Voice and music theory lessons.

Why can't I hit high notes?

Before you can work on a high note you have to know where your range actually ends.

An alto is not going to hit what a soprano hits. A mezzo is not either, and a soprano is not going to reach down and do what an alto does. Same on the other side with tenor, baritone and bass. There is a crossover where you can be two of them at once, alto and mezzo for instance. Once the range is established, you can see what is missing. A note that speaks one day and not the next usually means you have not developed the pocket in the head cavity to sustain that sound yet.

With the right exercises you can hit those notes. Every note you add to a voice takes time, and how much depends on the voice.

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Why does my voice shake when I hold a note?

Most of the time that shake is your own vibrato, and it sounds much bigger from the inside than it does to anyone listening.

Vibrato is natural. It arrives on its own once a voice is free, and singers who have never heard themselves closely often think something has gone wrong. Nerves can add to it. The other possibility is that you are parked in a crack place, sitting right between two notes at your break, which is the passaggio, and a voice will wobble there until it knows how to cross.

Telling those apart takes someone listening to it, and the answer changes what you would practice.

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Why do I run out of breath when I sing?

Running out of air almost always means the breath is coming from the wrong place.

A real breath goes to the bottom of your stomach. It feels like it is coming right out the other side of you, and when you push, you can feel your back expand. Most people never breathe that way because nobody showed them, so they fill the top of the chest, get about half of what they need, and then run dry in the middle of the phrase. There are exercises that put the breath where it belongs, and once you have it, you can sing anything, as long as you want.

That is the part that changes fastest in lessons, and it changes more than singing.

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Why do I sound nasal when I sing?

Nasal singing is a placement problem. The sound is going into the nose instead of filling the whole mask.

What usually causes it is the soft palate. The back of your tongue rises up and covers it, and with the space closed off, everything gets shoved upward into the nose. The tone has nowhere else to go. It is hard to explain in words and very easy to hear the moment it changes, which is why it is one of the quicker things to fix in person.

That is one cause. There are others, and yours depends on what your tongue and palate are doing.

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Do singers need to know music theory?

If you want a career in this, absolutely yes.

Musical theater, opera, writing your own music, pop. All of it goes faster and further when you know what you are looking at. The more theory you know, the more quickly you get through everything, singing and playing both. Singers who avoid theory end up depending on someone else to tell them what the music says, and that gets expensive in rehearsal time and in opportunities that go to the person who could read the chart.

How much you need depends on what you want music to do for you, and that is worth deciding early.

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What key should I sing in?

Your key comes out of your range. It is not a property of the song.

Establish your range first, and understand that it is where you are starting, not where you will stay. Then look at the music and find the highest note in it. That note should never exceed your range. If it does, the song gets moved to a key where it does not, which is what transposing is for. Singing a song in the key it happens to be printed in, when that key does not fit you, is how people end up straining every time they perform.

Your range grows, and the keys available to you grow with it.

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How do I sing harmony?

Harmony starts with being able to sing a line back exactly the way you heard it.

Learn a melody first and keep it on a loop so you can repeat it. Call and response. Somebody sings the phrase, you sing it back. Once you can return a line accurately, you are ready to hear a second line against it. Then the teacher stops singing with you and plays the melody on an instrument instead, because if somebody sings the other part at you, you will drift onto theirs without noticing. You hold your line against what is played. Then the other voice comes in over the top.

It is a long process and it absolutely works. People have done it many times.

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Why can't I stay on the beat?

A beat has two halves. The number, and the and.

Tap your foot. The foot coming down is the number, one, two, three. Every one of those has an and, which is the upbeat, and that is your toe lifting straight up before the foot comes squarely back down on the next number. Most people who cannot stay in rhythm are only counting the numbers, so half the beat is invisible to them. Once you can feel the and, you clap the rhythm with it in there. The and is the miracle cure.

Once it is in your body it stops being something you think about, and that is the goal.

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Do I need to read music to take voice lessons?

Not to start. It depends entirely on what you want music to do for you.

If you want to take it seriously, perform well, do solo work, do more than sing in a choir, then yes, you need to learn to read. You might only ever need the melody line, but you need to read it and be able to play it. The other way works for a lot of people. You learn the song from a recording, either I play it for you or you find it on YouTube, and then you sing along to a karaoke track in the key we have been working in, which teaches rhythm quite well. And if you are doing this for the joy of it and reading holds no interest, you can follow Mitch Miller's bouncing ball and have a wonderful time.

Both roads work. Which one you take is a decision, not a requirement.

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How much do voice lessons cost?

Mine are $35 for a half hour and $50 for a full hour.

Voice lessons range wildly, from about $10 a half hour up past $100, and the price usually tracks what the teacher has behind them. With sixty years of working music and a music education degree I could sit at the top of that range. I would rather be reachable. The hour is the better value of the two and it is also the better lesson, because a voice needs time to warm up before the real work starts.

What you need depends on where you are starting, and we can sort that out before you book anything.

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Can you really learn to sing over Zoom?

Yes, and the settings matter more than the camera does.

Zoom is built for talking, so out of the box its noise cancellation flattens the very things a voice teacher needs to hear. Turn that off and the full range comes through. Headphones clear up the rest, and I have watched students go from muddy to perfectly workable the moment they put a pair on. From there it is ordinary teaching. Students who start out weak get more comfortable, they try what I ask them to try, and their range widens, their voice strengthens, and they start singing like someone who believes it.

I will help you get your audio right on the first call. It takes about five minutes.

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What happens in a first voice lesson?

The first lesson is mostly finding out where your voice actually sits.

Most students who come to me online are beginner to intermediate. Some are performers wanting to sing something better than they currently do, and the rest simply want to learn to sing. Either way we start with range, what kind of voice you have, alto, soprano, tenor, baritone, bass. Then placement, with exercises that let you feel where the sound is supposed to sit, so you know what I am asking for. Then we look at material, some of it what you want to sing, some of it what I want you singing to build the voice up and extend the range.

You will leave the first one knowing something about your voice you did not know that morning.

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How young can kids start voice lessons?

Nine is the age where it usually starts working.

I have taught them younger. Seven is the youngest I have taken, and it can go fine, but attention is the whole problem and online makes it harder. Nine seems to be the magic age. They can hold their focus, they follow the instruction, they practice between lessons, they take it seriously, and they stay present for the entire lesson instead of twirling off into a corner to wonder where the milk and cookies went.

Children vary, and some are ready earlier. A conversation tells you more than a birthday does.

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Do I need to be able to sing already to take lessons?

No. A great many people can sing and do not believe it yet.

Often what is missing is not the voice, it is listening. The note is there to be heard and the singer has not learned to hear it, so it never arrives. That is teachable. I take my time about it, and I am patient waiting for you to arrive at the notes you want to sing, the ones you actually do hear.

Where you start has very little to do with where you can end up.

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