Voice Teachers vs. Vocal Coaches

In recent years I’ve started teaching voice privately, both at home and occasionally when I’m away on gigs. It has been an illuminating experience, learning to articulate and explain the various elements of vocal technique in ways that make sense to a beginning singer or to an up-and-coming young professional.

I have a wide variety of students, including young professional singers trying to establish careers as soloists, other singers studying to become professional choristers, and some other/older singers who sing in their local church choirs, and want to learn to sing more easily and consistently. They all bring different degrees of skill and different perceptions about what singing is, but one question I will frequently get is: what’s the difference between a voice TEACHER and a vocal COACH?

To my mind, these are not the same jobs. There are definite areas of overlap, but, in a nutshell, the job of a voice TEACHER is to help a singer discover their instrument and how to make it function better. The job of a vocal COACH is to help a singer apply the skills they have learned from their teacher to the goal of performing a particular piece of music.

A teacher will assist a student in exploring their vocal range, the different types of sounds they can make and how their instrument functions, and devise exercises to help a particular singer’s instrument improve in size, resonance and flexibility. A coach will help a singer learn how their vocal line fits into the harmonies and rhythms of the music they’re preparing, how to sing the language more clearly, and can assist them in making informed musical choices between different ways of performing a particular piece.

Obviously there is some overlap here. A teacher can recommend and assign new rep for their student to explore … a coach may do the same. A teacher may point out incorrect vowels, or unhelpful musical choices that a singer has fallen into … a coach may do the same. But the teacher’s primary area of focus and expertise should be vocal FUNCTION, while the coach’s focus should be musical INTERPRETATION and performance style.

In other words, there’s no reason for you to pay a ton of money to your voice teacher just so they can tell you about how THEY used to perform a particular piece. Conversely, a good and honest coach should be willing to tell you, “Look, your voice really needs to be able to do A, B and C in order to sing this aria. It can’t do that yet. Go to your teacher and figure that out, then come back and we’ll coach this music.”