People often have many questions about private voice lessons, and not knowing the answers to these questions can keep them from pursuing instruction. Here are some answers to the most common questions I hear.
Can any voice be trained?
The voice is just as much an instrument as the piano or the violin, so barring serious impairments, the answer is yes. Some will excel faster than others, due to variety in learning capacity and musical proclivity. Some will train and go on to perform at Carnegie Hall, and some will only progress to a certain level. However, it is a complete misconception that “you either have it or you don’t.”
What are the serious impairments?
If your vocal folds have been badly damaged due to strain, if any part of the body that effects breathing has been permanently injured, or if you are tone deaf, there is a good chance that voice lessons will not do you a great deal of good. Being tone deaf means you are incapable of distinguishing the difference between pitches, just like someone who is color blind cannot tell colors apart. Remembering that the voice is an instrument, understand that studying with these conditions may feel like attempting to play a violin with the strings removed. Yet if you are uncertain whether you have any of these conditions, or whether they are treatable, there is never any harm in taking a few voice lessons to assess the situation.
How long does it take to train a voice?
Again, it depends on the student. A professional opera singer usually trains for about 10 years. Yet many diligently practicing students will find themselves reaching a proficiency for amateur gigs in a year or two of training. The deciding factor is almost always the amount they devote to practicing outside the lesson.
