I’ve been singing in choirs for over 25 years. When I first started, at school, we weren’t given any vocal instruction at all, just told to sing! The same happened at university – no auditions, no vocal training. We just sang.
In my late 20s I joined a more serious choir. The musical director started many of our rehearsals with talks about various aspects of vocal technique. It didn’t take me long to realise that I had little idea of what he was talking about. Fortunately for me, my father offered to buy me a course of singing lessons as a birthday present.
Ideally, we would all like to be able to afford a personal vocal coach, but the reality is that singing lessons are expensive. To make them worthwhile you need to practice at home between sessions and you need to go at least once a week. It’s a bit like learning to drive – you need to keep the momentum going and keep in practice.
Realistically, not everyone can afford the time and the money to take a lengthy course of private singing lessons. One alternative would be to look for group classes. This was something that my choir started to offer after I had my private lessons. Group classes are fun, you are in good company and the cost is less than one to one lessons. However, the groups were small so the lessons still cost a considerable sum and still required an extra weekly commitment to attend.
Committing to weekly lessons isn’t easy if you have family commitments or work/school commitments.
A third alternative is to consider learning at home. This has become easier now that most people own a computer. Along with the computer comes the ability to record yourself and play back so you can hear where you are going wrong. If you want an accompanist – the computer can do that too – playing the accompaniment for you. If you want to repeat a lesson – no problem, computers don’t get bored. They will repeat a lesson, or part of a lesson as often as you want until you feel you have got the hang of it.
There are a whole range of online courses, some of which come with their own recording studio software to allow you to record yourself and mix with a choice of backgrounds and accompaniments.
If you decide to learn at home you can learn at your own pace, in private. If, like me, you start knowing nothing, you won’t be embarrassed by finding that anyone else on your course knows more than you do. With a bit of practice you will start to gain in confidence and ability, without the need to pay for an expensive course of lessons
If you decide to learn at home, take a look at Sing Smart Not Hard
