Voice Coaching Versus Voice Lesson

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