CAN ANYONE LEARN TO SING?

A question voice teachers get asked all the time.
By Molly McCarthy-Egan(Guest for Kevin Michael Murphy)

"Can just anyone, really learn how to sing?"

Over the years, I have had this exact same conversation hundreds of times. I am finally taking to the blogosphere to attempt to dispel the myths about learning to sing.

The conversation always goes a little something like this:

Random Person: What do you do for a living?

Me: I am a voice teacher(received with a blank stare)...I teach singing.

Random Person: Oh that's so cool! Great! Well let me ask you a question, I've always wondered, but not just ANYONE can learn how to sing right?

Me: Umm what do you mean by that?

Random Person: I mean, I know that there has to be a certain amount of natural talent, and certain people are just lost causes that shouldn't even try...right?

Me: (In an attempt to try to silence the inner defensive monologue that is saying just moments ago, I told this person that I teach singing as my career.. )
Well actually, while you do need to want to learn how to sing, I have built a life on the knowledge that there is a certain amount of skill, not just talent involved in singing. I believe any person, while they may not necessarily go on to sing on Broadway, could begin voice lessons today and with the help of a good teacher, within a month or two be at a significantly better singer than they are today.

This conversation will typically go on for a few minutes, hopefully ending with someone becoming enlightened as to how the voice works, in my professional opinion.

Which is this:
The voice, is an instrument, plain and simple. While a clarinet or a guitar for example, have the benefit of being tuned by a digital machine, the voice needs to be tuned by the singers own ear and various other tools, that we are using each time we sing any tune.

In the simplest of terms, in order to sing any pitch our ear has to first hear it, that signal goes to our brain which processes it, and then our diaphragm drops and our ribs expand as we breath in air, the air moves up through the body and then passes over the vocal folds (which have their own complex movement of abducting and adducting)the air heads through the mouth and out through the lips. Each of these steps needs to take  place each time we try to sing back a same pitch or note that we hear. Now, if any of these tools(the body parts) are slightly out of alignment and not processing their jobs accurately, the voice won't function the way we expect it to when we open our mouth to sing.

In other words, there's a lot more going on than just being a "good" or " bad" singer. I've worked with countless people over the years that were told at a young age, they were a terrible singer and therefor should never sing. Imagine being told to never sing?? They come into the studio and we train each of the various parts, to work together and allow the voice to function as it naturally wants to, instead of trying to force it to be the way they think good singing should be done.

The moral of the story, is that singing is not a joy for a privileged few. Sure, you need to be realistic about where you see your voice taking you, but if singing, (whether it be in the shower, at karaoke, in your car, or on stage) has always made you happy you're ahead of the game. If singing has always made you happy, hold the fact that you are ashamed of your voice and think it should never be shared with others, why wouldn't you take the risk to try to develop your skill level? As with most things in life, don't let others, specifically those without expertise on the subject your interested in, tell you what you can and can not do. I don't know if there was an epidemic in elementary and middle schools here in America, but at least once a week I run into a person who loves music, and for whatever reason was always told they couldn't sing. If you've always wanted to sing, find a voice teacher you trust, find a library with excellent resources on the voice and start listening to all the music you can find.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what you can accomplish when you're given the knowledge and training to enhance your own natural voice.  

 

 

MOLLY MCCARTHY-EGAN  is a voice teacher on faculty at the Bloomingdale School of Music in addition to being the co-founder of the NYC Vocal Studio(with Crazytown writer Kevin Michael Murphy).       www.NYCVocalStudio.com