What to Expect in Your First Vocal Coaching Session
Starting singing lessons can feel daunting.
For a lot of people, walking into that first session is the hardest part. They worry they’ll be judged, expected to sing perfectly, or immediately exposed as “not good enough.” If that’s how you’re feeling, I want to reassure you that your first lesson probably won’t look anything like you imagine.
The first thing we do isn’t jump straight into scales or technical exercises. I don’t expect you to understand vocal terminology, know how your voice works, or already have a great technique. That’s my job. Instead, we start with a conversation. I want to know why you’ve decided to start singing, what you hope to achieve, what’s been holding you back, and where you’d like your voice to take you. If you’re an experienced singer, you might sing me a song early on. If you’re completely new, we’ll begin with some very simple, relaxed exercises that help me understand where your voice is today.
One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that singing lessons are formal or intimidating. They’re often surprised by how relaxed they are. If you’ve come to me for coaching, I’m not expecting you to be brilliant already. In fact, the opposite is true. You’re here because you want to improve, and that’s exactly what lessons are for. I’ve taught singers at every level imaginable, so whatever you’re worried about, I can almost guarantee I’ve worked with someone who felt the same way before. My role isn’t to judge you. It’s to guide you.
One student always comes to mind when I think about first lessons. Someone else had encouraged him to take singing lessons, and he arrived believing he had a fairly proficient voice. During that first session, it became clear that his pitch wasn’t as reliable as he thought. It was a difficult realisation, but an important one. We spoke about the different stages of learning and how, at the beginning of any skill, we often don’t realise how much we don’t yet know. That awareness isn’t failure—it’s the beginning of real progress. Six weeks later, his singing had improved dramatically because he committed to practising what we’d worked on. Recently, after months of lessons, he sang in a way that genuinely moved me. I realised I wasn’t having to guide him through every phrase anymore. He had become confident, capable and independent. Watching someone make that journey is one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
One thing that surprises many people is how much I explain. Singing isn’t magic, and your voice isn’t a mystery. I like to show students how the vocal folds work, explain the difference between chest voice and head voice, and introduce ideas like M1 and M2 in a way that actually makes sense. We might use vocal fry to help connect different parts of the voice or explore individual components separately before putting them back together. Singing is made up of lots of small skills, and when you isolate them and practise them one at a time, the whole instrument becomes much easier to understand.
By the end of your first lesson, I don’t expect you to be a completely different singer. There isn’t a magic wand that transforms someone’s voice in an hour, and I’d never pretend otherwise. What I do want is for you to leave with a clear plan. You should understand what you’re working on, why you’re working on it, and what your next steps are. More importantly, I want you to feel excited. The first lesson is often where people make some of their quickest improvements because we’re uncovering habits they’ve never noticed before. It’s also where many people realise they’re capable of much more than they believed.
Occasionally someone arrives convinced they’re tone deaf or that they simply can’t sing. I do everything I can to show them otherwise. Rather than choosing exercises that feel childish or disconnected from what they love, I’d much rather work with a song they actually enjoy—whether that’s ABBA, Disney or David Guetta. If they’ve recorded the lesson, I’ll often encourage them to listen back afterwards. In the moment, it’s easy to focus on every mistake, but listening back usually reveals something different. They hear moments where the voice sounded good, moments they didn’t expect, and suddenly they realise there really is a path forwards.
The biggest thing I’d ask of anyone before their first lesson is this: don’t overthink it. You don’t need to prepare a performance. You don’t need to spend hours worrying about what we’re going to do. Thinking about the lesson is my responsibility, not yours. Your job is simply to turn up, be present, and be willing to learn. That’s enough.
If there’s one thing I’d love you to remember after reading this, it’s that everyone can learn to sing. Singing is a skill. Like riding a bike or learning to swim, it can feel awkward at first because you’re trying to coordinate lots of different things at once. But those things can all be broken down, understood, practised individually and gradually brought together. That’s what vocal coaching is really about. It’s not about discovering whether you’re talented enough. It’s about learning the skills that allow your voice to become what it’s capable of being.