3 mindset characteristics of fast learner singing students

Do you ever wonder why some people learn so quickly and for others it takes ages? There are some common characteristics of fast learner singing students, and today I will reveal them for you.

Learning to sing doesn’t happen overnight. If you are a singing student you probably know that it is a process and it requires time and discipline to develop.

However, there are some things you can do to improve faster, and none of them includes having a “gift” or a special talent.

In my experience as a singing teacher and a singer myself, I have found that what really helps you improve is your mindset. 

Your mind is what ultimately always drives your actions. It is what actually makes you get up and practice your singing and ultimately become a great singer. Or it is what makes you sit down and not even bother trying.

In over 10 years of teaching people how to sing, I have found that there are three characteristics that all my fast learner students share. 

Of course, remember that everyone goes at their own pace, but if you want a shortcut keep reading.

Characteristics of fast learner singing students

1- Don’t skip steps

Very often it happens that I receive a complete beginner student and they tell me that they want to train for an exam but they want to skip grades and start from the intermediate levels. Or that they want to audition for a featured role in a musical. Or that they want to sing a super hard 3-octave song.

While being ambitious is not a bad thing and it does help you progress, it is important to start from the beginning.

Singing is not about reaching high notes and awesome belting in your first few lessons. 

The first stage in the process if you want long-term results and a truly powerful voice, is about building your instrument. Learning how to produce sound in a way that builds strength and true expression.

Most people want to skip this step and that is a terrible idea.

If you don’t have a strong foundation, your progress will not only be quite slow, but it will also be built over a weak foundation and that will damage your voice sooner or later.

You don’t build a house on a weak foundation! 

Starting from the beginning does not cost you time. On the contrary, it helps you develop your voice safely and it provides a strong foundation to keep on progressing. 

2- Being humble and down to earth

In my experience as a teacher, the students that progress faster are always humble. They start from where they are and go from there. They accept feedback and trust the guidance of the teacher. And they are all in for the process.

Whenever I have a student that thinks they know it all, I can’t see any progress through the lesson because they refuse to think they have to work on something.

When you are learning to sing you must be humble to accept feedback. Building up your instrument requires you to change singing habits, and if you don’t want to accept any feedback on those habits then you won’t be able to change them.

Being humble allows you to focus on what you have to do to improve rather than on the drama. We all want to progress, but this is not possible if you don’t want to see yourself with humbleness.

Being humble and grounded to me means being in the present moment. And it also means to separate the facts from the drama. Look at why your voice is sounding like it does now and work with the teacher to understand what is the next step. 

In my years teaching all the students that started by telling me how much they wanted to be famous and how talented they naturally were, are the ones that gave up after a couple of months at most when they found out the work required. 

3- Consistency in the practice

When you are learning to sing, your weekly lesson is your guide. But if you don’t practice during the week at least a little bit, progress will happen really slowly.

Again, singing is about building new habits in your instrument, and your instrument is you. And you carry yourself all day. If you only think about your instrument 45 mins a week during the lesson, creating new habits will take a lot longer than if you practice during the week as well.

During the weekly lesson, you get the theory information you need and probably how to apply it in your body. You get the intellectual information you need. But for those concepts to be integrated into your body and become a habit, you need to practice at home.

So those are the characteristics of fast learner singing students in my experience. And you can learn them!  Creating new healthy habits in your mind will help your learning speed and quality by a lot.

And if you have no idea how to get started, I just released a mini-course that contains warm-ups for the complete beginner as well as indications to practice those warm-ups properly to build up your instrument from scratch.