Hey there,
As a voice teacher I am constantly talking to my students about practicing. It doesn't matter what you're studying, weather it be voice or another instrument, in order to improve you must practice. Some people say to me "Why do I have to practice? I really enjoy spending money and not having anything to show for it." Just kidding. No one says that to me out loud, but it's often what is subconsciously communicated week after week when students come to their lesson unprepared and unpracticed.
WHAT makes practicing difficult?
Practicing can be a challenge because you have to 1. remember what you were taught or coached on during your lesson, 2. you have to get over yourself and JUST DO IT, 3. you have to mentally talk yourself IN to practicing by talking yourself OUT of your fears of not being perfect, 4. you have to have patience with yourself, 5. you may have household members who make fun of you during your practice sessions, and 6. you may be unsure of how to structure your practice session.
Here are 10 ways to FAIL your practicing practice:
1. Sing your piece all the way through
If you sing your song 3X all the way through and call it a day - most everything your teacher gave you to work on will get forgotten and not be implemented. It's like singing through all your bad habits over and over again.
2. Don’t warm up
Students who don't warm up, set themselves up for disaster. Disaster you say, why? Because not warming up properly is a sure way to misuse your voice and stay stuck. Staying stuck with your voice looks like not improving your range, always dealing with the same problem spots in your voice and not having a connection between the voice and the breath.
3. Forget to breathe and connect your breath
Not warming up properly leads to breathing problems. Our amazing voices are one instrument with multiple elements to them. One of the most important being our breath. If we don't connect our breath we will have a wispy sounding voice with no power behind it.
4. You practice in your car. #fail
I ask "how did your practicing go this week?" Student replies "Good! I was able to practice in my car 3 times!" Wah wah wah. When you practice in your car you're playing with your voice which is good but not as good as when you sit down to intentionally practice. It's similar to when a child eats an ice cream sandwich before dinner. Did you eat? Technically yes. Was there any nutritional value in the "food?" Technically yes. BUT what your body really needed was the essential vitamins and minerals that come from your vegetables at dinner. Your body didn't need more flour and sugar to play with. Car practicing is giving into your craving to practice but just sing the sugary fluff stuff but your body needs the broccoli.
5. You only practice once during the week
Practicing once during the week is great but it's a fail. It's a fail because your commitment to your voice equals your confidence over time. If you have a goal to become a level 10 singer in 90 days and you're at a level 3, it's going to take you a LOT longer than 90 days to reach that goal.
6. You breeze over hard spots in your piece
If you breeze over, meaning sing through the hard spots and not stop and work on them, you'll never nail those spots. Becoming an expert in any given song, means stopping to fix difficult spots. Even if you hate that spot because you're "not good at it." Oh the irony.
7. Only sing the parts you’re good at
If you sing the "easy" parts over and over you'll only ever be good at those spots. If feels good to pet our egos and sing what is easy but we need to dig in to those problem spots. Avoiding hard things is avoiding pain, which we're programmed to do because let's face it, nobody likes pain. But in order to improve, you must face that pain even as it hurts.
8. Don’t drill
If you want to fail your practicing, don't drill. What's a drill? A drill is singing one small part, like 4 notes, over and over and over and over. This is the annoying sounds of practicing. For drilling it's helpful to have your own space so you can get annoying and lean into it.
9. Don’t experiment with different vowel sounds
During your drills if you don't experiment with different vowel sounds you'll 1. not understand your voice, 2. probably sing the wrong vowels, and 3. sound awful.
10. Don’t listen to your inspiration singer
Not listening to your inspirational singer is a fail because you can learn so much from their technicalities, to their style, to their performance. Listen to them and LEARN.
