How to be good at singing without lessons? | Beginner Singing Lesson

Whilst I think lessons with a good voice teacher is the BEST way to improve your voice.

The reality is not all of us will have access to voice lessons.

Today I want to share with you, if I had to restart from the beginning how would I try to get better at singing without lessons.

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.

Now I need to caveat.

I’ve got 3 tips for you all today, but even if you followed these next 3 steps. Some of you will see results, but the reality is there will be some of you who won’t.

Sometimes it’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle.

Especially for some of the hard cases like me.

But we won’t know if we try.

What I can suggest here is block off a reminder in 3-6 months & give yourself a time limit.

Focus on executing these next 3 tips and if are the end of the 3 months you’re seeing great results. Keep going.

If you don’t see progress or maybe you’re getting worse. I want you to book in a lesson with me. This reminder should also give you some time to save money.

I’ve taught so many people who tried to do it on their own for years only to have their issues resolves with me in the matter of weeks/months.

Okay so what are 3 tips?

TIP #1: Realise the resources you have access to

You already don’t have access to the best resource which is voice lessons and having access to a trained ear.

The internet is a great place.

But this doesn’t mean you don’t have anything at all. What you do need to do is be more resourceful.

How I see it is you need different types of resources to help you along this journey

(1) You’ll need a way to learn the lingo, the concepts and fundamentals to improving singing.

Youtube is probably one of the best place for this and is one of the reasons I post these tutorials. But there are also places like Podcast, singing courses.

Now be careful here. When you’re learning things on your own. A big trap is information overload. We watch too many videos and especially when they all talk about singing differently, we get pulled in all directions and end up getting nowhere.

So learn just enough so you can get back to practice.

(2) You’ll need a way to listen back to yourself

Listening back to yourself is a great way to improve.

If you’ve got a phone. That’s sorted. But if you have access to any microphone or DAW that would be even better.

(3) You need a way to get external feedback for your voice.

Beyond just listening to yourself, getting feedback from others can be really helpful. There are communities on reddit R/singing and Discord servers. Of course, this isn’t always a professional opinion but it can be a good start.

TIP #2: Focus on fundamentals

Now I have a slightly different definition of fundamentals.

Rather than it being basic, or things beginners need to know.

Fundamentals for me means, what are those key skills/movements that I need to be able do in 90% of my singing and if I just focused on executing them well, this will get me most of the way with singing.

For example whilst runs are cool, they aren’t fundamental.

Whilst vibrato is cool, they aren’t fundamentals. You don’t need them to sing well.

So what are the fundamentals? For me it’s these 2-3 skills

1) Blow air consistently and enough

2) Knowing how does it feel like to change pitch easily without ANYTHING else changing? (stretch the vocal folds)

3) Knowing how does it feel like to change volume easily without ANYTHING else changing? (bring the vocal folds together)

So if you really want to get good at singing, this is where I would spend my attention especially on (2) & (3).

Now the key words here are EASILY and WITHOUT changing anything else.

Because what this means, when you learn how to do this is you’re really engaging only the muscles you need to change pitch or volume.

“But then what about all these techniques that I’m learning. Head voice, chest voice, singing in my mix”

Be open to them. But realise, they are just trying to make these 3 fundamentals movements better.

If this is the first time you’re hearing fundamentals explained like this, I’d highly recommend checking out the previous episode or episode 129, where I guide a student through these concepts.

TIP #3 Learning to play your own scales

Youtube videos/warm-ups can be a great start. Especially if you’re looking for something quick and convenient.

But the problem I have with it is so much of the initial part improving at singing is deliberate practice.

This means when you’re practising and say if you get it wrong. You need to be able to correct yourself again. Often this means redoing the scale, slowing it down or even finding an easier version of the scale to get you back into that place.

When you’re running through scales quick and when it follows a linear pattern, it can be hard to self correct.

And so this is where learning to play my own scales has been incredibly helpful.

It allows me to slow things down, repeat it, but also bounce between scales where I feel easier execution of good technique AND translate them to more challenging scales.

But you might be wondering,

“Ivan, what if you don’t know music theory”

Well next week, I’m going to tackle this problem and show you exactly how to build your own scales EVEN if you don’t know any music theory.

Yes it takes a bit of time to learn, but does pay off long term.

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!

Extra Links/Resources

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

🌍 Step By Step Singing Course: https://www.singingsimply.com/courses/singing-fundamentals 

🌍 Stream my music: https://linktr.ee/singingsimply

🌍 Business/other inquiries: [email protected]