Avoid these 3 singing mistakes & save YEARS | Singing Lessons For Beginners

I feel like singing is one of those skills where you can spend YEARS on it.

And make no progress.

How do I know this? This was me.

I’ve had many instances where even after years of practising daily, putting the work.

I was told by people around me that I still sounded the same.

And it’s only really in the past few years where through prioritising and working on the right things. My voice has started to really grow and even receive applauses when I perform live.

And so really for today, I want to share with you the 3 common singing mistakes OR areas that most people focus on that are simply going to waste years of your life. And also what to focus on instead.

Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

Mistake #1 - Caring too much about “voice types” and “how much range you have”

So I got stuck on this for the first 3-4 years of my journey.

I naturally have a lower range, lower voice.

And for some reason, maybe it’s the general consensus of the voice floating through the internet.

But I got stuck with idea of a “voice type”.

That I was stuck with this lower voice.

That I had this baritone curse.

And I know a lot of you might feel like you’re in a similar boat.

So what’s the problem here?

The ISSUE I have with this.

It starts to shift our focus away from the things we can controlling

Learning to feel good technique. Learning how to actually navigate your range.

For example,

I’ve seen a lot of posts on Reddit where people will do these vocal type test OR range test.

Basically, they’ll use a website/app and find their lowest note and their high notes.

And then they’ll label their voice type

“Oh I’m a Baritone”

But the challenge here, is that these tests tells you nothing about the quality of these notes.

Like how does it actually sound good?

Is it in falsetto or something with a bit more connection?

Are you able to get there from a low note? How useable it is. Which is how a lot of songs will be like.

Usually when I hear the clips accompanies with these posts they are often just screeching their higher notes and they’ll have this giant flip/hole in the middle of their range.

Now let me be clear.

I’m not saying range is not important.

If anything I think it’s incredibly important to build, because when you can go up and down your entire range. This is a great sign of your technique.

What I am saying though is

Switch your focus to the quality of your technique. How are you navigating up and down your range. Do you feel like you really have to force the note out? Does it even sound right? How well do you understand the fundamentals? A good little cue, is spend more of your time fixing your mid range. When you fix your technique, your USEABLE range expands anyway.

Mistake #2 Obsessing with terms/terminology/technique videos

This is quite linked to the first mistake.

And I definitely fell into this trap.

When we’re first learning to sing, we feel like to sing better we need to learn/understand the voice more.

And this is important.

Without some kind of understanding of the voice.

It’s hard to know where to start.

And so we start to browse on the internet.

We hear about all these different terms, mixed voice, pharyngeal, twang, nasality, edge.

Now this is just from my personal experience and also the experience of my clients.

But I find with learning to sing, you start to hit this point of diminishing returns.

Where it’s not about LEARNING more ideas, more concept.

More isn’t necessarily better.

Rather it’s about learning a few key concepts and executing them REALLY well.

For example, consider when you’re doing vocals scales, beyond all the terminology and vocal hacks.

We’re really trying to answer a simple question

How does it feel like to change pitch easily without anything else changing?

How well can I actually execute this?

This means, say with a particular exercise. There’s no change in the word. No change in the airflow. No change in the volume.

Now this can be tough to execute it right! But to get closer to this, it’s really about learning to execute a few ideas well. No about learning more.

If this rings a bell, I have posted many more in-depth tutorials to help you with this especially episode 129 & 138,

Mistake #3 Not believing you can do it.

For me, I’m a pretty confident guy.

But for some reason with singing. I’ve always had some doubt in my mind about my singing.

Maybe it’s from hearing people around us saying

“singing is a gift”

“You don’t have that gift”

Or even just hearing your own voice and thinking

“my voice sounds like a screeching whale”

Now this is a hard stage to get past. Many of us will spend years listening to these stories that we tell ourselves and not take the actual work of practising.

It’s like someone who because they’ve ENGRAINED the belief they could never get in shape. So they never start to eat and work out right.

Solution?

I think from experience 2 things have really helped.

(1) Start with a “what if?”

What I mean by this is sure maybe singing is a gift but what if I could just get 10% better?

Sure my voice sounds like a screeching whale right now, but what if it’s just because I don’t vocal technique?

Another way is simple looking at your favourite singers and asking - what if I could get close to this level?

I like this way of thinking because it start to open up possibilities.

However tackling “your mindset” is just one piece of the puzzle. What I find even better is this

(2) Give yourself IRREFUTABLE evidence that you can get better.

This just means giving yourself so much evidence that you can get better. That there’s just simply no other way.

But here’s the caveat, it means taking action EVEN when you feel scared.

Taking my first voice lesson even if I was shaking

Performing at a private concert even if I was scared

Performing on the streets for the first time even though every cell in my body wanted to go home

Because each time I did it REGARDLESS of those stories/emotion and came out alive.

If gave me irrefutable proof or personal experience that I could do it.

Further more, when you’re literally experiencing yourself getting better, singing with more range, more freedom more control. When there are people who enjoy listening to you sing.

What happens is you naturally start to wonder what’s next? What else is possible?

Anyway! That’s all. If you found this episode useful, please share or give it 5 star wherever you’re listening from. This really helps spread the word and means the world to me. If you’d like to study with me, links are down in description. Take care!

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