If you’ve never checked out Quora, you’re missing out. It’s an excellent resource website where people can ask questions and have experts in the field respond. I occasionally like to answer questions on Quora, here’s a fairly recent one:
How Can a Non-Singer become a Halfway Decent Singer?
I am on a mission to have the whole world so very informed that no one asks this question anymore. I started as someone with no talent. It took me over half an hour to match a SINGLE pitch! Sadly, I was considered a horrible singer, rather than just a beginner. Have you ever heard a beginning violin player? Not pretty. Somehow though, they aren’t immediately called “horrible musicians”. It’s a difficult double standard that singers have to live with.
I can now definitely say I’m a half-way decent singer and have brought many beginning singers to the half-way decent point and beyond 🙂
I love how you phrased it as a “half-way decent” singer, as no matter how great some singers get, they will still see themselves as just half-way decent.
If you can already match pitch, it will take less time to be able to sing along with karaoke and instrumentals. If you cannot match a single pitch, then please check out my video series on “how to sing in tune for beginners”
How to Sing in Tune for Beginners
In addition, I’m coming out with an eBook that describes the process of learning to sing in tune, but most importantly how to assess your level of singing so that your effort is well spent. Why is this basic thing not covered everywhere already? Because most voice teachers could already sing in tune when they started, so they essentially skipped what needed to be learned in order to have a very clear, concrete understanding of how to go from no ability to decent ability, how long that actually takes, how to meet the student precisely where they are at, etc. Hence why you have lots of epic, very difficult vocal exercises covering large ranges of several octaves out there but if someone wants to just learn how to sing in tune, it’s crickets. Hardly anything out there.
Singing in tune will get you pretty far towards being a half-way decent singer. After that, you’ll need to develop your ability to sing with a karaoke track if that’s not already happening. Some singers sing in tune just fine with the original singer singing their notes, but once they are singing with a karaoke track, they get thrown off. This also is not covered enough in the internet sphere, so I’m including that in my ebook.
After that, you essentially want to find the easiest place in your voice to sing for karaoke, and then stick to that area. I call this your “Vocal Comfort Zone” because it’s not the same thing as your range.