School of The Rock

 

Develop Your Voice                


Written by Paul D. Race for SchoolOfTheRock.com™

 

You may be a sixteen-year-old with a great voice for a sixteen-year-old.  That’s a trap.  If you don’t continuously develop your singing, in ten years you’ll be a twenty-six-year-old with a great voice for a sixteen-year-old, competing with the next generation of sixteen-year-olds with great voices.  I have several very talented friends right now, people who sing better than me, who are surrounded by people who claim they’re as good as they need to be.  They’re not.

Or you may think that since you’re a world-class guitar player or you’re in the best band in the world, your voice isn’t important.  But bands come and go, and a lot of great former lead players I know are doing solo acoustic acts now and wishing they’d really, really learned to sing when they had a chance. 

I never worked on my voice when I was young enough for it to really do me some good, because I was always in bands with great lead singers.  But I was also in bands with some world-class flakes, and the result is that I have now been my own lead-singer, accompanist, chief songwriter, arranger, booking agent, and so for most of my life.  And it would have done me a world of good over the years if I’d taken my voice seriously when I had a chance.

If you’re still in high school and you have a good choir teacher, learn everything you can from her or him. If you’re out of high school and can track down someone who can coach you in the vocal style you want to present.  By the way, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that learning to sing classical music will ruin you for Rock and Roll or Country.  Just don’t take lessons from a teacher who loves the Baroque era (pre-vibrato).

 

 

As always, please contact me with corrections, complaints, clarifications, etc.  If your response is responsible, I'll try to include it in the "reader response" section below.

God bless,

Paul

SchoolOfTheRock.com

 


Paul Race playing a banjo. Click to go to Paul's music home page.A Note from Paul: Whatever else you get out of our pages, I hope you enjoy your music and figure out how to make enjoyable music for those around you as well.

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