Here's my starting point: I sang in choruses for a few years as a child and I also generally like to sing stuff. I also did a lot of theory and ear training, which involved sight-singing contrived exercises. I am also a pretty good pianist/harpsichordist and an ok composer/arranger. I have also spent some time tuning harpsichords professionally. So I started with the ability to read music fluently and a really good ear (relative pitch only, but better at hearing exact intervals than many people with perfect pitch).
That is all to say that I don't have to learn many "musicianship" skills during the process, I vaguely knew that vowels are important, and I have a pretty good idea of how to generically practice music (and as a former pianist, I have a very high tolerance for things most singing teachers call "boring"). I will also say that aside from piano, I have done a lot of things that need fine motor control in the past, and that seems to extend to your face muscles.
That means that my voice teacher and I can focus mostly on vocal technique and honing my ear to listen to my own voice (which is surprisingly hard). I also picked a teacher who was a locally-well-known soloist, and she was a very good fit because she herself focuses a lot on the biomechanics of singing.
I have been working for a year and have a decent tone (several times louder than when I started, too) and a decent voice quality with vibrato if I focus on it. Vocal placement, "support," and other similar things are not unconscious for me but I can control them. I can also sing several arias and art songs at a decent quality. I am still working a lot on agility, pronunciation and exact vowel sounds, picking the right ways to produce sounds, and working on controlling my tongue and my abs/diaphragm to produce a good tone that is expressive and can pierce an orchestra.
FWIW I have heard that if you switch voice teachers a lot, it's actually bad for your voice because teaching methods are so "fluffy." Also, I have never done this, but I am sort of convinced that developing a good pop voice is probably as hard as developing a classical voice. In contrast, learning to play keys for a band is supposedly much easier than classical piano of the same level.
That is all to say that I don't have to learn many "musicianship" skills during the process, I vaguely knew that vowels are important, and I have a pretty good idea of how to generically practice music (and as a former pianist, I have a very high tolerance for things most singing teachers call "boring"). I will also say that aside from piano, I have done a lot of things that need fine motor control in the past, and that seems to extend to your face muscles.
That means that my voice teacher and I can focus mostly on vocal technique and honing my ear to listen to my own voice (which is surprisingly hard). I also picked a teacher who was a locally-well-known soloist, and she was a very good fit because she herself focuses a lot on the biomechanics of singing.
I have been working for a year and have a decent tone (several times louder than when I started, too) and a decent voice quality with vibrato if I focus on it. Vocal placement, "support," and other similar things are not unconscious for me but I can control them. I can also sing several arias and art songs at a decent quality. I am still working a lot on agility, pronunciation and exact vowel sounds, picking the right ways to produce sounds, and working on controlling my tongue and my abs/diaphragm to produce a good tone that is expressive and can pierce an orchestra.
FWIW I have heard that if you switch voice teachers a lot, it's actually bad for your voice because teaching methods are so "fluffy." Also, I have never done this, but I am sort of convinced that developing a good pop voice is probably as hard as developing a classical voice. In contrast, learning to play keys for a band is supposedly much easier than classical piano of the same level.