Singing lessons are recommended for anyone who wants to improve their singing voice or technique.
A singing coach can teach you how to practice techniques to sing better, of course, but how can you tell if it’s really working?
You might even wonder if it's worthwhile in engaging with a singing coach before trying to develop your skills naturally.
Since singing can be really subjective, it can be hard to recognize when any changes occur. Progress is typically slow and gradual, so you might not be able to tell on a day-by-day basis if you are improving.
Here are 10 signs you can look for to really notice if your teacher is effective, your practice is working, and your singing is improving.
1. Comfort While Singing
The first and most easy-to-tell sign that your singing is improving is your comfort level.
This refers to both physical and mental or emotional comfort.
Physically, you should be able to tell that you have an easier time singing, your voice might feel less strained, and your throat doesn’t hurt when you use proper techniques.
Many inexperienced or untrained singers will strain their voices in order to hit certain notes. They may also experience lasting hoarseness and vocal fatigue, especially if they sing for too long.
It is also common for singers to feel shy about singing to others, whether it be people they know or strangers.
You can tell that your singing instruction is working when you realize that your voice and throat feel better, and your hesitation to perform in front of others decreases.
2. Expand Your Range
A lot of untrained singers will have a limited range of notes they can comfortably hit and make them sound good.
Without a teacher, you might think that that is just your natural range and nothing can be done to expand it.
But with proper techniques and guidance, it is common for people receiving voice lessons to successfully expand their range, sometimes by quite a bit!
You might notice that you can hit a higher or lower octave (or octaves) that you never dreamed of using before!
3. Improve Your Posture
A well-aligned body is extremely important for the quality of a singing voice.
From head to toe, there are adjustments that can be made to your posture to help you breathe better, project your voice better, and execute advanced vocal skills more effectively.
The easiest to recognize is the position of the shoulders, spine, head, and hips.
Without postural training from a voice coach, you might not realize that in order to sing to the best of your ability, you need to keep your head up, keep your spine straight, have level hips, and open your chest with your shoulders back.
Over time, these changes in your posture will make their way into your daily life. At first, you might only have proper posture when you actively think about it in preparation to sing.
When you practice keeping your body this way for long enough, it becomes your new default posture! Notice if you feel taller, can breathe better, and generally feel like you purposefully take up more space as your singing lessons progress.
4. Better Enunciation
In singing, there are times when you may need to pronounce a word in a way that might seem ridiculous, especially compared to spoken pronunciation.
However, since singing changes the way we perceive certain word sounds due to the pitch, tempo, elongation, clip, or other affectation, it’s important to know how to sing a word in a way that will be properly understood by listeners.
Think of a song where you can’t quite understand what the singer said. Maybe the lyrics are subject to debate even when you look them up because different people clearly hear different words.
This trouble could have been avoided if the singer enunciated their lyrics a little differently and more clearly.
With practice, the proper way to enunciate a word while singing will come naturally to you. You might also find that your speaking enunciation and pronunciation improve as well!
5. Boosted Confidence
When you know you’re good at something, it becomes easier to be confident about it.
Many new singers are shy or hesitant to sing in front of others. This is usually because they are unsure of their actual talent or fear messing up where others can hear them.
With help from your singing coach, you can guarantee that your confidence will skyrocket with practice!
Your coach for singing lessons Brisbane will be able to give you unbiased information about the quality of your singing through your lessons together. Additionally, you will learn the skills to make sure that you do not mess up.
You’ll have the knowledge and practice to maintain tempo and rhythm, find a pitch, work within your range, and know how to improvise if needed.
This way, even if you do make a mistake, you can recover and move on without much interruption, if any. Professional singers are able to smooth over errors in their performances all the time!
With solid skills, you can feel more confident that you are doing a good job, and you don’t need to fear judgment from the people listening to you.
With your increased confidence, you can also be brave and knowledgeable enough to ask for a lesson that covers a certain skill or technique that you want to improve.
6. Improved Mental Health
Singing is an art form.
Any type of art allows the artist to express themselves, play within the boundaries of the art, and find joy in life.
In the same way that aimless paint splatterings can elicit some degree of artistic joy, but being able to paint exactly what you are thinking of gives artistic freedom, so too does an experienced singer gain peace of mind when they have control over their voice.
The act of singing can be a stress reliever. The caveat is that the stress is only relieved if you feel comfortable with singing that particular piece!
So when you become more comfortable with singing in general, you can find that more and more music brings you calmness and joy.
You can use singing as a way to release frustrations, compound beautiful feelings, and celebrate what you are capable of.
The mental benefits are also accompanied by the physical benefits of controlled breathing and vibrations from the vocal cords. Both of these physical elements also improve mental health!
7. Better Ear for Sounds and Music
With practice, you’ll find that you are able to better identify sounds, tones, and music in your everyday life.
An average person can pick up on these things as well, but an experienced ear can tell more information from the same set of data.
Whereas a regular person hears a jingle on TV, you might recognize the musical theory behind the simple little song.
Other signs of having a good ear are:
- Hearing detail and individual notes where others hear a “blur” of sound
- Being able to differentiate different parts of a song, like recognizing the main vs supporting vocals
- Understanding why certain musical choices were made by the composer or singer
- Increased awareness of tone in conversation
8. Impeccable Pitch and Tone
In addition to being able to recognize pitch and tone with your “golden ears,” you will find that you are also able to hit notes with ease where you might have struggled before.
Many singing students will discover that they can hit a note with nothing more than the name of the note to refer to. D3, B5, G5… you can recognize what the note is and you can find it with little to no difficulty as you practice more and more.
Inexperienced singers often find themselves gliding into a note, or just flat-out hitting the wrong one. When this starts to happen to you less and less, you know you’re improving.
There are many exercises to learn this precision and technique, and you can practise with a professional voice coach through in-person or online singing lessons on Superprof.
9. Impressive Techniques
Basic singing can be thought of like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
It’s a tune, for sure, but there aren’t a lot of difficult or fancy things being done while singing it.
Compare it to an operatic piece, or even a lot of contemporary music, and you will notice a lot of vocal techniques being utilised in the latter works.
Glissando, portamento, vibrato, timbre, falsetto, ligato, chiaroscuro, trill, staccato, and other vocal ornaments or flourishes are easier for you to identify and perform when your singing teacher imparts that knowledge to you.
10. Easily Cover a Song
With practice and coaching, you will be able to use your voice to achieve what’s in your head. And what’s in your head is also well-formed, correct, and within your capabilities.
Combining what you know and what you can do, you will find that you can sing things very well- even things you’ve never sung before!
You will be able to formulate a way to sing your favourite song (or another person’s favourite song) that matches your skills, range, voice, and preferred techniques.
You can add your own special brand of flair to a song, modify it to change the mood, and play with it in many other ways, too.
When you take the time to notice all of these improvements in your singing, you will realize that you already know how to become a singer. You can decide how serious you’d like to get with your singing tutor, who can advise you on the next steps to take.
With all your experience, you may notice that you are drawn to certain types of music. Why not pursue those avenues and see where they take you?
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