Singing Tips: Productive Practice

Students ask me all the time: how often should I be practicing? What should I be practicing? Sometimes the “what” isn’t as important as the “how” - are you coasting through your practice, just waiting for the time to go by? Or are you giving your undivided attention and focus to your vocal practice? Do you have a goal for each practice session, or are you trying to just hit a myriad of varying targets? I know it’s a shocking revelation, and I regret to inform you, but practice ACTUALLY IS A REQUIREMENT. Consistent and continual practice is an important part of any “practice” - and vocals are no exception. It takes a good amount of conditioning to build a strong and consistent voice that you can feel you can rely on and lean on - anyone telling you differently is selling ya snake oil, darlings.

That being said, I think QUALITY practice is even more important than QUANTITY of practice - meaning, having a clear sense of what habits you’re trying to replace with better ones, which part(s) of your vocal mechanism you’re trying to get to “sit out on the bench” (and which you’re trying to employ instead), and then focusing on building the muscle memory of singing the RIGHT way (for you) is far more beneficial than just mindlessly going through scale reps and potentially just reinforcing or further ingraining unhealthy and unsuccessful habits or methods. Above, I have some ideas about this, as well as how best to divvy up your practices so you actually do it each week. I know there’s a romanticism about the idea of just having things innately spill out of us, and that practicing doesn’t seem “cool” but - let’s be real. What’s cool is being good at what you do. Straight up.

So buckle up, babies, and get your damn practice on!