Hello knowledgeable people!

I appear to have just arranged a trial singing lesson for next Wednesday. Where I got that idea from I will never know.

But ... what does one need to do for such an event?! She asked me to take along anything I like singing - what if I take something she utterly disapproves of? Is there any sort of hidden code I should know about?

I really, really want to do this, but it's quite petrifying too... It's all very well your friends saying 'Aw, you have a lovely voice etc' but this person Knows What She is Talking About. Eeek.

Er... help? Please? I know I'm probably worrying unnecessarily over this, but I really want it to work out.

Thank you! Fiona x

if you choose something you like (and in the style that you want to learn), and your potential teacher is frowny and disapproving, i suspect you wouldn't want to take lessons with that teacher anyway--isn't finding that out the purpose of a trial lesson? ;-)

it's the teacher's job to teach you what you want to learn; not to dictate the sort of music you should enjoy.

I agree totally with River and David - prepare something you enjoy singing and sing well (as this is a consult - for future lessons you'll want to take things you're having problems with, to get solutions, but not for the consult) - this will enable the teacher to see 1) what you enjoy singing 2) what your current level is 3) What YOU think your current level is etc.

A good teacher won't tell you that you're singing rubbish songs or that such and such a style isn't real music, but they may say that they aren't comfortable teaching a certain style - that's fine, you can just go somewhere else and they may even be able to recommend a colleague.

Don't let yourself be told that any style or sound is dangerous, or that any one style of music is superior to another - that's outdated claptrap - make it clear what your objectives are, what music you like and then see how you get on with the teacher - you'll know pretty soon if it's going to work - as will the teacher. Don't worry about nerves or the odd wrong note - you can be certain the teacher has heard and seen it all before and will be supportive.

Don't feel bad if you don't want to work with them after the lesson - just be honest. Equally, don't feel ashamed or rejected if the teacher doesn't want to work with you - it happens sometimes and doesn't reflect on your voice in any way at all - it just means that they don't feel you gel musically or objective wise.

Nine-times out of ten, you have a lovely time in such a lesson and meet a really nice person who will help you get where you want to go or tell you the name of someone who will.

Enjoy yourself!

This is true, but if I were going for a trial lesson I would prefer the teacher to be honest, not just about the kind of music they feel equiped to teach, but also about what they prefer to teach and their feelings concerning different styles and genres.

After all, I doubt a teacher would be at their most effective teaching music they dislike or of which they have a low opinion. It's one thing not rubbishing a choice made by an existing pupil, but as a potential 'customer' I certainly wouldn't want to be misled into thinking I'd found a teacher on the same wavelength when actually they regarded the repertoire I wanted to learn with scorn and derision. Better to be up-front from the outset.

I tend to agree with David here. I'm not a singing teacher, but as a piano teacher I would like to think I would encourage my students to play what they wanted..no matter if I liked it or not. I have a student currently working on Fur Elise...despite it being by Beethoven, it's not a favourite piece of mine. It's her choice though so I'm going with it.

Anyway, for my first singing lesson, my tutor started with some warm up exercises and some intervals to test the range of my voice. He had already asked me what I wanted to sing and I tried one of the songs in my first lesson. He didn't criticise my choice, but did say he felt I would struggle with it in the early stages (I sang Summertime, which he played at a key to suit my voice at the time).

He was a good teacher who allowed for nerves..and hopefully your new teacher will too.

Judging by the way you were so comfortable with "You Raise Me Up" last week, Floss, I would suggest taking something that you know and love well.

All the best to you.

I do exactly that, and in fact have a pupil working on Fur Elise (which I can't stand) at the moment.

However, the question was about an initial singing lesson. If I were looking for a teacher, I would prefer to know from the outset what sort of music they preferred and specialised in as, let's be honest, they're likely to be the same thing: a teacher is unlikely to have built up as much knowledge about repertoire they dislike as that which they are passionate about.

This is not the same thing as encouraging an existing student if they want to learn a piece you don't happen to think very highly of.


Started doing what? I'm merely saying that it's better, in my opinion, for the teacher to be honest about their area of preference and expertise. That can be done in a way which is not at all critical or discouraging. We're talking about a trial lesson and personally I wouldn't want to start paying for lessons from a teacher who had no interest in the music I wished to study - it's no reflection on the teacher or the student, just a matter of individual taste.

My piano/singing teacher are one and the same. I knew from the start of my piano lessons that he was primarily a Jazz performer, and that Jazz was his field of speciality. However, he also knew that my first love was classical piano (and now singing). His knowledge of the Classical repetoire was just as strong as that of the Jazz repetoire..and he never tried to sway me away from the classics.

I guess I struck lucky in that he never showed any boredom or disinterest in anything I learned whilst I was with him.

Don't forget that the job of a teacher can also be to introduce new repertoire to the student and to help mould the student's tastes.

Indeed..I'm sure if things had not gone the way they did last year, I would have asked to learn some Jazz from him so that I could then teach it to any of my students who wished to take that route.

Interesting. Thanks for all the advice! I don't suppose any of you would care to give your preference for any / none of the following? Bring Him Home (from Les Mis), Somewhere Over the Rainbow or You Raise Me Up... I'm pretty much as comfortable with each of them, and I guess they're all as over-sung as each other.

Well, I've heard you sing You raise Me Up so you have no problems there...out of the others, I prefer Bring Him Home. But yes, if time allows, do all three.

Yup, take all three pieces, but a decent singing teacher will probably hear all he/she needs to hear within one piece, and will probably know in which direction to take the lesson after hearing only a few bars.

yes, i agree--i didn't mean that the teacher should pretend to like something they don't; and if they're not comfortable with that style of music, they should be honest with the student; this is the purpose of the trial lesson, to see if the teacher and student can work together. if the teacher doesn't like the music, they probably won't be able to teach it well.

but the OP seemed worried that the teacher would interrupt mid-retical, and declare "my God, how can you stand to sing this rubbish--depart immediately from my studio!" (or perhaps something a little more subtle). there's a difference between a teacher not wanting to teach a particular style, and rubbishing students who sing in other styles; one is acceptable, and one isn't.

I agree with all of this.

One important point, I think, is the level of the potential student. If I went to a teacher specifically to study for a classical diploma, I would not expect him or her to spend a lot of time discussing and demonstrating jazz (at least not unless I had expressed some interest), whereas if I were a beginner, particularly a child, I would expect - indeed hope - that the teacher would introduce a range of different styles.

I wasn't suggesting that there is any good reason for a teacher to ridicule a potential pupil's choice of material, but I do think they have a duty to be clear if it is outside their area of expertise.

I agree with everything that has been said, with the exception of the idea that a teacher should mould a student's taste. I believe the singer sings what they want in the style they want and as teachers we either help them with it (if we can) or we leave well alone and send them elsewhere if we can't - I don't believe we try to change their tastes to suit what we like.

If someone comes to me to learn how to sing rock, it's not my place to try to push their taste to something such as baroque or jazz instead, and indeed if we turn the question round and imagine that someone wanting to learn baroque gets pushed to study RnB instead - most people would agree that this is not the way forward, so the reverse holds true as well. I have a large amount of pros in my studio and they would take a very dim view of me trying to push them down some road they don't want to go down.

I may have misunderstood the idea of moulding a student's taste, of course, as the idea is alien to me - but I do just prefer to allow them to sing whatever they want in a style they love.

Miss Ross - as for your audition pieces, I agree with David - take all three and perhaps give the teacher a choice. HG is right that the teacher, if they're good, will know very quickly what your strengths and weaknesses are irrespective of what you sing, but I think it's nice to offer a choice if you can.

Let us know how it goes !

Allan

this is true, but i thought Czerny made a good point--for a beginner, they might not actually know what they want to sing. if a student comes along and says "well... i think i want to sing pop music... maybe", it seems reasonable for the teacher to at least mention other styles to the student as well. it would be different if the student came along with a very clear idea of exactly what style they're interested in.

Exactly - introducing music to a student, particularly a beginner, and more particularly a young beginner (who has presumably generally experienced less music in their lifetime) is not quite the same as 'moulding a student's taste', although it will have that effect to a degree. Not many eight-year-olds have heard of Schubert, but if they're interested in classical music they will come across him sooner or later. That doesn't mean they have necessarily been forcibly steered in that direction; helping to develop taste is not the same as trying to change it.

There is a stage where is appropriate to widen a student's experience and a stage where it is appropriate to appreciate that they have the experience to have formed their preferences and to know what they wish to study (although even in this case there is of course no harm in introducing new repertoire).

Precisely!

Moulding students' tastes is emphatically not changing their tastes. You can't fundamentally change somebody's basic taste, but you can help to develop it, widen it, and steer it in new directions by introducing new repertoire and new experiences. This is a very basic and elementary skill of a music teacher, and I'm surprised to see anybody who professes to teach questioning it.

Right, so moulding someone's tastes isn't the same as forcing someone to study something they're not remotely interested in. I get it. I think everyone else gets it - no? So, who is claiming to be a teacher yet not understand that? I haven't seen a single person in this thread make that claim, and if it's been said in another, you might be better off saying it in that particular thread.

HG! Many adults will have little knowledge of much of the repertoire that would suit them and their voices. Even those who are advanced performers on other instruments may not know much of the singers' repertoire. It is the teacher's job to introduce suitable works to them and to expand their knowledge. Some voices are more suitable to certain styles than others. That's a fact of life. I work with the instrument that nature has given them. I wouldn't try to mould a voice into a style that would not suit it, however keen the owner of the voice was to do so! If you own a harpsichord you don't expect to play the Grieg Piano Concerto using it.

That's a fair point - as I said I might have misunderstood what you meant and it appears I did. I agree with you when it comes to beginners as it turns out.




Interesting point. I don't subscribe to the belief that there a singer has a 'natural voice' (as Estill said 'Singing is an unnatural act') so the idea that one singer will have a particular genre that is suited for them is alien to me - empirical study has shown that we can be trained to safely make any sounds we wish to with our voices, so I subscribe to the school of thought that the singer should choose what they wish to sing and the teacher shows them how.

I can't think of a voice that can't be shown how to sound well in any genre it chooses, but it's interesting to see how other people see the same topic as oneself.

I'm curious as to how you would handle a student whose voice doesn't, in your opinion, fit any of the styles you feel comfortable teaching. Would you pass them on? Or do you consider that some styles are suitable for all voices?

I had a lesson today. It wasn't really at all how I'd expected it to be.

I got there, and waited 15 minutes while she finished chatting with her last pupil.

When I went into her living room, she asked if I'd remembered to take any music, and I took out my copy of Bring Him Home to which she gave a weary look and said, "Oh, you're another one of those are you...?"

I was ushered to sit beside the piano while she started to mimic my accent (which I hate already but isn't so bad when I'm singing...) before going through some warm up exercises - fair enough.

Then she wanted me to sing 'As long as he needs me' from Oliver, which I know quite well. She was playing the accompaniment on the piano and was only counting what seemed to be 3 beats in each bar rather than 4, which made it seem as if I was holding on to notes for far too long and getting the phrasing all wrong.

She pointed to the D above middle C in a random piece of music and told me that she thought that it would probably be in my range one day.

And then she asked when I wanted to go back for another lesson. I asked if I could think about it. (And swiftly went into the pub next door... )

If I thought I could sing before, I'm not so sure any more. Lesson learned, I guess.

Sounds an interesting experience!

RUN AWAY RUN AWAY!

Poor you - we're not all like that, I promise!

Aww..really sorry to hear that Floss. You're worthy of better than that. Don't even think about going back there.

Sorry it didn't go well, honey. Just remember how amazing you are - I've heard you enough times to know. I'm sure you won't be the only person who has disliked her. I dread to think what her pupils must come out like!

It's funny - I can never sing properly for my singing teacher...

And... Please don't ever let anyone criticise your accent, and please don't ever lose it!!!

eek - I'm so sorry Floss! I agree with David and Rosfrog - it is NOT what it is supposed to be like.

I can't think of a worse introduction than
1) keeping you waiting 15 minutes while chatting to another student
(I'm assuming you were not 15 minutes early here!)

and 2) greeting you in the way you were greeted. Wrong wrong wrong.

Sorry - no. There has to be an alternative!2)

What a thoroughly ill-mannered, ignorant, unpleasant person.

I'm sorry you had to endure that, Floss.

The good news is that there are teachers who don't behave like that, and you will find one that suits you.

Don't you ever go near her again, Floss.

I really don't think she knows what she's doing. Was she really getting you to sing sat down?

Which D was she talking about? The one immediately next to middle C or the one above that? They should both be within your range already given that your either a soprano or a mezzo, and you could sing both notes at Leeds. If she'd been talking about a top D (as in the one above the 2nd ledger line) then that would be fair enough - I can only get it if I'm really in practice - but talking about one of the other Ds like that is weird...

Don't go to her again...

How rude. Gosh, how unlucky Fi! Don't worry, just keep looking, hopefully you'll find someone nice soon.

Of course you can sing, I've heard you, you're brilliant! I guess you must've just had really bad luck with that one.

ARGH! Only just read this...the words 'bargepole', and 'don't touch her with' are springing to mind...

Don't get discouraged.

I've had a couple of lessons with teachers where the first lesson was the last one!

For one of them I suspect the teacher in question was good, but not right for me. With the other I can't imagine how he managed to teach successfully (if, in fact he did). But nothing ventured, nothing gained, just because it didn't turn out well this time doesn't mean it won't next time.

That sounds like a really disappointing experience, especially after you'd prepared yourself and done some work on the piece in advance! It might be helpful to think of it as sort of singing-teacher-shopping, and that particular one was like the top that looks okay on the hanger but when you put it on it looks utterly terrible and there's no way you would consider buying it!
I am sure that there are a lot of amazing singing teachers out there and that you will find someone who suits you and that you want to work with.

I've been fortunate, and two out of the four singing teachers I've had have been utterly and completely brilliant. This excludes a fairly disastrous consultation lesson where the teacher concerned spent the ENTIRE time staring at my breasts... I'd been forewarned by other people who had lessons with him that he was a bit of a lech (letch? how DO you spell that?) and so I decided that I really couldn't be bothered spending half the lesson time thinking "um... my face is about a foot higher, please?" so didn't ring him to arrange a time for any more lessons!

He had been recommended by a number of people, as had my first singing teacher who, when I went back to her after finishing uni, told me that I shouldn't have been singing the pieces I was doing as they were "much to hard for you".

However, the two teachers I had at uni were really, really good, and they were also recommendations from people I sang with in choirs. The first one made more difference to my voice in four lessons than my previous teacher had done in two years! (sadly I finished at that uni and did a PGCE elsewhere after that year )

That said, my flute teacher (found on the musicteachers website and chosen purely on the basis that he lived within about 15 minutes of me and that he DIDN'T sound like he had anything to do with pop music (not that there's anything wrong with pop music, but it's not something I have a lot of experience of and so it seemed a bit silly to try to get my head around both a new instrument AND a new genre of music) is totally brilliant - and very patient with me.

So definitely don't get discouraged - I'm sure that you will find a really helpful teacher.

What an excellent way of putting it!

Only just spotted this Floss, and I think katyjay has summed up the character of this teacher very well.

I am very much looking forward to hearing you sing Floss (August maybe?), and I have no doubt you will impress the audience in York in November.

As others have already said, don't go back to this teacher, please.