Can a "non-singer" learn to sing? | Singing Classes For Beginners

Author

Ivan Lu
February 03, 2025

Can a non-singer learn to sing? | Singing Classes For Beginners

You want to pursue singing, but you’re on the fence.

You’re thinking can someone with ZERO experience, someone who doesn’t actually sing.

Is it possible to actually learn to sing?

Now I’ve talked about this before, but today I wanted to explore this question in a slightly different angle which is

  1. Is it possible for you to learn how to sing?

  2. Based of teaching hundreds of students around the world, some of the barriers/challenges you WILL most likely face so you don’t go into it blind because it’s not all rainbow and sunshines

This way you can decide if it’s worth the effort for you to pursue singing.

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.

Part 1: Is it possible?

Have you ever considered what singing actually is?

Some of us might think it’s a talent or gift that some people are born with.

But if we really look at singing at it’s most simplest form, it’s basically just hitting notes really well and doing it in a way that’s pleasing to the ears.

Now behind the scenes, what we don’t realise is singing is just learning to coordinate a lot of muscles very finely.

When you have time Google “How the CT muscle changes pitch”

What you’ll see is that there are

Muscles that stretch the vocal folds and change pitch

Muscles that bring them together that create power

Muscles that shape the vowels or blow air

And having the mind muscle connection to coordinate them well altogether!

The better you coordinate them, the better of a singer you are.

And so instead of thinking of singing as a gift

If you can approach it with the lens of

“Can I just learn to coordinate the right muscles better?”

It’s easy to see that a non-singer can definitely learn to sing.

Now I’m not saying it’s always easy but I think this makes it quite possible.

If you’re still looking for more “proof”

I’ll share some before and afters of my students below. Feel free to check it out to see what’s possible. And hopefully it can inspire some of you.

Part 2: Things you should watch out for

Whilst it’s possible to learn singing, here are the 2 biggest BARRIERS that I believe you should watch out for.

Barrier 1: The Invisible Barrier

Unless you’ve got a camera down your throat.

An inherent challenge with singing is it’s hard to see the voice.

It’s not like I can get in there and physically correct things like if you were learning to play the piano/guitar

This makes learning to singing a lot harder for some of us.

And so in learning to sing, we often have to rely of abstract concepts, physical cues, imageries to describe what’s going on. And try to tie that what’s happening with the anatomy.

Which presents a hidden problem.

I find this leads too many ways of describing, interpreting vocal technique. And as you might have noticed with all the conflicting information out there.

Instead of helping us.

It starts to confuse the heck out of us.

Solution? I think a good teacher is really important here.

However I also think it’s important to come back to a few simple foundations.

For example,

For many of us the biggest challenge is going up and down our range.

We strain, we push, we do weird things.

Now there’s a lot of techniques, concepts, ideas floating around on the internet to help with this.

But really if you boil it down.

What we’re really trying to answer with vocal technique is this

(1) How does it feel to go up and down my range without anything weird happening. No flips, no change in volume, airflow, don’t have to change the vowel.

When you pursue better technique through this LENS, it just makes it much simpler.

All the techniques, the concepts almost come secondary to this.

Barrier 2: YOURSELF

What I’ve found with learning to sing

The concepts, the vocal technique is actually quite simple.

But what often holds us back from getting it is literally ourselves.

In physical sense, it’s the old singing habits that we’ve built.

Maybe when we try to sing higher, we naturally sing a lot louder.

Maybe we move our face in a certain way.

Part of learning to sing, is UNLEARNING this habits.

And as you guess, it can be INCREDIBLY frustrating when one day it works and the other it doesn’t.

On the other hand, we’re often our own worse enemies in a mental sense.

It’s the stories we tell ourselves

“we can’t sing”

“oh that just sounds bad”

“I could never learn to sing”

These stories run in the background and can often make the journey of learning to sing harder than it is.

So what’s the solution? There are definitely ways to make it easier. Finding the right voice teacher, attach your identity to being a better learner and being patient and courage.

Patience in a sense that even if you put in the right work. It will take time

And courage because it’s up to you to decide whether that inherent risk of embarrassment or discomfort can be overwritten by the love of singing.

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!

🌍 Book Private Singing Lessons here: https://calendly.com/singingsimply 

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