How To Learn To Sing In 2024 (Beginner Roadmap)

So you want to learn to sing in 2024. But there’s one problem.

You don’t know where to start. All you know is that your voice is out of control and it doesn’t sound good.

Well I got you, in today’s episode I’ll be sharing a roadmap on how to learn to sing better in 2024. To do so, I’m going to share with you 3 simple areas to focus on. If you do this, you will sound good.

Move 1: Build your FUNDAMENTALS

Why? I can’t stress this enough. The first part of your journey needs to be developing your fundamentals. After more than a decade of working on my voice, I still wish I spent more time working on fundamentals AND especially the right ones.

You’ll realise how much of good singing is basically just fundamentals DONE well.

But there’s a problem: What even are the fundamentals?

You see, there’s a lot of fancy terminology & workouts on the internet. Even yesterday I met a student who commented how every singing teacher talks about singing in such a different way.

This is a problem because we end up chasing so many different things. That sometimes we end up working on nothing at all.

This is why we need to dive deeper. Beneath all these terminologies and workouts are the deeper principles of singing. Aka the fundamentals.

So what are they?

1. Learn the feeling stretch the vocal folds (this allows you to change pitch)

2. Learn the feeling of keeping your vocals cord APPROPRIATELY together (this controls power)

3. Sing on pitch and time. The tighter the better.

That’s it. There’s a certain feeling of stretching your cords and a certain feeling of keeping those cord appropriately together.

A big part of learning to sing through your range is learning how to combine both of these SENSATIONS accurately.

How can you work on these fundamentals?

Remember, there are MANY ways to get to Rome. Vocal exercises are just a means to an end. Remember that you’re focus is to BUILD these fundamentals.

However I’ll share a few of my favourite methods.

With tightening up pitch and timing. Try slowing down a song. This gives your brain the space to notice things. When you notice you’re slightly off pitch OR time. Stop and correct it right then and there.

With my clients I actually guide them through a bit of a recording session. Where we just do takes until they physically feel “singing on pitch”.

For building control of the stretch and connection of the voice I have covered these in more depth in past episodes. I’d highly recommend checking out episode 129, 131, 132, 147 at the end of this episode.

Before we dive into #2 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.

Move #2: Practice singing into the pocket

Why? Building fundamentals establishes ease and accuracy. It allows you to move up and down your range with more ease.

However this doesn’t always mean you’ll sound good in a song. There is another step.

You need to learn to make the right STYLISTICALLY choices to convey the right feeling/emotion.

What? I call this “singing into the pocket”

And no, this isn’t a physical sensation.

But rather think of it like this

All your “CHOICES”

Whether you choose to sing loud/soft, add vibrato or not, sing it in the octave above or below.

All of these choices should be guided by the FEELING that you’re trying to express. You’ll notice that your voice fits into the context of a song OR at least fits into the emotion you’re trying to deliver like a glove.

How can you start working on this?

A lot of this is experimentation. Trial and error.

However one of my favourite ways to speed this up is

Listen to the vocals of genres that you like. (Which you’re probably doing)

But instead of listening for enjoyment.

I want you to analysis the stylistic choices here a bit more.

What sort of volume are they singing?

What sort of runs are they using?

Do they add vibrato?

You see.. you’ll notice each genre say POP or ROCK will dictate a lot of the stylistic choices that you can make as a vocalist.

Of course it’s not a hard rule, but it can be a general guide.

From there you can simply test this choices/colours in your own singing.

Move #3: Build patience

Why? The first 2 steps I’ve shared with you is a continuous process.

It takes time to develop your fundamentals.

It takes time to understand how to sing into the pocket stylistically.

You can probably keep working on it back and forth.

And so probably the biggest thing that determines if you’ll get good at learning to sing is WHETHER you choose to give up.

So many people give up before they get good.

And then they hide behind the excuses of

1. I was never meant to sing

2. Maybe my voice is built different

But when in reality, they decided to give up.

Don’t be this person!

So how do you practice being patient?

One thing that has really helped me during those rougher moments is

Practicing shifting your FOCUS to a longer term view.

You see. The frustration happens when your FOCUS in on the immediate.

You’re trying to see results now.

But you need to understand, EFFORT and RESULTS aren’t always 1:1.

There will be moments where you put in effort and see no results. But then also there will be moments where you just get it. And all of a sudden your singing improves a whole bunch.

For me, the journey of singing feels more like a bunch of plateaus and breakthroughs.

And so during those moments of frustration. Pause and take the time to ZOOM out. Realise that this is just going to be one of your many practice sessions. And whilst you might not see results in that ONE session.

When you stack it up over months, years and maybe even decades.

Looking back, you’ll be so glad that you started and kept going.

Anyway! I hope this episode was useful. If it was, please support this channel through all the usual social media stuff. Like, comment/subscribe.

If you’re from the podcast, leaving a 5 star would really help us grow and mean the world to me.

Last but not least, if you’ve always wanted to improve your singing faster and with less confusion. Remember you don’t have to do this on your own.

I’ve got ways to work with me in the description down below. Make sure to check it out. Apart from that, my name is Ivan, I'm your voice teacher, and I'll see you for our weekly tutorials every single Thursday or Friday.

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]