Everyone wants to know how long it will take and the real answer is that it will take as long as it takes. Just as some people learned to walk faster than others or learned to speak before, people progress differently with the voice. For most people, it usually takes three years to tear down all the foundations. How long does it take to learn to sing? Exactly ten months and three days.
If you think it sounds weird, you're right. Some people are born with very little vocal ability, while others are naturally gifted singers. But everyone, from the shyest shower singers to the professionals, can always learn more about singing. Some experts claim that 10,000 hours of dedicated practice is one of the requirements to achieve mastery of anything.
Going from a basic level to an intermediate level of singing takes six months to a year of constant practice. As with other sports, constant repetition develops muscle memory. Basketball players run drills at every practice. They run laps to gain endurance and practice all kinds of coordination exercises.
It will depend on how much work you do in it and if you have any previous experience, but you can definitely learn to sing in less than 6 months. Then move on, as you can continue to improve and develop your vocal technique. Tuning and tuning problems can often take a few months to correct;. Becoming a professional singer isn't just a matter of learning to sing, or even starting to sing well.
If you're learning from a teacher, how quickly you progress also depends on how often you have classes. Expect to spend many years working with a classical voice coach followed by at least three years in a conservatory doing intensive training, if you want to be a professional classical singer. In addition to being a singing teacher, Tom is one of the 10 founding members of the Institute for Vocal Advancement and serves as the organization's chief financial officer and marketing director. It is right now that I wish I had a string that would hold all the voice lesson CDs that I have taken strung around the room.
I have some students who come shyly to me week after week and admit that they haven't been practicing between classes. Singing with a one-on-one teacher is certainly not the only way to learn to sing, but it can speed things up a lot for someone to adjust your technique in real time. However, if you intend to use techniques such as falsetto, vocal fry or whistles, in-person classes are much better at making sure you don't damage your voice. All you need to benefit from voice lessons is an open mind, diligence to practice and a love of singing.
Maybe you just want to learn a simple song and sing it well enough that you don't feel mortified in front of your friends at karaoke. Singing at a professional level and doing it as a profession takes years, unless you have a lot of luck, speed, rest, incredible contacts or win a high-profile competition. If you're not sure what difference there is, this video describes how trained and natural singing voices differ. Once you train your voice to sing with the correct technique, your muscles will begin to remember how you taught them to work to create a specific sound.