How long did it take before singing started making sense

[Jarom]

After you started seriously training, roughly how long did it take before singing became more natural, or in other words when did you start getting the hang of this singing thing. When we first start we are as confused as a soccer ball at a baseball game. When did things start connecting? 

[Khassera]

If I had done what I do now to learn songs (and thus learn singing) it would have probably taken far less time. But that's learning for ya. Everything along the way is just pieces to the puzzle.

[MDEW]

If I had done what I do now to learn songs (and thus learn singing) it would have probably taken far less time. But that's learning for ya. Everything along the way is just pieces to the puzzle.

    Not only is everything along the way pieces to the puzzle but sometimes you have to trim the edges a little to make the pieces fit. We all have different physiology and different ways of learning.

    I pretty much trust everyone on this forum to be giving advice that they truely believe. That is, what they say has worked for them and helped them along the way. Still you get a few who bust heads every now and then, but when you get right down to it they were both correct just using different points of view to get the same message across. It gets confusing sometimes.

   Most of them will admit that they never stop learning and gaining more insights or learning/training different aspects of their voice that they were unaware of before.

   "When did you get the hang of this singing thing?" I am still trying to get it.....But I am singing anyway while letting my voice figure out what it is supposed to do and taking note when things go right and when things go wrong, adjusting along the way.........

[ronws]

I agree with MDEW. I am still getting the hang of singing and I have been doing it a long time.

[Gsoul82]

Still hasn't.

[Jeremy Mohler]

It's lifelong process just like anything.  Even though I'm just a kid I feel pretty confident in saying that.

[Jarom]

i completely agree that singing is a life long process. the fun is in the process not  the finish. However, I think when you're starting out, after some time in your training things begin to click and you begin to understand things, not fully im not saying you're an expert but........ ya know, things start making sense. for me after I seriously started training in about a month things started clicking, was I a good singer? probably not the best but my path became more clear.

[aravindmadis]

I hadn't sung in nearly 10 years.  I started seriously pursuing singing about 1.5 years ago.  I have no formal coaching and while I used to sing in my college days(15 years ago), I had never pursued singing seriously.  

I started learning basics like head voice/chest voice, support, vocal fach etc only about a year ago.  Based on my experience, since I was not singing "regularly" it took me nearly a year before I started being able to put things together and apply the techniques I had learnt to songs.  It might take someone lesser time, especially if they have proper coaching, which in my case I did not(still haven't ever taken an "actual" vocal lesson, have been meaning to!). 

In my case, even without any training, I could sing and pull of tough songs earlier.  Therefore I used to associate singing with an inborn gift and therefore set a personal ceiling.  I was not aware of the benefits of training and technique earlier and I sure as hell wished I knew this when I was younger.  It helps if you are gifted, like being able to easily sing to tune, have a powerful voice etc, but singing as good as professional takes 85% training and effort.  Talent is less than 15% IMO.. 

I realize that I have a lifetime to learn, but for actual progress, you should see improvements in 6 months to a year, provided you sing and practice regularly.. Hope this makes sense. 

[JohnnyL]

For me, after a year of serious training - I've just started listening to myself and think - okay, it came out nice. Still doesn't "make sense" though. 

 

Edit:

I suppose that at some point you just want to start taking it further even if you haven't fully figured it out.

[Jeremy Mohler]

i completely agree that singing is a life long process. the fun is in the process not  the finish. However, I think when you're starting out, after some time in your training things begin to click and you begin to understand things, not fully im not saying you're an expert but........ ya know, things start making sense. for me after I seriously started training in about a month things started clicking, was I a good singer? probably not the best but my path became more clear.

​I agree with you a bit but it's still an impossible question to address because it's 100% relative to the singer in question.  I know guys who have been singing for one year and they say, "things started to come into place" and I've had friends who have sung for five years and are still trying to figure out why they can't sing past G4.  

[VideoHere]

It's supposed to make sense?  LOL!!!  I'm in a joking mood......

[MDEW]

​I agree with you a bit but it's still an impossible question to address because it's 100% relative to the singer in question.  I know guys who have been singing for one year and they say, "things started to come into place" and I've had friends who have sung for five years and are still trying to figure out why they can't sing past G4.  

​        People have different ways of processing information, plus the fact of different sources of information have their own means of expressing that information.

You will not truly know something until you experience it. Even though you have the information that you need support, Vowel shape, resonance placement, Laryngeal coordinations ......You will not GET how to transition through the passaggio until you experience it. That also takes the strength of the vocal folds and balance of the proper coordinations. To achieve the strength and balance takes proper training and guidance plus your own understanding of that guidance.  

      I think too much     Time to go sing....  

[lifelonglearner]

If I had done what I do now to learn songs (and thus learn singing) it would have probably taken far less time. But that's learning for ya. Everything along the way is just pieces to the puzzle.

@Khassera: If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing differently now that you weren't doing before?

[Gsoul82]

​        People have different ways of processing information, plus the fact of different sources of information have their own means of expressing that information.

You will not truly know something until you experience it. Even though you have the information that you need support, Vowel shape, resonance placement, Laryngeal coordinations ......You will not GET how to transition through the passaggio until you experience it. That also takes the strength of the vocal folds and balance of the proper coordinations. To achieve the strength and balance takes proper training and guidance plus your own understanding of that guidance.  

      I think too much     Time to go sing....  

​That's the way I usually am. I try not to get bogged down with the explanations with this or that, and I just do stuff and learn by feeling. Knowing that the whistle register is accessed when the vocal folds are practically zipped all the way up and the smallest amount of air is allowed through didn't make it any easier to do it. I had to experiment to get the feeling and know what won't work.

[Owen Korzec]

There is no one point where it all suddenly makes sense, you build your understanding of singing in layers.
I would say for me, about 2 years in is when I could start trusting my voice and be confident with it and that was only after a few months of training seriously. The first 2 years was fleshing out the confusion and could have gone faster if I was more focused.

I still completely misunderstood a lot of important points about technique and style though. I'm at year 5 now and just now started to see glimpses of the full package of what great singing requires. I look back on the previous few years where I was still confident with my voice...but my values were just WAAAAY off and now they are approaching a more universal and practical level. Does that make sense?

You'll experience a lot of ups and down along the way and it never ends.

The real catch is finding the right track to progress from because it takes experience and development of your ear and sensation for vocals to even find it. I got off to the wrong track mere months in by just blindly believing what I read, then it took me years to find the way of learning to sing I felt was finally correct, then another two to discover that it still wasn't what I wanted and then I found the actual way I was interested in all along and it took about a year for that to even start coming to fruition. So the first four years of my singing was me just trying to find the right way to learn how to sing then this last year and a half just starting to make that happen.

 

[Owen Korzec]

By the way a good way to know if you're on the right track is to see multiple coaches even if for only one lesson each. And I hesitate to say, but I guess checking out several vocal programs and noting where they line up - I hestitate because I am the last person to encourage program-hopping, but there is something to be said about when you find similarities between different approaches...where different opinions intersect and agree is where deep truth is found...

This is not to discount the merit of sticking with a primary coach for 95% of your singing journey. Please do that, but in order to find the right person you will want to check that other coaches agree with and approve of what they are teaching you at least mostly (everybody disagrees here and there but they can tell you if you are GENERALLY studying good technique/style or not).

When you find a good number of them that are all very good coaches in your eyes and all start agreeing that you're on the right track and aren't trying to pull you in complete opposite directions that's when you know things are going well and that your primary coach or program is taking you down the right track.

That's the point I'm at now and it took me years to get there so don't expect it to be that way right away but maybe after a year with one coach, just grab a lesson with a couple others and check in to make sure it's lining up with other opinions. If they give you the go ahead, keep going, if they express concern maybe consider a different coach/program. Because the truth is singing technique and singing style is all pretty universal...there is still plenty of room for uniqueness inside that universal foundation but without learning the right foundation you will feel limited, it will catch up with you later on. You want to really make sure the foundation you are building upon is correct - had I focused on that in the beginning I would have saved a lot of time.

It can be a tricky dynamic to check in with other coaches - it takes a mature coach to just understand you are checking in for a second opinion and suggest a few tweaks but trust that another coach you are working with is doing fine, as well as to give the real talk if necessary that your coach has been teaching incorrectly and wasting your time. I used to receive the latter and now I receive the former but it all helps you get on the right path. So I am grateful to have found many coaches with that maturity, both through this forum and at my university

 

[Gsoul82]

I'm at the point now where people are giving me compliments and saying I should start performing, even though I don't want to pursue music as a career, but then I hear a guy like D.Star and everything he does sounds so smooth. Maybe it's just a style difference.

[Khassera]

If I had done what I do now to learn songs (and thus learn singing) it would have probably taken far less time. But that's learning for ya. Everything along the way is just pieces to the puzzle.

@Khassera: If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing differently now that you weren't doing before?

​Learning to sing by singing instead of isolated exercises.

[Felipe Carvalho]

It makes sense in a lot of ways now, but not in the way I expected it to when I began training.

 

Its not natural. Our expectations in regards to the plasticity of what we do, even the way we organize music itself does not match the way the instrument actually works, so there is a bridge (oh no! more bridges hehehe) there to cross that is quite hard, specially because you cant really just disregard one or the other.

In one hand you have your expectations, what you actually want, on the other, the way your voice works. They (usually) just don't match, that's all, so it can't and won't make sense in this regard. And its rather important that you don't try to force them to match somehow, we deal with it, we don't beat it to be the way we want.

 

And there are a number of things that frankly does not make much sense yet in any of the point of views.

[VideoHere]

Nowadays it's a commitment to ongoing exploration and trial and error that simply must be done.  It has to do with you and what you want to get out of your voice. Questioning and discovery....

 

[Drewb]

Right now I still feel a bit out of my depth. I understand the principles of chest, head, and mixed voice. But tapping into mix still takes me a bit of time. Keeping consistent vocal compression (what my teacher calls "press") is sometimes a challenge, but I am getting better at it. I'm kinda over the whole "I hate hearing my voice recorded" thing now and I took some big steps last night by singing in front of my bands bassist - which was nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be!

 

I've only been taking lessons about a year and three months. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though, and my confidence is starting to get better.

[Rotlung]

To me, it still doesn't make sense, which is fine because I'll figure it out eventually. However, in terms of the more practical "how long it took before my voice clicked and I had a much better idea of what worked for me and what didn't", I'd say it was with some lessons on and off for a year or so, and then another 2 years of consistent practice and experimentation on my own before I understood how to make my voice work the way I want it to (with some degree of error, of course). Practising till muscle memory kicks in is a large part of that too, I think.