How Lessons Work

The magic of singing lessons is in the application. Specifically, in the moment-to-moment diagnosis and adjustment of your voice-building exercises, and the interweaving of exercises and other tweaks with tricky spots in a song.

These lessons, recorded and practiced daily, over time, will make clean, powerful, effortless singing automatic, over your whole range.

What's the first lesson like?

A first lesson typically has three parts.

Note: The ‘free-ish intro session’ (30 minutes) is shorter than a ‘first lesson’ (50 minutes) and will typically only involve one small step of vocal improvement—but enough for you to get value for your time, and a sense of what lessons here are like.

Your goals and your voice

• If we haven’t done so, already, we'll talk about your musical background, what you're doing now, and what you'd like to be doing with your voice in the future (Normally, we’ll cover this in the free-ish intro session, so we can get right to singing, in the first lesson)

• I'll guide you through some short scales and maybe a bit of a song to hear how you currently sing.

Next steps:

• We'll talk about where your voice is working well, and possible next steps for improvement, unless you're singing pretty flawlessly, in which case, I'll let you know!

• You'll do some exercises that let you immediately experience improvements in your singing.

• We'll reinforce and build on the new coordination with gradually more challenging exercises and, at a certain point, we'll apply the new ninja-like coordination to a song.

End of lesson / recap:

• We'll review any new skills you learned and I’ll provide further tips on how to best strengthen your voice through practise. (Each lesson is recorded and designed to be repeated daily, for the week, so what to practise is never a question.)

• After the first lesson, any subsequent lessons work similarly, just with even more time devoted to developing your voice.

What's a regular lesson like?

Regular lessons typically have three parts:

Check-in and Warm-up:

• We’ll check in, briefly, about how you’re doing and how your voice has been feeling, the past week, and today.

• You'll start with some exercises to warm your voice up and get it ready to work on newer skills and songs.

Building your voice:

• You'll do exercises designed to challenge your current skill level and get your voice ready for song work. I teach using my own method, called (somewhat unfortunately?) the CSI Method—based on the incredibly successful Speech Level Singing method.

Song work:

• We'll apply what you're learning to a song. If you don't have a song in mind, I love suggesting songs. I keep a database of songs, organized by increasing degrees of difficulty, so we can quickly choose a song that will provide just enough challenge for your current skill level.