Can you learn to sing better?
You can learn to sing better.
I can still remember when I was 11 years old, living in the suburbs of Tasmania in Australia, and my dad suggested to me I take singing lessons. I had always just sung around the house, sung along to songs, and never thought about the fact I would ever need to be formally taught. I just thought singing was something that came naturally, but boy was I wrong.
So can you actually learn to sing better?
It’s always incredible to me how differently we all use our voices. Making sound with the voice is an incredibly efficient process but we don’t just come out of the womb and understand how it works - especially when it comes to singing. Very often there is massive untapped potential in a voice because we don’t innately know how the voice can work at its best. And I find our natural speaking voices are influenced by so many emotional factors
was there a tense atmosphere in your house?
did you feel you had to speak softly? or loudly?
are you a shy person?
do you talk nonstop without taking a breath?
When I started out with voice lessons my voice was very breathy. This meant I couldn’t project my sound and would always run out of air. My voice didn’t have that cut-through quality and at the time I didn’t even know that was desirable. But once I had learned to make that sound - my entire singing technique improved, everything was easier, I had more control, more projection, and singing became effortless and fun. I learned to be able to control the amount of cut-through quality I wanted to use, so if I need to these days - I can completely take it out of my voice, but if I need to sing across a theater - the people in the back will understand the words.
In the end, learning technique gives you incredible control over your voice, and this allows you to express whatever a song requires. The voice is an incredible instrument and at its best, should feel and sound, effortless.
So can you learn to sing better?
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I can tell you with complete honesty and personal experience I can still feel in ma’ bones - the answer is hell yes!!
If you have an experience with learning to sing that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you. Please put it in the comments, maybe your story inspires others to commit to the beautiful journey of improving their singing too.
Here’s to doing what we love x
Fiora
Singing should always be an extension of speech, but often even our speech is hiding our true voices. That’s why, with the right guidance, you can learn to sing better.
I think of singing as more like being an athlete than learning a musical instrument. It requires you to be aware of your whole body. Olympic athletes don’t just walk up to the starting blocks and rely on their natural talent - they spend years training and perfecting their techniques. If you wanted to be better at golf, swimming, surfing or horse-riding, you would train to be better - otherwise, like me, you’d swing that golf iron and leave a huge hole in the green or worse, fall off the horse… yep.. I’ve been there and trust me, you want to try to avoid that experience.
Becoming a better singer is the same process, except for the fact it’s not an Olympic sport. If your body is tired, the voice is tired, if you’re sick the voice just won’t work.
Even though I had quite a natural voice, singing lessons improved my singing dramatically. I would even go as far as saying - with the right teacher and healthy practice the sound of my voice completely changed. At the time I never would have believed it was possible. But it happened, and those changes in my voice improved my whole life.
