Finding a Good Voice Teacher

Welcome to omegabone.com. In this video I’ll be discussing things to look for in a good voice coach or vocal teacher. Thank you for joining me. Some things to look for in a voice teacher are he or she needs to have a good ear to hear when you’re out of tune or not. Though you should be able to hear that yourself, but your teacher needs to have that as well. You need someone that understands the human anatomy and what processes produce good sound and a good tone. Your voice teacher needs to have a good personality, it needs to be somebody that you can get along with. Someone that is honest that will tell you the truth that if you don’t sound good, if you’re not up to muster, but also can tell you when you’re really great because sometimes you might second guess yourself and you just need someone that’s honest. You need someone that isn’t going to talk your entire lesson about dumb stuff, “Oh Brad Pitt did that, this other student did that.” Your teacher needs to instruct and needs to give you space to sing and get feedback and not waste your time or your money. Now, it used to be the case that your teacher needs to accompany you, but with technology being where it is you can have play along tracks, you can have all sorts of things that can accompany you. You can have, I have programs on my computer where I can type the music in and it will play it back. I can, you know, make it faster, make it slower, make some parts faster, make some parts slower. So you don’t, your teacher doesn’t necessarily have to accompany you, but the teach needs to have some way of accompanying you if he or she physically doesn’t do it him or herself, or you can hire an accompanist. Another option is to go to a voice class where you have group instruction, and then great thing about that is you have a built in audience. So that you hear what the teacher says, you learn from what other students do and you can have the opportunity to perform. And then you can work out some issues that you can’t work out in a studio, in a private studio where you need the energy of an audience to feed your knowledge about a particular song or a particular issue. The most important thing I think a voice teacher should be is supportive and excited about you and your voice. If your teacher doesn’t think much of you, you’re not going to do very well. If your teacher constantly is negative about you and your potential, you’re not going to do very well. You need to go to someone that thinks that you can do something. And you might have a host of problems, but your teacher needs to be able to see the potential in your voice. They need to see something, they need to see some kind of spark. And if your teacher doesn’t see that, you need to find another teacher. 
I’ve had 3 voice coaches since college and I didn’t leave those coaches because they weren’t any good, I had just ended up moving. So the coach I have now lives 20 minutes from me and she’s excellent. She’s fun, she’s just as silly as I am, but she works just as hard as I do. And right now she works even harder than I do because I really don’t have that much strength right now. You know, because my son is only 5 months old and so tending to a new born is exhausting work. 

Some more things to look for in a good vocal teacher are one, you like the way the teacher sounds. If the teacher has the same style as you, that’s a good person to teach you how to sing better. Take Martina McBride for instance, she is a fantastic singer. I mean she is a singer’s singer. She has a beautiful tone, she has lots of emotion, her pitch is impeccable. I mean she’s just ooo, just juicy. But I wouldn’t study with her because she sings country and I’m more interested in Jazz, R&B and, and now back into classical music. So there’s lots of things that I can learn from her, but, which leads me to my next point, your teacher needs to have attained a goal that you want to attain. I don’t want to be a country star. Actually I don’t want to be a star at all I just want to be a working singer. You need to set a goal and set a timeframe for that goal, and your teacher needs to help you attain that goal in that timeframe. My teacher and I have decided that we want to get me working within a year. And so next summer I should have a job, working for a company as a singer. So Martina McBride isn’t going to help me do that, and can’t help me do that. One, she doesn’t live in my area, two, she sings country and there are no country clubs here in my area. So, but my teacher works where I want to work so she can help me attain that goal. Which leads me to my next point. Your teacher should have connections and networking opportunities. Your teacher should have other students that you can do concerts with or programs or recitals with. Because typically when you’re starting out you don’t have enough repertoire to fill a whole program. And so having other students to fill that space is good, they can also bring more audience members because they’ll bring their friends and family, you’ll bring your friends and family and everyone will make enough money so that you can pay the, the supporting musicians. 


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“Learn to Sing with Omega”  has singing lessons about diction and warming up, music lessons about scales and chords, and professional tips and tricks about health and beauty.  Learn every thing you need to be a better singer.  Sing higher, sing lower, sing louder and sing longer with Omega Bone, the authentic American voice.


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