“I’m thinking about getting some singing lessons, but what happens in a singing lesson? What exactly do singing lessons involve? How do singing lessons work?”
Great question, and it’s important to know what happens in a singing lesson! And truthfully, no voice coach or singing teacher runs lessons exactly the same. No matter how great a given teacher or coach is, or how similar two coaches happen to be in terms of their approach, all have different styles.
That said, here are some good things to bear in mind as a good structure for the first lesson you have and future sessions. If a teacher doesn’t follow roughly this list of check-points, it may be worth looking around for someone that more accurately fits the bill. We are assuming lessons are a typical length of an hour whenever we mention times below.
At the start of the first lesson…
The first lesson should have an initial consultation in which your prospective singing teacher identifies what you can currently do, and what you can’t. From there they should be able to explain WHY you are struggling there, and then present a clearly understandable plan of action for HOW you and them are going to address those issues. Their explanation should make sense and you should be able to relate to the issues they indicate you likely suffer from. The goal is to BUILD your voice to fix and address issues, not to avoid the trouble areas or gloss over it with adding style prematurely – this is critically important.
This shouldn’t take overly long at the beginning of the lesson, maybe 5-10 minutes at most.
Once you get going…
Once your key issue obstructing your development has been identified, the majority of the duration of the first lesson (and most lessons, at least the start of your vocal development) should focus on addressing your specific vocal issue using exercises that isolate and attend to that issue to develop correct vocal technique. Your coach should enable you to feel and identify that difference they are causing in your voice, however small (or ideally big!) that difference might be. This is because it is the coach’s job to introduce you to the more effective way of using your voice and to make this abundantly clear throughout the first lesson and every lesson thereafter – this is critical to effective teaching, don’t put up with vagueness or lack of understanding in this area.
This section of the lesson can vary, but should typically be 20-40 minutes depending on the voice in question.
Wrapping up towards the end…
Technique is all well and good, but we NEED to apply this to song… as that’s what we’re trying to learn to do in the first place. The last 5-15 minutes or so should be spent applying this to one or two songs. Typically at the beginning it will just be one fraction (maybe even just one line or so) of one song, but as your ability grows, it will naturally become more than this.
The last few minutes…
Typically you should be recording your lesson or the coach may be recording it for you (for example, we offer a free online service to all clients to record and host their lessons online privately just for them) to enable you to practice along with between lessons. At this stage you’ll stop the recording, and your next lesson will be booked in, as well as any last few questions answered that you may have.
That’s about it! Hopefully that’s given you some idea of what to expect in singing lessons, how they work, etc. Give us a shout if you have any questions!
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