Long Distance Learning
The student walks into the studio wanting the pill that will make things right, bring him back to vocal health, and make him famous overnight.
What this kind of student doesn't know (and doesn't want to hear) is that learning to sing takes time—more time than he is willing to give to the art form.
If you can get him to stay and work on his voice (which amounts to working on the Self), he will experience the change he desires over the span of weeks and months—which is exactly how language is learned.
The Old School maintained that it took at least 3 years to learn to sing: a ball-park figure which experience has confirmed. Of course, no one wants to hear this in our click bait world.
I've been working with a young man for about two and a half years now and during a recent lesson he mentioned that he'd been practicing as I had taught him—in ten minute intervals 4-5 times a day—and is now feeling confident in vocal ability. This stratagem has served him well with sustained and steady progress—progress that hasn’t melted in the face of challenges.
Singers don't appear out of nowhere. Their development has only been out of sight, gestating for a long time.
How long does it take to become a professional opera singer? I’d say about a decade of serious study after the having mastered the basic elements of vocal technique.
It all starts with being a great listener. You bide your time until you meet a catalyst, often in the form of another artist, teacher, or experience involving aesthetic arrest. Then the journey begins.
Want to be a singer? Learn an instrument. Lean to read music. Learn foreign languages. Inculcate everything your eyes see and your ears hear. Find a great voice teacher and become an apprentice. It's only then that you will start to sing with your Self.
