Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting 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.