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I've taught singing lessons for high school age students for over nine years. With that much time and experience, I've changed how I teach lessons, especially regarding the Region Vocal Competition.
My first All-State singer, Mark M., was a Bass II. In addition to being a fine singer, he was a wonderful actor and VERY intelligent. What made him special as a singer, however, was his sightreading ability. He could read music and sing the pitches and rhythms accurately without any preparation. This was invaluable when he reached the Pre-Area and Area rounds of the vocal competition. Sight-singing counts as 20% to your total score. When the points separating 1st from 5th Chair is in the single-digits, EVERY point counts. Being able to sightread a perfect score can easily give you a few points to beat your competitors. For the first few years of my teaching, I didn't accurately value the importance of sight-singing. My rationale was two-fold: sight-singing does not improve your vocal tone or musicality, and I personally struggled with sight-reading in high school. My attitude was such: if I turned out okay, why would my students need to worry about sight-reading. This attitude was misguided, and not just because sight-singing helps you in the State Vocal Competition. The reality is that good sight-readers make better musicians. In addition to learning music at a much faster rate, sight-singing also improves your musicality, as you learn to anticipate harmonic changes and melodic shapes. In my voice lessons now, I always try to include one sight-singing test. It's a bit like eating your broccoli instead of the chessecake: not many students like sightreading, but it sure is healthy for you. I've noticed my students are goign farther in competition, but they are also better musicians because of it. DWS For voice students and teachers, there are two types of lessons. The first is a 'vocal coaching.' In a vocal coaching, the goal is to have immediate improvement on a certain song. Say, for instance, you have an audition for "Sound of Music" in a month. You don't have the time to go through all the fine points of vocal technique; you just want to sound great on your audition song and get the part! That's vocal coaching in a nutshell; short-term, quick improvement on a certain piece, but not necessarily improvement overall as a singer.
Once you are an accomplished singer, there are even teachers who promote themselves as vocal coaches for specific genres. The best vocal coach I worked with was Tom Jaber at Rice University. He would be the first to tell you that he was not a voice teacher, though he was so smart he could help with technique too! But what he specialized in was operatic music; how it should sound, the style of a certain composer, and very critical language information. The second type of lesson is the 'voice lesson,' in which the goal is to help a student produce a better, more efficient way of singing. This sort of work takes time and progress is measured in weeks and months, not days. While certain short-term goals may be established to evaluate improvement, focus is more on the long-term results of practice. A great voice teacher is an expert in voice lessons. At the end of the day, you want a great teacher who makes singing easy. This takes time; if a person could be a singing sensation overnight, everyone would sound great! The reality is that developing a consistently pleasing tone that causes the singer no vocal stress takes years of work. I started voice lessons when I was in junior high. I continued them through high school, college, and graduate school. It wasn't until my second year of graduate school that I felt I finally understood my own instrument and how to sing well all the time. Think about that: I had taken lessons for ten years, easily, before I felt I was ready to call myself a professional singer. That's a lot of practicing! I had wonderful teachers, but no matter how you slice it, becoming a professional singer takes a lot of time and patience. DS |
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