Learning to sing

Hey guys
I've always been told that I can't sing a bit and that I'll never learn to to but I don't really believe them. An Irish dude in town will let me have a gig in his bar so I thought I'd learn some songs with a friend and play an acoustic set there but my father, being the nice guy that he is was trying to convince me that we should only learn instrumentals because we both can't sing. NO, THANKS! I figure that if I'm going to be silent for the rest of my life I'll never learn to sing so I'll give it my best, make a lot of mistakes and give it my best again so I don't make the same mistakes next time.
Enough with the essay.

My question are:
Has any of you here learnt to sing from scratch? If yes, how was it?
Do you think an online course will help with the right amount of determination since I'm not allowed to take any course that I have to pay for (or one about which my parents will know)?
Do you think that people can LEARN to sing or do you believe that some are just born with it and the others will never learn it?

you definetly can learn to sing. i have been singing for about a year, and although i am not good, i have gotten better. I have done nothing be read things for free on the net about technique.

I agree with chicago medic. I am also not great at singing but I'm getting better somehow. What you should probably do is to ask or look for a friend who can kind of explain the techniques you need when you are singing. I don't have made any experiences with online courses, but I don't 100% trust them. They often seem to promise a lot.

What I always do to practice my singing is to take the guitar and simply play scales for example and each note you play, you sing. That's a good way to get your voice a bit stronger and you can keep track as well. And I always sing when I'm driving in my car. 20 minutes to work, and 20 back in the evening are already 40 minutes spent practicing you would have otherwise not used at all. How do they say: Little by little one walks far.

of course some people are born with a great voice, and I definitely wasn't one of them ^^ but you just have to work your way through. I think you can fairly quickly achieve a little succes in singing.

grab a guitar

write a tune

sing.

-end-

RAWK!
Cs

@ Admiral & ChicagoMedic: Nice that you've been making progress. I gives you the thumbs up.

Yeah, maybe I'll ask a friend about that. They'll probably help.
Online courses, yeah I know they're not exactly like a real teacher but it shouldn't hurt read a few pages and do some exercises.

I've never really thought about guitar scales, man! Thanks for telling me about that. I'm definitely going to try that one out.
And yeah, I practice, too on my way to town and back home again. It's a long walk and there's some spots where I can "turn up my volume". A car would be better, though.

@Carl: I do that from time to time and when I can't come up with lyrics I'll just throw in some gibberish but I meant more like Matthew Bellamy singing. I listen to a lot of Muse and sometimes I get the singing just right but mostly it's far away from what it should be. I'd like to have a band in that style so that's what I'm going for.

Singing Tips

This should help. :)

DANG! I should have taken a look at the lessons' page first. :s Thanks.