"Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious."
~Wynton Marsalis
An expression my friend Joe Baque uses in regard to talent, "Anyone can sing, some just do it better than others." The right training will improve the majority of voices ... providing that the student practices. Frequent practice is essential, as is an open mind and an adventurous spirit.
I tell all of my students, "You are the captain of this ship," meaning that we will proceed at your pace. "Only you can know for certain whether you are comfortable enough with the current technique and ready to move forward." However, students need to do themselves a favor and refrain from over-estimating themselves. Some students are so eager to move forward that they temporarily short-change themselves and request to move to the next level without having a permanent lock on the current technique. If that happens, sometime down the line they find themselves temporarily floundering because they are forgetting to apply the previous, essential techniques.
Each technique needs to be learned so well as to become a part of the student's identity, i.e., second nature. If it is a part of who you are, it has become natural and you don't have to lend as much attention to it – anymore than you have to think to breathe. (How to breathe correctly for singing and/or public speaking is another subject entirely.) Using the analogy of building a pyramid, if you wish to correctly apply the capstone, you need to pay close, critical attention to the all-important cornerstone – because that is the basis upon which everything else is built.
The very best students are those who are diligent, enthusiastic and disciplined. If you take someone who is a "natural" – who doesn't practice – and match them against someone who has to "work for it" and practices diligently ... there will come a time when the practicing student who has to "work for it" will eventually surpass the non-practicing "natural." It's simple mathematics, otherwise known as "sweat equity," i.e., you get out of something what you put into it. To borrow an expression, "Talent is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration." In other words, you simply have to get down to brass tacks and do the work! You cannot improve by resting on your laurels and wishing that it were so.
From my own past experience in regard to acting and dance, memorization time aside, I find that music is much more of a solitary art than the other disciplines. Musicians and singers/vocalists spend much more time practicing alone than they do with others and thus they must be strongly self-disciplined if they wish to excel. I have been told (and find it to be true in my own professional life) that the greatest musicians are workaholics. However, not many people know about these workaholic tendencies because professionals in the music business do the majority of their work behind closed doors and in the privacy of their own homes. Keeping that in mind ... make the most of your voice lessons and practice on!
Hugs, Carolena