You’ve decided to take voice lessons to improve the quality of your voice, perhaps for someone in the family or your colleagues’ kids. You want to find the right teacher with the rate giving you the most value for your money but you are not quite sure how to go about it.

Searching online and inquiring through various ads and what you can find in the malls can be time-consuming and you might end up even more confused with so many options. You can find several lists of music schools and freelancers offering various packages all promising to help you with your singing voice. But how would you know which teacher to hire?

Anyone can pursue offering voice lessons but how do you know if they’re qualified to teach proper vocal instruction? What questions should you ask? Does a great singer make a great teacher? And how much can you gauge the real value of the singing lessons you’re getting from the various teachers offering lessons?

Things to Consider When Choosing a Voice Coach

Find a teacher to fit your needs and interests.

You might be hearing of good vocal teachers but then if you dig deeper, the styles they are teaching are far from what you are after. So even if they are so good with their specific field, it won’t do good for you.

Make sure the vocal coach can teach you the style you like.

There’s a big difference between having extra sensitive ears and distinct professional constructive criticism than being the vocal coach who can walk you through every step of the vocal techniques to nailing the style you aimed for.

Look for a teacher who can immediately identify your bad habits and correct these into making you sing practically better on your genre.

Coming from experience, most often than not, several of my advanced, semi, and professional singer students have bad habits that took them a whole lot longer to unlearn due to years of accustomed familiarity to doing those specific bad habits, compared to intermediate students who started fresh with me and took a shorter time to learn those techniques from scratch.

Ask the teacher, if the Vocal Technique is part of the training program and not just merely covering from one song to another.

Most 1-1 private classes are geared towards customized training with goals concentrating on being able to justifiably sing songs right away over a much more formal academic approach to learning singing wherein a lot of time is spent in going over the theories and exercises over working on songs and input/correct techniques along the way.

If after a voice class you feel your voice is fatigued, then consider that a red flag.

Your teacher might be a good singer and performance teacher but not with the voice technique. To quote a great voice mentor Cathrine Sadolin “Everybody got a voice. It’s a question of taste if it’s beautiful or not. To train your voice to do what you want, you need a good technique not least you keep your voice.”

Important Questions to Ask When Looking for a Voice Coach

• Does the teacher play the piano or adept with scales?
• Describe what a typical lesson is like?
• How long have you been teaching voice?
• What voice technique do you teach?
• Do you teach different styles of music?
• Where did you learn voice training?
• Do you perform? If so, where?
• Do you include ear-training?
• May I also hear other students you teach?

Key questions a qualified voice coach will ask:

• Why do you want voice lessons?
• What is your goal?
• How much time are you willing to train and how long are you willing to train?
• Have you had previous training?
• What style of music do you like?
• Do you sing in a glee club, band, choir or group?
• Who are some of your favorite singers?
• Does your family or loved ones support your choice to study voice?

And lastly, for a long term voice mentor, look for someone who can help you grow not just with your singing skills, but rather help you grow with your artistry. That simply perfecting or copying the original singers is enough, but that you as a singer develop and bring out your authentic raw voice and make it pro. That you can grow into a professional artist, start a career out of being a vocal performer and create a name for yourself.