It is a difficult question to answer, it can depend on many factors; experience, musical background and even if your goal is to sing in the shower or on the stages of London's West End. Some of you may have heard of the 10,000-hour rule, in which they say that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. How long does it take to learn to sing? Exactly ten months and three days. If you think it sounds weird, you're right.
Some people are born with very little vocal ability, while others are naturally gifted singers. But everyone, from the shyest shower singers to the professionals, can always learn more about singing. Going from a basic level to an intermediate level of singing takes six months to a year of constant practice. As with other sports, constant repetition develops muscle memory.
Basketball players run drills at every practice. They run laps to gain endurance and practice all kinds of coordination exercises. It will depend on how much work you do in it and if you have any previous experience, but you can definitely learn to sing in less than 6 months. Then move on, as you can continue to improve and develop your vocal technique.
Tuning and tuning problems can often take a few months to correct;. But I usually advise people that it could take 6 months or more to notice a clear difference. For most people, it usually takes three years to tear down all the foundations. That said, when you have all the fundamentals as a singer, you'll be a very good singer.
The voice is one of those instruments in which simply laying the foundations is such a task that most people never get to that point. If you are looking to go beyond the basics and learn to distort the voice, extend the voice from your chest as much as possible, etc. It may take another 2 years of diligent practice to lower that. If you're not sure what difference there is, this video describes how trained and natural singing voices differ.
Once you train your voice to sing with the correct technique, your muscles will begin to remember how you taught them to work to create a specific sound. Becoming a professional singer isn't just a matter of learning to sing, or even starting to sing well. Most people are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, with a little talent and a desire to learn. All you need to benefit from voice lessons is an open mind, diligence to practice and a love of singing.
Singing at a professional level and doing it as a profession takes years, unless you have a lot of luck, speed, rest, incredible contacts or win a high-profile competition. Maybe you just want to learn a simple song and sing it well enough that you don't feel mortified in front of your friends at karaoke. For genres of music that are potentially less vocally demanding, such as folk or pop, you can teach yourself using online tools and resources. If you work with a singing teacher without exams, and you don't need to work as a singer, it will take several years of weekly classes before your voice is considered “trained”.
Expect to spend many years working with a classical voice coach followed by at least three years in a conservatory doing intensive training, if you want to be a professional classical singer. Singing with a one-on-one teacher is certainly not the only way to learn to sing, but it can speed things up a lot for someone to adjust your technique in real time. Just as some people learned to walk faster than others or learned to speak before, people progress differently with the voice.
