You may want to check this out- online classes from Berkeley- I saw that you were nearby... https://cjc.edu/workshops/ I know Kate McGarry and have heard Dena DeRose teach many times- both phenomenal singers and teachers of singing. Both classes look interesting! You could also email Kate or tweet to her to see if she might know a good accompanist or vocal teacher or if she herself does lessons outside the music school.
There is also SFConservatory, but I don't know the whole faculty there.
Having tried it, I think singing is poorly suited to self-learning. In my experience, vocal lessons are designed around identifying and overcoming problems and habits that are unique to each person. Identifying problems is done by ear or by observing subtleties in body posture, which require experience and training.
Particularly I'd mention Eric Arcenaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5hS7eukUbQ
Listening to podcasts by performers about their daily routine might be useful if you want to know what they need to do to care for their voice in order to be able to perform daily.
Now, having said all that. I have had really positive experiences with a teacher who teaches CVT (Complete Vocal Technique). I'm sure a huge part of this was the individual teacher I found, but every lesson I walked away feeling like I had learned something new and had improved my technique. If there's a licensed CVT teacher near you, I'd highly recommend trying them.
There is only one thing you can do: find a good teacher. You don't have experience related to singing, so you are not even able to diagnose what you are doing wrong and start working on it. You accidentally start pushing yourself into direction opposite to what you should be doing as I did at some point. Also, it's important to find a good one: if a teacher suggests something, then you try it for a few weeks and nothing changes, then maybe it's time to find another one. I'm not saying you can learn everything in a month, but you should at least notice something is changing and and understand what exactly you are working on. If the teacher can't explain what exactly you should improve (and how) other than "sound better" then likely it's not a good teacher. I cannot stress how important is finding the right teacher. Two lessons with right guy I found were much more effective than everything else I did beforehand for years (youtube tutorials, lessons with other people, trial and error). Don't try to be cheap: few weeks with someone who knows what they are doing can take you further than months with someone who doesn't (obviously I'm not saying that all good teachers are expensive and all cheap are bad. What I'm saying is that there is SO MUCH DIFFERENCE between an average and a great teacher that it's often worth paying for example twice as much). One more thing about teachers is try to get demos of their students and see if you like how they sing.
Another piece of advice: get used to recording and listening to yourself. It's frustrating, but it's second best thing I did after finding a good teacher. I can't imagine making progress on singing without recording. And you can record yourself on a smartphone/laptop/whatever for practice purposes, no need to buy any audio equipment.
But it doesn't really matter actually, because once in a choir you will meet people, learn from other people, learn about other choirs, and it's quite normal that people switch to different choirs every so often.
Also, people say that a choir is important for one's musical development, and I have to agree (having done solo singing before singing in a choir).
PS: the first few sessions may feel overwhelming but this is quite normal and most choir members have learned that new people will need some time to get accustomed to singing. In my experience, most new people will sing along very softly, and then suddenly after a few weeks they will become more confident and more audible. This is totally normal.
PPS: until the covid19 situation is over, perhaps "online" lessons as others have mentioned are a better idea.
Also, second everyone who is saying get a voice coach. Very valuable in surprising ways.
https://www.youtube.com/user/EricArceneaux
Start with the warmups, work on breath fundamentals, and sing for the love of singing :)
A good vocal coach in person is fantastic, but expensive.
If that won't work for you and you're set on in-person lessons, try to find someone who was never a natural singer, and had to learn everything from scratch. They'll be able to pass on more than someone who started with a basic natural ability.
She is a piano prof at Juilliard and I believe runs one of their startup/business courses, so she’s put a lot of careful thought into this (but I’m sure would appreciate feedback).
Disclosure: I am completely unaffiliated with her company, but have been using it during this period of SIP. If you have any questions or feedback about TR, feel free to reach out.
While there are plenty of resources available online and there are countless self-taught singers it's easy to acquire unhealthy habits, which in turn might also limit your progress and ability over time.
Latency can be a problem with anything music-related in an online setting, though. Apart from that, singing is very much a physical activity and some feedback from your body might be missed due to limitations of the medium.
Nevertheless, it certainly is a viable and tested approach (with many teachers and even well-known singers offering personal training online) and worth a try.
With her feedback I am able to self adjust to reflect my personality when I speak Korean.
Personally, I feel like getting a tutor to "teach you" something in the artsy space may slow down your search to find your own voice that resonates with you. Maybe you can pay a tutor to just "listen to you" and tell you what you sound like to the other person.
On the other hand, if your goal is to just to imitate other singers, I would suggest getting a tutor to teach you like many other are suggesting.
Not trying to discourage anyone, but if your goal is to become a singer people outside of family/friends enjoy hearing for free or money learn how to sing on key then sing for others. You will know then and there by their response to your singing if you have that gift or not. Though many with that gift are born with perfect pitch and can sing on key innately (lucky ones).
If you need a place to get started, you might just look for a few YouTube videos or tutorials about that. It gives you extra volumes of breath, so you can belt out the notes and hold them longer. Everything else follows from that.
The situation is, I've known that I should find a teacher for many years. However, I can be quite stubborn and have instead been recording myself playing guitar/singing for the past several years. With debatable progress.
I know I should find a teacher, but what should I look for? My guitar is fine.. I've played since I was 12 and had a lot of lessons back then. So I feel better about self-studying guitar.
I've also been singing for that long, but without any actual instruction. Help!
Worse, without the feedback of a teacher, you can easily neglect a major weakness, develop a bad habit without knowing it, or even destroy your vocal chords.
Quit seeing the vocal coach if it's too expensive and you're confident you can do the exercises on your own
I also encourage everyone reading this to try and learn singing. It's surprising what even a month of practice can do to your voice.
I truly believe that "bad singers" don't exist.
There's also this which is useful but not great.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tadaoyamao...
Try out a handful of teachers and choose someone who matches your goals and levels.
Try to practice little and often. Don't overdo it.
Expect progress to take a long time. Of the order of years.
Good luck.
* Tuning
Good tuning software is a vocalists best friend, even if you don't struggle with pitch issues. Don't like the timbre of your voice? Good tuning software has the ability to manipulate the "formant" of a voice, which if used in conjunction with some pitch shifting can make a woman's voice sound like a man's, or vice versa. Tuning software is also invaluable for visualizing the notes that you're singing. I use tuning software to help me compose and finalize my vocal melodies. I start with my scratch vocal take and push notes around until I have a consistent result I'm happy with, melodically speaking. These tuned scratch takes become "guide tracks" that I can have in my headphones while recording new takes. You can also turn them into MIDI tracks to aid in composing other parts.
* Comping
Comping is where you create a good composite track out of a bunch of mediocre ones. I do like 8 takes of each part, and then I pitch correct all of them so they conform to my official melody, referencing my guide track as needed. I also clean up the timing of sung notes at this stage (another great use of tuning software) to make sure that I'm not too far off the beat. Small slop is OK.
I have 8 tracks now of tuned vocals that are mostly bound to the grid, which makes it easier to select the best bits from each track to create a composite. I try to focus on the notes/lines that convey the most emotion and feeling, I comp those 8 tracks down to 3 or 4 decent ones. The best one I save for my lead vocal, the rest I use for doubles and harmony parts.
* Double up
Choruses need big vocals right? You can use your extra tuned and tightened tracks to double (or triple, quadruple) up your vocals and pan them left/right to make them sound bigger and better. Because they're unique tracks and not copies this will sound wide, and because you left in some minor timing slop, it will sound tight, but not robotic. You can also use doubles in non-chorus parts to emphasize certain words or phrases.
* Harmony
Harmony tracks can really sweeten and thicken a vocal. It'll definitely help to learn some music theory to understand the right notes for your harmony parts, but you can also just do it by ear. I take a one of my comps, and push the notes around with tuning software so it becomes a harmony against the lead vocal. Sometimes these extreme tuned artificial harmonies can sound robotic, but if you blend them in subtly and/or play with the formants they can work well. If not, you can use them as a guide track to re-record organic parts, but that's more work. Use harmony parts the same way you might use doubles.
When looking for a teacher, I wouldn't try to find "the best" or "most virtuoso" around, but what works for you. Try several teachers, get some sessions with 2-3 and find which one is the one that motivates you the most, and understands you the most. A teacher is like a coach and a partner in an adventure... the most important thing is that they can make you progress and keep you motivated.
Good luck :)
- decide if you have the confidence to sing or not. (Some intrumentalists don't.)
- after you want to sing, get a vocal coach. Singing for a career is the hardest musician job. Your whole lifestyle needs to accommodate your voice wrt food, rest, recovery. If you can't afford a coach, watch some intro Youtube videos and practise for a few couple months.
Here are the problems:
- every vocalist you know has had vocal cord surgery. Even Band-maid. Bon Jovi had a nightmare of vocal problems.
- because they yell at the mike, instead of talking to the mike musically, and letting the PA amplify it. At the turn of the 1900s, this was well-known. Somehow that fact was lost in the 1960s until today.
Seriously, get a coach or you will destroy your vocal cords and prematurely end your career. The stress of deciding if you and your band can perform the next booking or not is shattering.
(There's a video of Justin Bieber on Youtube talking to his mom and manager backstage about throat problems and what to do next, with 20,000 paying, screaming fans outside waiting. Talk about stress.)
They have a frequency analyzer that's great for looking at your voice output and comparing it against notes.
There's also a cool java app for monitoring your tone
You need to just sing. Sing along with your favourite songs, sing with heart.
Then ... you may either want to get a bit of coaching, possibly sing with a choir.
Most singers were really quite good before they had formal coaching, and many have never had any coaching at all.
One of the more challenging things is pitch ... some people sing out of tune, have no idea, and it sounds bad. Oddly, this is something a 'voice coach' will have difficulty fixing. This tends to be something that people 'have' or they 'don't' - it can be learned surely, but it's oddly not a 'singing specific' issue. Playing around on a piano, singing the notes, trying to get them to match. So if you have a pitch problem, it will be a separate can of worms, but the more musical exposure you have, via anything, the better you'll get.