Tips for Daily Practice

How to practice daily: 

1.  WARM-UPS:  spend 10 minutes doing warmups that are specific to your goals.                

This could include lip trills, arpeggios, speaking on pitch, slides and sustained pitches, etc. This may also include pop exercises, solfege exercises, etc. 

2.   Technique Building Exercises: 10-20 minutes.  

    These are focused exercises that specifically help you learn control or releasing tension, sustaining tone, etc. This may include exercises with metronome, with    watching mouth shape or body posture in the mirror, etc.  

    Examples include singing one continuous pitch with volume 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1, or allowing energized vibrato on a single tone, etc. For commercial music, this may also include working on riffs and pentatonic patterns. 

3.   Repertoire Study: 30-40 minutes or more if preparing for an immediate performance or recording.  

    When studying your music, try and begin with trouble spots and transition areas. Pay close attention to the bridge of a song. Listen to chord patterns and feel how the groove of the song flows. For tricky riffs or for classical melismas and odd intervals, try and isolate the phrase. Go slowly and stick with one syllable at first, then you can speed up gradually. 

4.  Cool Down: 5-10 minutes depending upon how hard you were working your voice 

    Just as an athlete needs to stretch and cool down after an intensive workout, a singer should cool down with calming, soothing vocal exercises. Lip trills and ooh’s are ideal but stick to a small range that is most comfortable to you. 

**** How to practice when you are feeling under the weather (or have overused your voice prior to practice time:) 

   - Take this opportunity to look over sheet music and if there are examples available follow along while listening.  

    -Mark phrases and breathing spots on sheet music or lyric sheets. 

    -Work on arrangement ideas for commercial music. 

    -Try and work on songwriting ideas. 

    -Spend time researching the composer/show, doing character study, etc. 

  

     

    

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