Practice Etiquette

The art of practicing can be like finding the right hair care routine. You’ve got to try different combinations in order to find out what your hair will like. The same is with the voice but it is important to start simple. Slow, steady, and consistent will win the race in vocal advancement. Just like our hair may be a little picky and demanding sometimes, it’s a lesson to learn how to listen to your body's needs. Trust me, your voice does not need vocally demanding and complicated vocal exercises to be the best it can be.

Length/How Long: The methodology I choose to follow for practicing is similar to the sprint method in scrum: short bursts of meaningful sessions for efficiency. I benefit most from 3-4 twenty-minute practice sessions a day, 5-6 times a week. Some weeks I’ll sing every day, while other weeks I will take a physical break and study mentally or just the piano part. I recommend beginners to start with two 20-minute sessions a day. On occasion, the voice may feel difficult to phonate with resonance. Be self-aware to pick up on cues alerting your brain to rest. Pushing through can lead to vocal fatigue, bad habits, mental frustration, and even vocal damage. Stick to a regime and practice in multiple small bursts throughout the day. This routine will build stamina and train mental and physical muscle memory. In between each break, take a 5-minute break to break down what you learned during your session. Then, go about your day as normal and think nothing of music. When you return to your next session, see what information you can retain from the previous session and how you can improve. Repeat.

Before you practice:

Warm up your body by stretching your legs, back, and neck to get your blood flowing. Drink water throughout the day to keep your vocal folds hydrated as they do not reap the benefits of hydration until roughly 4 hours after consumption.

What to practice:

During the early stages of learning to sing, it is vital to gain knowledge in vocal pedagogy and physiology to elevate your understanding of how and why things occur within the body. The primary focus of vocal exercises should be resonance, pitch accuracy, breath management, tongue position, vowel pronunciation, and rhythm. Even for advanced singers, it can be quite difficult to focus on all of these elements simultaneously. The easy answer: don’t. Begin with breathing exercises to thoroughly understand the body’s mechanisms in response to breath. One exercise I recommend is inhaling and then exhaling on a “sh” for 10 seconds. Once you feel comfortable getting to 10, gradually increase your exhale by 5 seconds. Brava if you can get to 60 seconds. This takes time and patience.

Scales in all major and minor keys should be the center of focus when first learning to sing. Scales can be broken into multiple sections for proficient ear training in order to learn how tones exist in relation to other tones within the scale. For example, one can focus on do-re-mi-re-do. Then incorporate do-re-mi-fa-mi-re-do and etc. Begin slowly, adding all notes of the scale. In time, increase your speed but immediately stop when the pitch is compromised. A metronome is highly recommended.

Once scales have been mastered, vocal exercises incorporating leaps, arpeggios with multiple chord progressions, staccati, long phrases, lèggerò, vocal range extension, and passagio work can slowly be incorporated. Do not attempt to incorporate all types of vocal exercises prematurely. For anyone interested in having a book of vocal exercises, I highly recommend Marchesi Vocal Method.

Primarily when practicing vocal exercises, you can forego rhythm in order to concentrate on pitch accuracy and resonance. Reminder: rhythm can and should be practiced outside of vocal exercises. Great resonance is present with proper tongue placement.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

If you are only able to take one thing away from this blog, let it be this: perfection should never be something to aspire to obtain. Perfection is a destructive mindset that can hinder your pathway to success every time it is not achieved. Find beauty in the ever-learning process of your creative craft. This means you will have to find comfort in vulnerable moments in order to gain knowledge on how you can improve.