or are you going to keep going?Do you hate the sound of your own voice?
So, do you hate the sound of your own voice?
What I find really interesting about Mika’s vocal styling is his use of a much lighter higher range where most singers then and now go for “RAH! MORE POWER EVERYWHERE” (to quote the Eagles song Life in the Fast Lane ‘everything, all the time’).
A lesson to be learned here is that even if you don’t quite sound like singer X, Y or Z, you should NEVER dismiss what you are doing as artistically unuseable. You may not have found exactly your niche or style just yet, but if you keep developing and trialling what you’ve got going on, you’ll start to develop something all your own.