Voice Lessons

I have been taking them from a young lady with a great voice for a couple of months now, and she has helped me a lot with staying on pitch and theory, but I am wondering (I am a baritone with a pretty decent range, she tells me) if I might have done better with a male teacher instead?

When she sings with me, the tendency is to harmonize with her rather than singing the notes exact.

No, I haven’t mentioned this to her, and I won’t.

Just wondered what y’all thought?

Thanks

Q

My voice teacher is a woman. She said it would be better for me if I was taught by a woman, because I wouldn’t try to imitate her singing. That hasn’t been a problem for me.

Do you mean you tend to harmonize with her when she sings along? Maybe you shouldn’t have her sing along with you in that case.

Do you harmonize or sing the same note as her?

I’ve been taking professional voice lessons and am on my second season now. I got a really great teacher and she’s the opposite sex of me too. When we’re working on scales and such, we use the piano for me to sing along with so I’m singing to those notes as opposed to her timbre.
I also have a friend who is a choir teacher at a high school and posited the same question to him. He said that right now, it doesn’t really matter, however, somewhere (far) down the line, I may want to switch to a male vocal teacher. In the end, he said that it wasn’t really that important as long as she can accomodate the lower part of my range.

I try to sing the same note as she does, and she always corrects me and then has to start me out all over again with a note on the piano.

I think it’s got to do with my confidence. It doesn’t happen all the time, to be fair, but enough to where she calls it to my attention.

When I’m practing along to her cd, it’s not a problem, I can hit the right notes. It’s just when she joins in (noting again my confidence) that I tend to veer off course.

Tough to explain unless you’re there…

Q

That does sound like a confidence issue. That said, I don’t know why she insists on singing along with you, knowing that it gives you problems.

Howcome?

Referring to the “male teacher=better” aspect of the OP?

Guess I just don’t want to hurt her feelings. She has taught me a lot. Besides, it hasn’t been proved here that a male teacher is better.

Referring to the unintentional harmonizing: Mixed feelings, I think. Goes back to the “confidence” issue. I have only been doing voice for 2 months, but some days are bad days. Even though I warm up in the car to her cd, sometimes I am really “off-pitch” and know it the minute the note leaves my mouth. I think I have come to depend on that “reference note” from her to get me back “on track”.

Then she kinda sings along with me and that helps for a bit, until we start harmonizing.

Maybe I need a bit more “theory” learning?

I think I had better count my lucky stars that I at least don’t have to do a recital.

Yet. :eek: