What should you expect when you search for ‘singing teacher Los Angeles’?

singing teacher los angeles teacher John Davies Hey y’all. John Davies here. Hope I can help you out a little with this one. When you’re looking for a singing teacher Los Angeles, you’re probably looking for someone who can actually help you improve your voice. When I talk to people who are looking for a singing teacher they often tell me what their aims are.

For example, they tell me that they want to strengthen their voice or increase their range or stop losing their voice every time they sing for ten minutes. And while they’re talking to me, I’m actually listening very carefully to the way their voice works and making mental notes. Often, what they’re aiming for isn’t going the be the best thing for them. And that’s where an experienced vocal coach comes into the narrative.

The best singing teacher will be someone who has long years of classical training, with a very strong background in performance and recording. They will assess exactly what it is that you need to improve all aspects of your vocal performance.

Breathing in Singing

There’s a lot said about breathing in singing.

Actually, breathing is very important…and if you don’t do it, your chances of continuing to live are remarkably slim. Non-breathers tend to be non-livers, guys. Remember that. Anyway, no informed vocal coach will disagree with the notion that in one sense, breathing is ninety-nine percent of the game. When viewed strictly as a musical instrument, the voice is an instrument which is set into motion by pressurized air and the way that air is brought into the body and pressurized HAS to be very important.

There’s no special tricks to it…it’s simple and it should be, because humans breathe all the time.

The big problem is that people often get the wrong idea about how to breathe generally. And they might get those ideas from people who think they know how it works…grade school teachers might tell the kids to suck in their belly and pick up their chest to take a big breath.

And the teachers may have learned that technique from their granddad who was in the army. Who knows? In any case, that’s definitely NOT how we were meant to breathe. We were breathing perfectly from the moment we were born, and any variation on that is not healthy. Your singing teacher Los Angeles should be able to assess how correctly you’re breathing and correct any errors. And do it simply.

As for increasing your range—that’s how high and how low you can sing—that can be done also, by a quality vocal coach. But remember guys, it’s not about how high or how low you can sing…It’s about how well you can sing with what you’ve got. And high and low touch on the voice-type issue, too. I often get, during the first lesson, “What type of voice do I have? Am I a soprano or a mezzo-soprano?” Invariably my answer to that is that I don’t know until you’ve been practicing your exercises for a while. That’s what training’s about, folks. You train the right way and your voice improves in whatever way it’s going to improve.

That said, voice-type is not just about the notes a voice can sing. It’s also very much about the weight of the voice, or its tone and only a very experienced singer will be able to help you with that. Just because a male voice can sing a high A definitely does NOT mean that the guy is a tenor.

Sure, it’s unusual that an untrained voice can sing up there, and yes, it MIGHT indicate that the voice will add notes above that and actually develop into a tenor. But it might also indicate that the voice is a good quality, dramatic baritone. Only correct training and technical exercises will answer that question.

How long does it take for the voice to reveal itself? Not long is the simple answer. If you’re given great technical exercises and you actually practice them as prescribed, you should have an answer to that one in about a month.

Another big question I get from students and prospective students is about interpretation and performance. One simple way of looking at those is to consider that interpretation has quite a bit to do with enunciation and performance has to do more with body language and movement. Now that’s not strictly all the details, but it provides good starting points which are easy to work forward from. Mostly when singers are talking about interpretation it comes down to, among other things, enunciation.

Yes, America…I am now going to give the strictest definition of enunciation. As a matter of fact, I just Googled it two minutes ago, and sure enough, there wasn’t one single correct definition in the top-ten hits. No fricking wonder there’s so much confusion about it here. For us Royal Schools grads, enunciation means the intentional emphasizing or de-emphasizing words, or syllables within words, to give a word or the narrative greater meaning. Watch this example…

The cat sits on the mat. There’s no enunciation there, so you can interpret it how you like.

But if I say:

The CAT sits on the mat, it means that the cat and not the dog sits on the mat.

Now, if I say:

The cat sits on the MAT, it means that the cat sits on the mat and not somewhere else.

This example is extremely over-simplified and some of you might want to argue. OK. That’s your problem and not mine. Knock yourself out.

Singing Teacher Los Angeles – Just Find a Good One!

Anyway, I don’t want to get bogged down with details here, but your singing teacher Los Angeles should be able to answer all your questions about vibrato, head-voice, chest-voice, support, placement and everything else you’ve always thought had something to do with singing.

Just try to find a good one! And feel free to check out my youtube channel for more videos!

Well, guys, I hope this is a bit of help to y’all. Have fun with that voice now! Bye.

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