by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: August 08, 2009

No. Singers are born with bodies and minds that make them capable of singing. Barring a mental or physical problem that makes singing impossible, anyone can learn to sing well enough.

I've been a singer and artist most of my life. One of the most irritating things that I hear involves using " lack of talent" as an excuse for not bothering to try. I ask the annoying whiner if she or he can read and write. The answer is invariably yes.

I tell them that they just need to learn how to read and write painting, music, and any other art. We have deaf musicians. We have dancers in wheelchairs! So just stop with the talent excuse, will you?

Children in other countries are able to perform up to standards in the arts by the time that they are 10 years old. They can visualize and render a three dimensional object with good accuracy.

Those children can hear and reproduce musical tones with accuracy. They know the basics of rhythm. They know a basic "C" scale on an instrument.

We should have been able to do this by age 10, also.

To develop as a singer, however, there are athletics that have to be worked on. There's the diaphragm and learning to control it. There are whole new worlds of ways to adjust and control breathing and the flow of air through the mouth. There are ways to memorize a quality sound by memorizing the feel of it. There is the fine art of learning to listen to everything and everyone around, and not to oneself.

An operatic singer is like a concert pianist. There must be a devotion and passion to a lifetime of daily work, study, and practice.

Country, Blues, Jazz, popular favorites, and other cultural and ethnic singing is about the culture, the stories, the ability to capture the audience while telling the stories well. The top singers have devoted their lives to the whole of their art, too.

Not everyone is going to become a star, of course. Not everyone is going to knock people's socks off when they sing. But there is no excuse for denying oneself a basic gift that everyone is given: singing.

Casual singing is a perfectly fine thing to do. With practice, good teaching, some discipline and some dedication to doing some hard work for a while, the vast majority of people could learn to sing well enough to share with friends, express feelings, tell a story, or participate in a choir.

But please do a favor for those of us who have done the work and made the effort: Don't insult us by writing it all off as merely being "talent".

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