Can a person be taught to sing?

You can be nurtured to a point, but if you don’t have the pipes, you can only go so far.
After the disastrous attempt at the baseball game, Roseanne Barr took singing lessons, and was quite serious about it. After 15 years, she can sing very well for an amateur, but you would never pay to listen to it.

Most people can be taught to sing within reason. There is the need for some natural ability, but voice lessons help people learn how to breath, exercise their vocal chords and feedback from a voice coach helps fine tune your voice.

I believe a person can be taught to sing better, but he or she must have innate singing talent to sing well.

Of course, there’s no shortage of professional singers with minimal singing ability whose “talent” is augmented electronically or in other ways, and whose fans aren’t discerning enough to know or care.

Up to a point. However, if a person is tone deaf, there’s not a whole lot that can be done other than a continuous application of Auto Tune.

Some people are born with perfect pitch while others are totally tone deaf. Most are somewhere in between and can be helped by singing lessons.

But if they cannot hear if something is on pitch it’s similar to being color blind to a specific spectrum of colors. If the ability to recognize them is absent, it can’t be created from nothing at all.

Yes people can be taught to sing but it takes some work. You have to have a good coach and be willing to do the lessons of strengthening the voice and breathing exercises. One has to be dedicated to the endeavor and not give up too quickly.

No, two words…Celine & fucking Dion.
Okay that was three, but still.

GQ.

Often wondered this very thing!

I agree withe answers of “Yes, to a point — but natural talent is needed to be exceptional”.

I also feel this is true of most creative endeavors. This has been my experience teaching graphic design as well. Most students can learn the nuts and bolts and how the pieces fit together, but the naturally talented students create exceptional things. It becomes the difference between “production artist” and “designer”.

@cookieman I agree people can learn to sing, paint, play the piano but they will not excel in any of the endeavors, unless they have a natural talent for it.

In my opinion (and I have a little knowledge about this having had 15 years of music lessons and seeing the progress of some of my teachers students) you can be taught the technique of singing, breath control, how to pitch a note etc, but if the sound isn’t particularly pleasant it probably won’t ever be.

I taught myself to sing, and went from “totally rubbish” to “singing on stage and people applauded on a regular basis”. It took 15 years to get to the point where I could sing well.

Then I started testosterone therapy and it all went to hell. Within 3 months my vocal range dropped from 2.5 octaves to less than one, which is pretty useless for anything. It’s recovered a little, and within the range I have left I can sing a nice tenor, but I don’t feel like it’s going to improve any more even with practise.

I miss singing, a lot, but I don’t regret the decision.