Why singers don’t need to work on “tone”

Your vocal sound quality can give clues about what is good and bad in your technique. Most experienced singers and teachers can detect problems to some degree by listening carefully. Maybe it’s vague like “Something isn’t quite right.” or something very specific such as “The root of your tongue is stiff.”

If you sound strained or otherwise suboptimal, releasing interfering tensions and building strength and coordination will make you sound better. On the other hand, it is possible for a good mimic, or a generally confused singer who is eager to please, to create a different quality in the timbre without fixing the technical problems. This false fix might make a wild voice with technical limitations sound like a prettier voice with technical limitations. Then a situation has been created where the singer is not singing with their own authentic voice, the one that can set them free as an artist.

Some singers come to identify strongly with the pretty voice that they have constructed, and never having known true freedom, cannot relate to a functional approach.

Those who have broken through excessive artifice to an authentic, easier, simpler way of singing would never go back willingly. Going back to the constructed sound would feel like lying.