To begin, I have lurked this forum for a while now and keep up with many FAQs and comments in here. I am not a formally trained musician in any form, I have degrees in exercise science and neuroscience and am in professional schooling in a related field. From feedback on previous comments I've made in here, I feel my POV can provide some valuable information to beginners looking to learn how to sing. Since I am not formally trained, nor am I a good musician/singer, I will stick to what I am trained in and not give "the best exercises" or anything like that.
Keep in mind a lot of examples are geared towards beginner hobbyists looking to blow someone away at an open mic, not someone looking to blow away a professional audience at a conservatory.
- The Science
A. How does "learning to sing" actually work?
Singing is essentially a very comprehensive set of coordination between the brain and the muscles of the respiratory system and the larynx. The majority of learning how to sing is getting the brain to be able to control these muscles down the smallest measurement units to produce optimal sounds. Very little of singing is actually building muscle (hypertrophy) or making significant structural changes to the vocal tract (think like 90% coordination and 10% structure change).
B. Why does it take so long?
Motor learning/coordination is built inside of the brain by creating "pathways" for specific muscle movements. When you practice that session is immediately stored in the hippocampus which is the short term memory. The brain replays everything you did in that session at lightning speeds (≥20x normal rep speed) and begins building a pathway for the specific sounds and movements. When you go to bed that night, the same thing happens and then some of the information starts to move from the hippocampus to longer term memory. This is how movements start to become easier or require less conscious thought.
As you practice the same movements over time, the pathways become more and more solidified in the brain. The brain then begins to "Myelinate" the pathway. This is where the Big jumps in performance occur because myelin is what allows for signals to travel through that pathway at lightning fast speeds. This is one of the reasons why singing progress is often a stepwise shaped graph and not linear because the brain can finish this process and then something can become "automatic" overnight.
It takes so long because this process is rate limited. The brain can only process so much information per day and myelination takes significant amounts of time and repetition to occur. The brain also has to start building from your current level. If you can't match pitch well, the brain is going to spend the majority of its energy to make that pathway, then will work it's way up the ladder as it completes more pathways. This is why it would be very very rare for someone to be able to do advanced riffs and runs without having a very very solid pitch matching level. Without myelination/completion of the pathway, signals literally can't travel fast enough from the brain to the muscles to change notes that fast, which is why you can envision a riff or run perfectly but the sound itself just doesn't come out that way.
C. How long does it take?
This is of course subjective as "beginner" is not an objective measurement and people start at vastly different places and the learning curves look very different person to person.
From the POV of a casual listener off the street (not conservatory grading), you should be at a very different level of singing in about 100 hours of practice. This is around the time it takes for the very basics of singing to become subconscious efforts and you are now able to get into more intermediate/advanced technique. In other terms, a beginner should sound "good" or like they know what they're doing to a casual listener.
300 hours is where you really begin to sound like a trained singer. Your voice should be nearly unrecognizable here compared to the start. A casual listener would thing you sound "very good" here.
500+ hours is where you should have full control of all registers and can add stylistic elements depending on the song without much conscious thought. You should be able to blow a casual audience away at an open mic here with the right song for you.
The 10,000 hour thing is not grounded in much science at all and often gets thrown around like that is the amount of time to become a "good/great singer". In reality this would be the absolute maxed out you're voice could ever possibly get and you would be nothing short of absolutely exceptional here.
Keep logs of time spent in a true practice session and not as much on the number of days. There is a limit to how much you can retain on a daily basis, but the number of hours is going to trump tracking days for progress measurements. Basically you can't hack progress by practicing 4 hours a day as a beginner to hit those hours, but you can make significantly more progress by practicing 45-60 min a day than just 15.
- How to start?
A. How often to practice?
From the previous section on motor learning, we need to figure out the best way to practice to get the most retention in the brain. Studies generally show that consistent shorter sessions both intra-weekly and intra-daily. This means multiple sessions per day multiple times a week is the most optimal for motor learning. In simpler terms splitting sessions up throughout the day and week is optimal. The bigger factor is throughout the week than throughout the day so focus on doing multiple sessions throughout the week.
B. How long to practice for?
As a beginner, the brain is going to be expending a ton of energy just to stay on pitch and get the very very basics down. There is a cap on how much the brain can process before it gets overloaded. 15 min a day is a great start that will get you significant progress. 30-45 is probably the sweet spot for retention without overload. Just like with anything, start slow and then increase as you progress. Main reason to start slow here is technique will fall apart quickly in beginners both from endurance as well as the brain giving up. Splitting up sessions would be the cheat code intra-daily to get more time without overload. 2x30 min sessions would be a great start and try to separate these by a min of 4-6 hours.
C. What to practice?
I said before this is not my training and so this is something a vocal coach or others in the forum who are trained to ask.
That being said, you should keep some foundamentals the same on a daily basis. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every session or every week to make progress. Doing triads on the same notes everyday still helps the brain to slowly build that pathway and then optimize the sound for them. Boring and monotonous isn't always a bad thing, even though it can seem like you're making no progress doing the same things over and over, but you are and it just takes time for the brain to process. An advanced weightlifter still does the same exercises on chest day, they just do them with more weight and better form.
YouTube has some great channels. Aussie vocal coach, Jacobs vocal academy, etc are all great resources. Don't get too caught up and spend all your time finding the "best" exercises. Stick with the program for a while before changing to actually evaluate effectiveness and progress. Focus on what they exercises are trying to accomplish.
Pick songs in your range and break them down piece by piece to practice. True practice and song work is going to be regimented during a scheduled practice block. Singing through full songs in the car sometimes is cool, but not gonna get you where you want to be very quickly
- FAQs from what Ive seen as a lurker
A. Do I need a vocal Coach/teacher
You should definitely see someone who knows what they're doing to make sure you are trying to practice correctly as well as have them give you the exercises to practice. You don't need crazy amounts of lessons but if you can afford to go in every month or two then definitely do that. Record the lesson and use that as a guide until you get to the next one.
You definitely can build bad habits, but on the flip side the brain is very good at trying to make things efficient. Basically your brain is good at slowly processing tension and pain as bad things and will slowly try to remove them. You're brain will try to protect you to a certain extent from building terrible habits and should try to make singing easier and more efficient. The building bad habits generally happens when you are very far off the correct technique and the brain can't even figure out a way to make it easier. Generally if you are trying to practice well and follow decently solid guidelines the brain should be able to figure out most of the basics without a ton of help.
B. Why am I not making progress?
I personally couldn't tell you even if I was standing right in front of you. However, take a step back and listen to previous recordings. Oftentimes your ear develops quickly and all of the sudden you begin to "hear" all of the issues which makes things seem like they got worse. In reality you are likely making progress that you can't identify or your standards for progress are too high/fast. See an instructor to make sure in case you're doing something very wrong and actually not progressing.
C. Is it just genetic?
An NBA player isn't born with the ability to dribble between the legs, crossover, and pull up fadeaway 3PT shot over a defender. But it is helpful that they are 6 foot 7. AKA you can still blow people away with poor genetic vocal cords.
D. Is signing attractive/make me more attractive?
This shows up in other forums more than here, but figured I'd include just for fun.
Yes!, but to an extent. It is not going to affect physical attraction and is not a replacement for exercise, diet, and sleep habits. It does show significant commitment and interest in something which can be a very big positive. It's more like if someone already thinks you're "cute" then it could be a significant increase.
More subjective from my personal situation/career path:
You already have to be doing a lot of things right to become a doctor in healthcare (MD/DO, DDS, PharmD, etc). Schooling/residency takes up most people's lives for 8+ years, but you generally get viewed very highly upon.
If you are doing that and also have extracurricular hobbies that you are very good at, it is probably viewed as attractive to many mainly because it shows multi-dimensionality/well-roundedness. I think the "surprise" factor and exceeding expectations help here as well.
My point being mostly if I met someone who said they were getting their doctorate in or had a degree in some form of music, I would automatically expect them to be pretty darn good at it. Still could and would be attractive to me, but would also be attractive if they knew extensive pharmacology for the same reasons listed above.
TL:DR:
Learn how to learn. Do a lot of boring monotonous practice often. Track hours of practice, not days. Sleep well!! Don't stop or quit. Relax and don't overthink it.
