Oh, I love answering these kinds of questions! Can you get better at singing through practice? I love myth-busting so much that I created a whole category for it! This is one of those things that I am really passionate about.
Yes, you can get better at singing through practice. You will have to be deliberate about it and would need a mindset shift to attune yourself to a better practice schedule. Gaining knowledge and understanding of how singing techniques work will help tremendously.
There is a lot to say about this and I have one more person to believe in practice, so let’s read on ahead and figure this out!
No Other Way
You only get good at something when you practice something.
This is true for everything because you have to start somewhere and that usually means you’re going to start from the beginning. You get knowledgeable about it through study and then the way you actually gain experience in it is through practice.
Imagine if you are an athlete (I use this analogy a lot and it’s the one that’s more effective) you are trying to run a marathon that is going to last hypothetically two hours.
Currently, you can only run for thirty minutes at length. Do you think you’ll be able to complete the two-hour marathon? Of course not. You would have to train for it or in other words practice for it.
It’s funny how we believe that it is possible for a human to get in better shape even though they were not born with the innate talent to be runners.
We have no doubt that if a person works hard and consistently practices and adds time to their thirty minutes of running each day, little by little, they will be able to reach the two-hour mark and be able to finish the marathon that they started to do.
We Act The Opposite
Somewhere along the lines, when we grow up we believe that being good at anything artistic requires you to be innately talented and that’s where people stop themselves to be creative at anything.
The stem or the root of the problem with this question starts with this – we somehow believe that we need innate talent to be good at singing.
In reality and I tell this to everyone, anyone can learn to say at whatever age they want to. You might not become the greatest singer in the world but you might also not become the greatest runner in this world either.
But we do it regardless.
A Word on Competition
We do it because we want to learn a particular skill and have fun with it. One thing that people again forget while pursuing artistic craft is that competition is not necessarily how we determine how good we are.
If the performance is good or bad, is based on so many other things.
It is very hard to compare two genres. If you want to compare a rock song to a metal song and if I want to ask you which one you like more, you would pick the one that you are more accustomed to.
But in reality, there is no way to gauge how good one song is compared to the other one. So it is true for you to learn how to sing.
When people do actually end up learning how to sing, it is less about competition and more about how much they want to push themselves and where they want to take this skill rather than how well they can do it compared to others.
Importance of Deliberate Practice
Across this website, you will find in various articles that I’ve mentioned deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice can be summed up very easily. It is when you practice actively. It is when you are aware that what you are practicing will lead you to what end.
For example – if I am practicing how to play major scales on a piano then I know that when I am not able to move my fingers the way that I want to, I am practicing toward an end goal that will allow me to play the major scale perfectly on this particular instrument.
It is a combination of knowledge and knowing what you ought to do so that you can reach a goal and utilize your time to the maximum.
Because we can start relying on muscle memory after a while and think that we are making progress by setting them and letting our muscles take over like walking.
But it is not as simple as that. You need to be actively present and mindful of what you are practicing, only then will you be able to get the most out of your time.
How Time and Consistency Wins
The thing with practice is that with time you will improve.
It is not a matter of seeing immediate gains.
Though you will see the gains eventually at some point in your practice, there will be some things that you can do far much better than you were able to do before.
While that is good and needs to be celebrated, you need to realize that you need to move on and practice the next thing as well.
Even If Talent Exists
I don’t doubt talent exists. I am saying that even though talent exists, it doesn’t exempt you from practicing things that need to be worked on.
Nobody is perfectly born with the sense of rhythm, ear, and skill to sing. Nobody comes with those kinds of talents.
They will either have a really good sense of rhythm or a really good sense of ear by having perfect pitch or they will be able to perform the techniques required to sing really well, but not all three of them combined together.
The idea of talent in terms of practice is that it saves your time. You don’t have to practice it anymore. I am telling you with an honest opinion and someone who likes to teach people that, regardless of talent, you can get better at singing with the consistency of deliberate practice.
Practice Pays
It will pay itself. Don’t worry about it. Anyone who sticks with that will one day conquer.
The idea you should have behind the practice is, that if you are not able to do it within a week, then you will be able to do it within two. If you are still not able to do it in two then you have to realize that you must be halfway through already.
The way you can get better is to look at it from all kinds of long-term visions.
Over the period of six months, there is no way that you will not improve. There will be some parts of you that will have been changed altogether so that you can be better than you were before.
Saving Time and Money
Online courses.
They’re here to stay and I am going to tell you what I’ve been telling everyone. Get at least one. You can read more about them here.
For now, ‘The Four Pillars of Singing’ is the way to go. If you’d like to see all of the courses available you can check them out here.
Go and become a better singer now!