I’m a professional musician in NYC. I perform and record classical and “jazz” and compose music. I learned to code a while ago too.
Here are a few vocalists who “taught themselves” how to sing: Chet Baker, Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Sheila Jordan, Blossom Dearie, Bob Dorough, James Taylor, Nelly McKay... even Barbara Streisand. (at first) I’d say all great singers play an instrument well, but Ella and Sheila didn’t, nor did Barbara. What do you like to sing? What do you want to do with it? Since you didn’t say “opera” and you called it “vocals”, I’m guessing you like pop or jazz or singer/songwriter stuff. If jazz, who is your hero? If they are alive, call them up for a lesson. I promise they will love to teach anyone with enthusiasm. I know, because I know this crowd of vocalists well. Where do you live? Looking past these times, it would be great for you to just go out and sing with a band every week. Every city has such a thing and it is usually a supportive group of people. Singers are great for that. But most impirtantly— apart from opera— there is no wrong way. we have mics now. Don’t worry about doing something “with bad habits”. The only important bad habit to avoid is to not try for fear of doing something wrong. I promise that there is no wrong if you listen, embrace mistake making and experiment with relish. That is how any great singer or musician does it. You don’t “need a teacher” but it’s fun to have someone to check in with. Better than a teacher— pick some songs you love, learn them and find a fantastic, professional accompanist who will play them with you once a week. (guitarist, bassist, or pianist— even vibes— a comping instrument, not a melody one)I could recommend actual people if I knew where you were. Just listen hundreds of times to great vocalists singing the same song. For example: How Deep Is The Ocean— Sheila Jordan, Chet Baker, Ella, ... anyone you love and imitate exactly how they sing it— note for note, bend for bend, even the scatting parts- especially those. Get the phone app: The Amazing Slow Downer and loop sections so you can sing exactly like them. This builds your ear and your technique. Obviously, you don’t want to sing the song like they do at all, but you want to learn from them. For more current singers—I’ve been digging Natalia Lafourcade recently, her phrasing is impeccable and natural. Nelly McKay is also such a natural singer- her If I had You is so perfect. Just put a little set together w a friend and go outside (10 ft apart) and sing to people walking by. That’s better than any teacher. I wish you great fun and encourage you to get singing ASAP! Cheers!
You may want to check this out- online classes from Berkeley- I saw that you were nearby... https://cjc.edu/workshops/
I know Kate McGarry and have heard Dena DeRose teach many times- both phenomenal singers and teachers of singing. Both classes look interesting! You could also email Kate or tweet to her to see if she might know a good accompanist or vocal teacher or if she herself does lessons outside the music school.
There is also SFConservatory, but I don't know the whole faculty there.
BTW, this is how birds learn their calls! The only app or teacher or tuning device you will ever really need are your own ears. We musicians develop technique by training ourselves to listen and sing using our listening as the guide— this is how we improve. No person or device can do this for you— this is what singing is all about just like logic is what programming is all about. There is no shortcutting this— it is myelinating those nerve fibers through practice and listening and developing an opinion of your own about it. The mindset is not about getting a badge from a qualified judge— that judge is you and only you. The mindset is about adventure and experimentation and creativity and expression of style.
Getting a voice teacher made a huge difference for me. I wouldn't have been able to make anywhere close to the same progress on my own.
Having tried it, I think singing is poorly suited to self-learning. In my experience, vocal lessons are designed around identifying and overcoming problems and habits that are unique to each person. Identifying problems is done by ear or by observing subtleties in body posture, which require experience and training.
I personally got a lot of benefit from singing teachers who posted daily vocal warm-ups on Youtube that you can try and sing along to, and they tell you what to do and what not to do. Exercises to separately work on and develop your posture, airflow, vocal chord usage etc are useful as you can improve the individual parts. I'd never had any vocal training and am not trying to be amazing - just to improve and have some control and consistency.
Some also post classes, where you can see them coaching others and learn from them.
Listening to podcasts by performers about their daily routine might be useful if you want to know what they need to do to care for their voice in order to be able to perform daily.
There are a thousand different techniques to learn how to sing and many people stick to their "tribe". If you're smart, you'll look beyond whoever teaches you first and stay open to other techniques with different approaches or opinions. Stick with what feels good for your body. If your throat hurts, stop.
Now, having said all that. I have had really positive experiences with a teacher who teaches CVT (Complete Vocal Technique). I'm sure a huge part of this was the individual teacher I found, but every lesson I walked away feeling like I had learned something new and had improved my technique. If there's a licensed CVT teacher near you, I'd highly recommend trying them.
I also highly recommend Complete Vocal Technique. It breaks down the voice in a unique way that I think particularly appeals to engineers and teaches you how to re-create any style safely by using correct vocal support, vowel choice, mouth position, etc...
My vocal coach (Greg Delson) is incredible and teaches Complete Vocal Technique. He does online lessons, group lessons, etc... that are worth looking into:
Music is my life-long passion, and I took rock/pop singing lessons for some time so I feel I can relate to where you are and give some actionable advice.
There is only one thing you can do: find a good teacher. You don't have experience related to singing, so you are not even able to diagnose what you are doing wrong and start working on it. You accidentally start pushing yourself into direction opposite to what you should be doing as I did at some point. Also, it's important to find a good one: if a teacher suggests something, then you try it for a few weeks and nothing changes, then maybe it's time to find another one. I'm not saying you can learn everything in a month, but you should at least notice something is changing and and understand what exactly you are working on. If the teacher can't explain what exactly you should improve (and how) other than "sound better" then likely it's not a good teacher. I cannot stress how important is finding the right teacher. Two lessons with right guy I found were much more effective than everything else I did beforehand for years (youtube tutorials, lessons with other people, trial and error). Don't try to be cheap: few weeks with someone who knows what they are doing can take you further than months with someone who doesn't (obviously I'm not saying that all good teachers are expensive and all cheap are bad. What I'm saying is that there is SO MUCH DIFFERENCE between an average and a great teacher that it's often worth paying for example twice as much). One more thing about teachers is try to get demos of their students and see if you like how they sing.
Another piece of advice: get used to recording and listening to yourself. It's frustrating, but it's second best thing I did after finding a good teacher. I can't imagine making progress on singing without recording. And you can record yourself on a smartphone/laptop/whatever for practice purposes, no need to buy any audio equipment.
Join a choir! Find one with suitable level, and with the kind of repertoire that you like, and with a teacher that actually teaches the technical aspects.
But it doesn't really matter actually, because once in a choir you will meet people, learn from other people, learn about other choirs, and it's quite normal that people switch to different choirs every so often.
Also, people say that a choir is important for one's musical development, and I have to agree (having done solo singing before singing in a choir).
PS: the first few sessions may feel overwhelming but this is quite normal and most choir members have learned that new people will need some time to get accustomed to singing. In my experience, most new people will sing along very softly, and then suddenly after a few weeks they will become more confident and more audible. This is totally normal.
PPS: until the covid19 situation is over, perhaps "online" lessons as others have mentioned are a better idea.
I used to make MIDI maps of songs in Ableton and then record myself singing along to it. The I would use the "convert audio melody to MIDI" command and get a MIDI map of my audio recording and overlay it with what the song should be. Gives you good visual feedback to correct things that you might not have noticed ... Oh wow I'm coming up flat on that 5 every time. etc...
Also, second everyone who is saying get a voice coach. Very valuable in surprising ways.
Not the op, but say you're looking to pick up a minor hobby with the goal of being able to sing campfire/karoake basics such that it's a tolerable or maybe even pleasant experience for the audience. Inspiration being "not-pretty" talk-singing singer-songwriters - John Darnielle, Bill Callahan, Will Oldham, etc.
Difficulty level: starting from utter scratch, middle-aged.
Find a group ( or start one!) that likes similar music or all types and sit in a room ( or zoom?) and play these songs together- everyone goes around the room taking solos, singing the tune, or whatever they want to do one time through the form. You will get comfortable with that, and you will learn new tunes!
Get a tuner app like you'd use to tune guitar then try singing something and check how close is your C, using a tuner as a cheat can shave years of agony compared to guessing.
I'm not sure I understand your suggestion. Are you saying that someone should be able to sing a particular note, with no other frame of reference? That's a fun parlor trick, but doesn't really benefit you when it comes to singing actual songs (where the pitch is all relative).
No, I think he means using the tuner to tell how well you sing intervals, etc. Find a center pitch, sing relative to that and keep track of how off you go from the correct notes.
Get regular Skype lessons with Kegan from https://www.bohemianvocalstudio.com. He also has YouTube videos up so you can get a taste for what he focuses on first. Don't worry if he doesn't sing in the exact style you want, because it's all about foundational principles. It's life-changing stuff.
If that won't work for you and you're set on in-person lessons, try to find someone who was never a natural singer, and had to learn everything from scratch. They'll be able to pass on more than someone who started with a basic natural ability.
Agreed. I trained under an opera singer in college, which couldn't be further from the genres of music I play in, but the underlying principles of bel canto singing were transformative for me.
Plug for my friend’s “start-up”/company that I’ve used to find online piano teachers to great success, but they also do vocals as well as many other instruments: ToneRow.com.
She is a piano prof at Juilliard and I believe runs one of their startup/business courses, so she’s put a lot of careful thought into this (but I’m sure would appreciate feedback).
Disclosure: I am completely unaffiliated with her company, but have been using it during this period of SIP. If you have any questions or feedback about TR, feel free to reach out.
Yes, getting a voice teacher is both the fastest and healthiest way to go about this.
While there are plenty of resources available online and there are countless self-taught singers it's easy to acquire unhealthy habits, which in turn might also limit your progress and ability over time.
Latency can be a problem with anything music-related in an online setting, though. Apart from that, singing is very much a physical activity and some feedback from your body might be missed due to limitations of the medium.
Nevertheless, it certainly is a viable and tested approach (with many teachers and even well-known singers offering personal training online) and worth a try.
I have had a tutor in the past, but I have been doing Yousician's singing course for a few months and I am quite happy with it: https://yousician.com/singing. I like that their software is able to detect if you are in tune or not.
I've been paying a tutor to teach me korean for a year with a twist. I told my tutor to not teach me anything, all I want is honest feedback about how I sound. What accent I make and how to say things a certain way. She just listens and tells me the impression I give off.
With her feedback I am able to self adjust to reflect my personality when I speak Korean.
Personally, I feel like getting a tutor to "teach you" something in the artsy space may slow down your search to find your own voice that resonates with you. Maybe you can pay a tutor to just "listen to you" and tell you what you sound like to the other person.
On the other hand, if your goal is to just to imitate other singers, I would suggest getting a tutor to teach you like many other are suggesting.
You can learn how to sing, but either your a good to great singer people enjoy hearing via a talent your born with or not. A few amount of people in a crowd of 100 possess such talent. No matter how many voice lessons you take the tone/quality of your voice isnt going to change.
Not trying to discourage anyone, but if your goal is to become a singer people outside of family/friends enjoy hearing for free or money learn how to sing on key then sing for others. You will know then and there by their response to your singing if you have that gift or not. Though many with that gift are born with perfect pitch and can sing on key innately (lucky ones).
Paul, this absolutely breaks my heart. Anyone can learn to sing in tune. I’ve taught kids and adults who are “tone deaf” to listen and sing/play in tune in weeks to months. It isn’t a magic trick, just listening and singing and listening and singing. Like algorithms- you break it down. There is no such thing as a bad voice— the best voice is when you sound like yourself: natural. No one is born knowing how to sing. we, all of us learn to sing by listening and imitating and singing a long—- its hours of practice. We are not born knowing how to talk either. Please try to sing again and don’t let the haters get you down.
So you have taught someone to change the tone/quality of the voice they were given to the point where ppl pay to hear them sing?
A great To distinct singing voice like Kelly Clarkson, Norah Jones, Karen Carpenter, Louis Armstrong, Barbara Streisand, Robert Plant, Allison Kraus, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and many other popular singers is a innate or god given talent. No vocal coach is going to change that...they can help your pitch and breathe but they can't change your tone/quality of voice that compels people to want and or pay you to hear you sing!
I'm with you on "born with": Karen Carpenter, Barbara Streisand and Whitney... we will never have another of any of these ever again. But Louis Armstrong?-- a great great singer and incredible, towering musician by any measure-- doesn't have a naturally "beautiful" voice like them-- he basically plays a kind of voice trumpet using his vocal chords-- which is his personal, developed style- and it is SO compelling and multi-textured. That is practice, baby! That is being comfortable with your instrument and your own stylistic ideas and making stuff up within a style and context. Robert Plant? That is all about the gut of it- the raw impulse. The rock n roll. It's his commitment to the story and the song, but I won't at all agree that he was born with a gorgeous or even naturally interesting voice-- but he has developed a very clear artistic one-- developed-- practiced and imagined. Bob Dylan? He compels a lot of people to buy records and tickets. Tom Waits? Great singing is stylistic and conceptual artistry like Picasso or Sophie Calle. Most important thing about the singing: being comfortable with yourself and accepting who you actually are and loving the imperfections. That is so difficult, I know - it is what we all practice all the time. Once you feel comfortable- it is all about being vulnerable (being totally cool with making mistakes and being imperfect and unbeautiful) in front of many people and making them feel like you trust them with your mistakes and your imperfections and your story. That's the whole thing and the hardest part.
Incidentally, no matter how beautiful the "born with" part, some of those who are most "born with" that impossibly gorgeous tone quality have a much harder time than the rest of us with the accepting of themselves and their imperfections (few, if any in the vocal department) and being vulnerable and ok with who they are. In fact, in the case of Carpenter and Whitney- it killed them —they were unable to sustain this vulnerability.
To your question: "So you have taught someone to change the tone/quality of the voice they were given to the point where ppl pay to hear them sing?" Well, not to change it fundamentally, but to embody it and learn to enhance it and present it with skill and generosity so that others (collaborators, audience members) will be compelled/motivated/helped by its vulnerability, truth, intention and whatever it's about-- this is essentially my job as a teacher of music. Just an FYI--- music is not about who pays to hear it- that is not the mark of its power or greatness. Does it change your life? That's it! (People pay for some crazy bad stuff.)
If you have rockstar And or making living off of being a singer go dream but with reality in mind. You either have that gift that compels people to stop/drop (also pay to)and listen to you or not.
Also, Louis Armstrong has a very distinct voice and no one I've heard sings a Wonderful World better.
I pursued my dream as a kid I started to hear songs in my head I hadn't heard before. That led me to Nashville to finish college and pursue my Songwriting dream. There you have to be the best of the best and many of those don't make it as they didn't get their break. While pursuing my dream I played/performed in many guitar circles amongst 5 to 10 songwriters. People will let you know if they want to hear you again vs. the next guy or my girlfriend at the time who usually was the best in each circle we played in. That doesn't mean I don't write Or perform anymore and enjoy it..I'm always just a realistic person.
I was in choirs growing up, and the one thing any singing teacher will start you with is: learning how to breathe from your diaphragm.
If you need a place to get started, you might just look for a few YouTube videos or tutorials about that. It gives you extra volumes of breath, so you can belt out the notes and hold them longer. Everything else follows from that.
Find a teacher. Generally as a rule Classical/Lyrical/MT styles require more technique than Rock or Jazz (they require technique to not hurt themselves but the style aspect is personal and harder to teach) so I'd recommend getting a teacher who knows the former well.
Classical/Lyrical/MT (what is MT?musical theater??)styles do not require "more" technique. They require different techniques that have a long pedagogical history. The style is not harder to teach. Classical music has many styles (Renaissance, Classical, Romantic, Chanson, Bel Canto...) and they are all as teachable as popular styles. I guess this bothered me because there is this incorrect hierarchy people ascribe to classical- like it's a higher art or something. This is misleading. I'm a classical musician. If anything, the "training" makes people think they need to ask permission for everything and keeps them chained to someone else's ideas and removes a lot of their own confidence. Then, they spend the rest of their life trying to undo this damage while they try to sing show tunes with some kind of relaxation "of the street" and without constant judging of themselves. See: Dawn Upshaw's popular musical recordings or Renee Flemming's.
For everyone saying "find a teacher": what specifically will the teacher will pick up on, that I can't pick up on my own listening voice recordings of myself?
The situation is, I've known that I should find a teacher for many years. However, I can be quite stubborn and have instead been recording myself playing guitar/singing for the past several years. With debatable progress.
I know I should find a teacher, but what should I look for? My guitar is fine.. I've played since I was 12 and had a lot of lessons back then. So I feel better about self-studying guitar.
I've also been singing for that long, but without any actual instruction. Help!
> what specifically will the teacher pick up on
Singing is not at all intuitive, and it is likely that the actions to take towards a goal will be counter productive and place an upper limit on your progress.
For example, if you try to sing a note on the top of your range you will likely resort to "muscling" the note by adding tension, but this approach if far from optimal, and will limit the amount of range you can add.
This is coming from me as a semi-professional classical vocalist, but I will also admit that my advice is likely much less useful for people interested in the kind of singing common in country or indie/folk music, as these kinds of music require much less technical complexity in their vocal production.
You don’t need a teacher. Seriously. The teacher thing is not the mindset you seek. Or rather, your best teachers are the great musicians you listen to over and over and admire from recordings and from your life. Jerry Reed had his own very strange way of playing guitar- it was so cool, Elvis hired him to play guitar on a record because he could not reproduce it.
> I've ... had a lot of lessons.... So I feel better about self-studying guitar
> I've also been singing ... without any actual instruction.
> Help!
So what's the difference between the thing you feel better about and the thing you feel worse about? What did you learn from your guitar teacher that you wouldn't have learned alone? It won't be the same for voice, but it'll be analagous.
More specifically, for learning, feedback is best when given immediately. A voice coach would be able to give immediate feedback, rather than you (potentially) discovering it later on on your own.
Also, an experienced coach will be able to match your weaknesses with exercises specifically chosen to address the challenges you are facing. Exercises appropriate for your current level and practicing the skills you need.
Finally, there is a lot of subtlety in vocal technique. There are tons of things that most people do not notice in self-observation or through recordings that a coach can pick up on and help you through.
You NEED to find a vocal coach. At least for the first few months. If you try and learn through online courses, you will never learn what you're doing wrong.
Worse, without the feedback of a teacher, you can easily neglect a major weakness, develop a bad habit without knowing it, or even destroy your vocal chords.
Quit seeing the vocal coach if it's too expensive and you're confident you can do the exercises on your own
I also encourage everyone reading this to try and learn singing. It's surprising what even a month of practice can do to your voice.
Are you looking to improve in one area specifically? Placement? Range? Sight-singing ability? I agree with another commenter that a voice teacher will help get you started. I studied contemporary musical theatre in college, studied music and took classical voice lessons from a young age, and singing/harmonizing with a group was the most impactful on my own experience. Take a look at local colleges offering sight-singing and similar voice classes.
Personally, I just sing or hum along with music, and if there was one thing I could improve, it'd be the ability to sing in tune. I do the "finger in your ear" trick, but it's still quite difficult to hit a note right, or move between several without sounding like a trombone (glissando).
I absolutely marvel at what pop singers can do with ornaments, seemingly hitting a whole series of notes in rapid succession, in tune. Maybe they're using an autotuner? :-(
I joined a barbershop chorus on a whim 12 years ago, and it was infinitely beneficial. You can generally find a local chapter to rehearse with, everyone is helpful, and you only have to become an official member if you want to compete
I have learned most things myself my entire life, and I would even say get a teacher. there are a set of things you have to know about tone and thinking in tune and how to practice. once you get the key concepts, which might take a few months say 10 lessons, you can do the rest yourself.
Depending on the style, this can be difficult. Human audiences respond to vocals which convey passion. A lot of times, passionate singing strains the voice.
Singing judiciously limits you creatively in the short term. Singing passionately can limit you creatively in the long term, as you burn out your instrument.
Get a teacher for sure so that you can learn to sing without damaging your vocal chords. I’m not a singer but my impression as an outsider is that opera singers are particularly likely to know the physical/anatomical concerns, since they learn to project without microphones.
I've been singing semi-professionally for the last two decades asas part of a wide variety of musical endeavors.
What you need to do to sing in a choir is very different than what you need to do to front a blues band. Singing in a broadway-style musical is very different than singing, say, bluegrass harmonies.
There is a lot of overlap, but how you approach learning stuff varies quite a bit.
If you want to learn to sing well, you're in for a lot of work. It means practice, having a teacher, unlearning potentially years of bad habits, and being disciplined. I like to write and record songs with a friend as a fun hobby, and since he hates the sound of his own voice, I got stuck with singing duties. I've learned to accept the rather frustrating limitations of my voice and technique, and instead focused on using my engineering skills to improve how my vocal tracks sound on recordings. I was able to learn this stuff on my own.
* Tuning
Good tuning software is a vocalists best friend, even if you don't struggle with pitch issues. Don't like the timbre of your voice? Good tuning software has the ability to manipulate the "formant" of a voice, which if used in conjunction with some pitch shifting can make a woman's voice sound like a man's, or vice versa. Tuning software is also invaluable for visualizing the notes that you're singing. I use tuning software to help me compose and finalize my vocal melodies. I start with my scratch vocal take and push notes around until I have a consistent result I'm happy with, melodically speaking. These tuned scratch takes become "guide tracks" that I can have in my headphones while recording new takes. You can also turn them into MIDI tracks to aid in composing other parts.
* Comping
Comping is where you create a good composite track out of a bunch of mediocre ones. I do like 8 takes of each part, and then I pitch correct all of them so they conform to my official melody, referencing my guide track as needed. I also clean up the timing of sung notes at this stage (another great use of tuning software) to make sure that I'm not too far off the beat. Small slop is OK.
I have 8 tracks now of tuned vocals that are mostly bound to the grid, which makes it easier to select the best bits from each track to create a composite. I try to focus on the notes/lines that convey the most emotion and feeling, I comp those 8 tracks down to 3 or 4 decent ones. The best one I save for my lead vocal, the rest I use for doubles and harmony parts.
* Double up
Choruses need big vocals right? You can use your extra tuned and tightened tracks to double (or triple, quadruple) up your vocals and pan them left/right to make them sound bigger and better. Because they're unique tracks and not copies this will sound wide, and because you left in some minor timing slop, it will sound tight, but not robotic. You can also use doubles in non-chorus parts to emphasize certain words or phrases.
* Harmony
Harmony tracks can really sweeten and thicken a vocal. It'll definitely help to learn some music theory to understand the right notes for your harmony parts, but you can also just do it by ear. I take a one of my comps, and push the notes around with tuning software so it becomes a harmony against the lead vocal. Sometimes these extreme tuned artificial harmonies can sound robotic, but if you blend them in subtly and/or play with the formants they can work well. If not, you can use them as a guide track to re-record organic parts, but that's more work. Use harmony parts the same way you might use doubles.
I've been playing Piano for ~28 years, almost went professional (Jazz) but ended up doing engineering. My advice would be to find a teacher, if you know nothing about it you need a teacher that corrects you so that you don't develop bad habits. Once you're no longer a novice, you can start learning other things on your own.
When looking for a teacher, I wouldn't try to find "the best" or "most virtuoso" around, but what works for you. Try several teachers, get some sessions with 2-3 and find which one is the one that motivates you the most, and understands you the most. A teacher is like a coach and a partner in an adventure... the most important thing is that they can make you progress and keep you motivated.
This is such a brilliant comment: "so you don't develop bad habits."
I went to Japan as an exchange student when I was 16. I had never studied Japanese at all. The thing that surprised me the most was how hard it was for foreign students to unlearn the bad things they learned inside their American classrooms by listening to their friends.
Most of them picked up bad pronunciations, bad grammar practices. Even if they were diligent (which is being generous for the high students they sent over with me), they would hear other students speaking in ways that made sense to them from their perspective of how English works. They would hear and repeat Japanese words in the bad pronunciation style their friends in class did, and those ways make sense. But, none of those practices were what Japanese people did.
I often remark on how fortunate I felt to have only learned Japanese in a setting where I only heard correct pronunciation and heard statements made by natives. In three months I was ahead of others who had studied back in the US for two or three years or more.
I would really love to see if anyone has studied this effect inside the world of software engineering. We pride ourselves in the hacker culture where self-directed learners are glamorized, but I wonder whether having good teachers and getting good feedback early on would make a large or small difference long term. This could be a startling alternative to the "naturally brilliant prodigy" stories we always hear.
I've been teaching coding (on the side) and doing software engineering for the past 10 years. There's a recent surge of self learners who believe in studying coding the way they believe should be studied (which is ironic, given how little experience they have). The moment they got a job, they turn around and proudly talk about "This is how I did it, you learn x, y, z and you can get a job like me" and influence the next batch of self learners. Bootcamps also buy into this ideology.
Instead, the engineers I appreciate on my team has very little to do with what they know. Instead of hiring engineers who only cares about the latest and greatest, I value engineers who: communicate openly, write good tests, and cares about the product enough to fix bugs without having someone create a jira ticket for them, and has good debugging skills.
When I'm not at work, I teach coding to a small group of self learners in my local community by telling them to focus on user experience and writing good tests instead learning every popular libraries out there. Its okay to know only 1 or 2, it is important to know it well. Together, we work on an open source project with 100% test coverage: https://github.com/garageScript/c0d3-app
We hired one of these students who was a core contributor and I hope to hire more directly once more recs opens up onto my team.
I went through one of the bootcamps back in 2014. I’m now a software engineer who cares about good practices, methodology, and design. Some of us take a few years to get there first
If you change the words bootcamp for academia in the parent comments, it still mostly holds. They both are an echo chamber, which usually needs to get "unlearned" to learn the good practices in the industry, if you happen to find a job where they actually practice them.
> This is such a brilliant comment: "so you don't develop bad habits."
Yes, true, but on the other hand, singing comes naturally to some people which makes me think that most other people have already developed bad habits before they even started singing. At least that would hold for me when I started singing.
Therefore I'd say that the technical aspect of singing == unlearning of bad habits.
I agree that this is a large part of it. I did Alexander Technique for about five years, and that helped me unpick a lot of bad habits. It helped my singing, teaching me to stop getting in the way of my voice. It also helped me with broader problems like my posture when I'm using a computer.
I agree, I'd been singing a lot since I was 7, including touring Europe when I was 11. I didn't stop practicing at any point in there but also never had access to professional voice teachers because of the cost.
Taking a single course in college that got me a little one-on-one attention (just one in a class of ten or so) improved my technique so significantly that I can compare recordings of myself from before and after that class and it's night and day. I don't think I'd have figured out what I was doing wrong without that attention, but they were able to hear it instantly and recommend solutions.
And that's with a solid decade plus of experience in choirs prior to taking that class, it's not like I was a true novice. It's just really not as easy or obvious as it looks.
Usually local music shops or chains that sell gear also employ or rent space to instructors. Qualifications can vary a lot, which is why I strongly support the suggestion others have made to try out multiple teachers.
For lessons particularly, err on the side of thinking you’re not the problem. You’re paying hourly for this, and if you don’t click with the teacher it could be fairly expensive to “make it work”. Some people are also great artists but terrible instructors. That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that they are also often completely ignorant of that fact.
Check local churches. If they hae a good choir, the director might teach people or know of teachers in the area. (Growing up, my local church the director of the choir was a first tenor in the US Army chorus for 30 years.)
Having some sort of teacher also does a better job of holding you more accountable. So that you're a little more motivated to stick with it which is critical early on before the bug bites or before a habit/routine forms.
- decide if you have the confidence to sing or not. (Some intrumentalists don't.)
- after you want to sing, get a vocal coach. Singing for a career is the hardest musician job. Your whole lifestyle needs to accommodate your voice wrt food, rest, recovery. If you can't afford a coach, watch some intro Youtube videos and practise for a few couple months.
Here are the problems:
- every vocalist you know has had vocal cord surgery. Even Band-maid. Bon Jovi had a nightmare of vocal problems.
- because they yell at the mike, instead of talking to the mike musically, and letting the PA amplify it. At the turn of the 1900s, this was well-known. Somehow that fact was lost in the 1960s until today.
Seriously, get a coach or you will destroy your vocal cords and prematurely end your career. The stress of deciding if you and your band can perform the next booking or not is shattering.
(There's a video of Justin Bieber on Youtube talking to his mom and manager backstage about throat problems and what to do next, with 20,000 paying, screaming fans outside waiting. Talk about stress.)
Singing is not something that someone teaches you, it's just something you do because you're inspired to in the moment.
You need to just sing. Sing along with your favourite songs, sing with heart.
Then ... you may either want to get a bit of coaching, possibly sing with a choir.
Most singers were really quite good before they had formal coaching, and many have never had any coaching at all.
One of the more challenging things is pitch ... some people sing out of tune, have no idea, and it sounds bad. Oddly, this is something a 'voice coach' will have difficulty fixing. This tends to be something that people 'have' or they 'don't' - it can be learned surely, but it's oddly not a 'singing specific' issue. Playing around on a piano, singing the notes, trying to get them to match. So if you have a pitch problem, it will be a separate can of worms, but the more musical exposure you have, via anything, the better you'll get.
This is bad advice. Pitch does seem to be something you have or not (research suggests most kids are pitch perfect and lose it to various extents) but the other parts of singing well are highly technical skills and a teacher will help significantly. Larynx placement, anchoring, muscle relaxation, breath control... etc are all difficult skills to master.
There's a reason that so many pop/rock singers ruin their voices, it's because they don't get training.
This is a little misleading, to the point of being wrong with respect to the 'health warning'.
First - unambiguously, the vast majority of people who sing learned to do so reasonably well before any hint of real coaching, other than possibly little bits that a student/church choir teacher may be able to help with.
It's misrepresentative to hint that an amateur singer, singing occasionally for fun, will somehow how run into trouble, physically, without this. In fact, the majority of people who 'sing a lot' will never have such problems. I sang in a 16 part Jazz choir in my youth, and have always been involved in music, and I don't even recall anyone in my circle losing their voice or having voice trouble (I don't doubt that it's possible), and I don't recall anyone getting specific voice lessons either, that said being part of a choir helps, but we weren't hugely focused on technique in that kind of specificity. Most non-famous pop act singers have not had any real formal training - it's simply unnecessary.
Singing is a little bit like running, you just need a pair of shoes, if you do it a lot and enjoy it, you will get better and it will mostly come naturally. If you are part of any kind of singing group, like a choir, you'll pick up some really simple things that will take you a really long way. If you want to get even better, you can get some coaching, but you don't need it.
The other thing I will add is that a 'singing coach' might move you into a more formal way of singing that might clash with your own creative sensibilities. Many old-school rock stars sing 'terribly' from a technical perspective, but they didn't know better, it's just 'how they do it' and it enabled them to have their own unique flavour. A singing coach early on who moved them into a more 'choral' way of singing ... might have taken that uniqueness away.
In every children's choir, there are a handful of great singers who haven't taken highly specific instruction with respect to technique, singing is natural. Probably a 10 minute, basic youtube instruction would go quite far in terms of basic things just as it might be for amateur running tips.
Big caveat: in my own personal experience, everyone grew up with music i.e. choir, instruments, etc. which will lead to different outcomes and perspectives than someone who has absolutely no exposure to music.
I feel this is very very wrong and damaging, I'd like to make sure anyone reading this comment has a balancing comment to read against it, mainly about the pitch thing. The kind of thing I wish I'd been able to read 10 years ago.
First, you're probably not tone deaf. If you can differentiate between one note and a note a semitone away, you've got enough pitch to sing. If you can watch two youtube videos, think one sounds good and one sounds bad, you've got enough pitch to sing.
I spent a long time worrying about this because I struggled with pitch a lot, and then even though I could eventually (with a lot of adjustment) get my voice to make a sound at the same pitch as a piano key, it didn't sound "right" or "good". Even though the tuner told me i was right on it. Also the pitch always seemed different inside my head to listening back to it.
In the end it turns out it's all about frequencies. Your voice is making a whole bunch of them when you vocalise, it's not just a simple sine wave, and these resonate at different places, and sound different inside your head (to you) and outside (to everyone else). When I had the pitch issues, I actually mainly had placement issues. Good placement feels like cutting off the lower half of my voice, but is pretty much just you making the right frequencies and more importantly avoiding making the wrong ones. To a natural singer this probably sounds like crazy talk, but to someone who always sounded bad, this is life-changing.
So yeah, ignore the parent comment, find a good teacher who started from nothing and can teach you placement (I still recommend https://bohemianvocalstudio.com/), and practise like crazy. You'll never look back.
You may want to check this out- online classes from Berkeley- I saw that you were nearby... https://cjc.edu/workshops/ I know Kate McGarry and have heard Dena DeRose teach many times- both phenomenal singers and teachers of singing. Both classes look interesting! You could also email Kate or tweet to her to see if she might know a good accompanist or vocal teacher or if she herself does lessons outside the music school.
There is also SFConservatory, but I don't know the whole faculty there.