has anyone any advice on singing software???

Im looking to get some, but dont know which one to get, and how does it compare to having a teacher?



zoso

Hi Zoso and welcome to the forums. I am not quite sure what you mean by singing software. Nothing will replace a good teacher as I am sure many of the other singers here will tell you so lessons really are essential. There is much that you can do to help yourself in other ways though. You can use language courses to help with basic pronunciation, tapes to help with aural training, theory books, Schubertline to find new songs, recordings of song accompaniments and so on. I use the Music Minus One series a lot. There are lots of things to work on between lessons apart from simply songs and exercises.

Do you mean ear training software? If so then there's all kinds of things out there - quite a lot available for free too! Do a search for ear training software and you'll see what turns up.

If you mean software to teach you to sing - I'm not aware of anything effective on the market. There are some good teach yourself courses available with CD's and the like (not software, though) - but these will never be as good as learning with a good teacher because they are generic and a good teacher will focus on the problem areas of your voice and help you improve.

Imagine this - a CD course will assume you know nothing and start teaching you everything from the basics upwards - this means you will spend a lot of time doing exercises which are potentially useless to you. You have no feedback, either, to tell you if you are doing an exercise correctly or not, which can be harmful (although it is practically impossible to break your larynx).

A good teacher, on the other hand, will assume you know everything about singing - listen to you and make a list, mentally or otherwise, of the things you actually don't know, then they'll correct ONLY those things - this means your progress is much faster. You also have direct feedback to tell you if you're not doing something right.

If you can manage it at all get a teacher and then, by all means, use software programmes to supplement your learning and make it more fun.

If you can't manage that, then by all means use a teach yourself method - it's better than nothing, but be aware that the progress will be painfully slow compared to working with a good voice teacher - and your particular difficulties may not even be covered in the programme you choose. Of course, if you choose this option and start feeling pain when working (particularly scratching pain in the larynx) then stop immediately.

Anyhow, I've rambled enough now, I hope this was of some help - feel free to give us some more guidance so we can help you some more!

Allan