5 Tips to Have Great Voice Lessons

Many times people don’t know what to expect to have great voice lessons Many people take voice lessons so that they can learn how to expand their range, or improve their speaking voice, or simply be more confident when they are singing with an ensemble like a choir.

Many times people don’t know what to expect to have a great voice lesson. Many people take voice lessons so that they can learn how to expand their range, or improve their speaking voice, or simply be more confident when they are singing with an ensemble like a choir.

So what are some simple things that can make your voice lesson a great voice lesson? Here are five tips that can help you out to make sure that it is exactly what you hope it will be.

Warm-up before all voice lessons

It really helps that when you start the voice lesson that you’ve already warmed up. Many times your teacher is going to focus on technique and how to help you build the correct muscle control or to help you learn how to express what you want to express with your voice. This means that you will be doing various exercises to work on intonation, range, breath control, and a host of other exercises that increase your awareness of how to produce sound. Because of this, it is best that you take at least ten to fifteen minutes doing simple humming exercises to warm the voice up. Because remember the voice is a muscle.

Have a glass of room temperature water nearby

Common wisdom tells us that we should drink hot tea before we sing to loosen up our voice. The truth is that you should not drink hot or ice-cold liquids before singing. Neither of these temperatures actually help your voice produce the sound you want and can actually contribute to you harming your voice. However, it is advised to have liquid nearby when you’re taking your voice lesson. It’s best for that liquid to be water, or apple juice, at room temperature.

Have a music stand and place music slightly below eye level.

When doing voice lessons there will be times where you need sheet music in front of you. This will actually be most voice lessons. You may think that holding a sheet of music in your hands is something that is easy while you’re trying to produce a sound. But the truth is that when you are trying to focus on breath control, pitch, tone, singing through your registers, etc… holding a piece of music may actually result in you bringing your chin down and restricting your airflow. So to avoid having to focus on something that is unnecessary, it is best that you have a music stand that holds your music slightly below eye level.

Bonus tip: Your closed jaw and neck should be at about an 85° when singing for the best airflow.

A chair with preferably no arm

You want to bring a chair into your voice lesson to make sure that you can sit comfortably, and at a 90° angle. It’s best that this chair have no arms. This is so that you may have proper placement of your arms which should be in your lap while you sing. Having this chair ready to go before you start your lesson prevents any time from being wasted looking for the proper chair once the lesson has begun. This can result in your voice teacher being able to properly assess all that needs to be assessed during your lesson while you’re singing vocal exercises and your repertoire.

Ask your teacher if it's okay if you record

A great voice lesson is something similar to a session with a personal trainer. Unlike physical instruments that you play, i.e. piano lessons, the voice lesson is to teach the proper technique of voice muscle manipulation. Because there are so many things that can be learned from hearing yourself and listening back to small pieces of advice that your voice teacher may give you, it would be wise to record the audio for your voice lesson. This will help you maintain exactly what your voice teacher was trying to help you express. Many times while you are trying to sing, you may miss a small tip that your voice teacher may have given you to help reduce the great sound.

At Southern Music Academy we take great pride in cultivating great students and developing their innate musical ability. If you would like to develop your voice by having private voice lessons please contact us at Lessons@SouthernMusicAcademy.com and someone will gladly match you with one of our enthusiastic teachers.