Singing Practice Strategies || Expert Voice Coach Advice

June 25, 2022July 5, 2025

The Most Insane Excuse: Finding time vs making time

Many years ago, I had a client who gave me the most insane excuse I’ve ever heard. Brace yourselves, because it’s a doozy.

They had started voice training with me whilst they were working a normal job. At some point they had decided to change career, but for a period of time chose not to work. So they were free as a bird from a normal 9-5 job. No job, not employed, no kids, some household responsibilities, but nothing contractually obligating them every hour of the day. About as free as one can get is my point.

A bit of context

Before we get into the story, a bit of background about how sessions work. The way sessions work is that I will start someone with a warmup exercise, and how this sits in their voice tells me where their voice is at on that day. This then helps direct me to the next appropriate vocal exercise, and so on. I generally have a strong imprint of where people are at vocally from one session to the next, but what I hear on that specific day is a big part of good training.

If someone’s voice has really moved forward since the last session (generally due to effective practice) then I can move ahead to more advanced tools and improve their voice quicker.

In contrast, if someone’s voice has not moved all that far (sometimes due to lack of practice, but can often be due to the general difficulty of physiological adaptation) then we often have to re-tread ground and refine the work.

The latter is totally fine, but that brings us neatly back to our story. Continue reading “The Most Insane Excuse: Finding time vs making time”

May 28, 2022August 3, 2025

The Most Repetitious Part of Singing

So, what’s the most repetitious part of singing practice?

It’s the repetitions.

Thanks for reading!

Horrendous jokes aside, there’s no getting away from it. To polish a song takes repetition. I’ve written this article about putting in the reps, and I’ve written several others that orbit around the same theme… how repetitious of me.

For many people, repetitions become tedious. It’s one of the reasons few people stick at the gym, or running. Sticking at anything that involves long durations of going over the same ground again and again with ever increasing precision and focus, is not something that comes naturally.

That’s the scope of today’s article. I just want to make two simple points then wrap it up. Continue reading “The Most Repetitious Part of Singing”

February 20, 2022July 5, 2025

Four Simple Steps to Not Sucking (or at least, getting past it)

I had a brief exchange with someone this week, where they told me they’d quit the gym. Now, I happen to like the gym, but that’s not why I’m telling this story. I’m sharing this story because it struck me as a perfect illustration for where so many people go wrong when it comes to sticking to any goal of self-improvement or skill acquisition.

The Illustration

When speaking with this person, they had joined for 6 months with the intention of doing several early morning sessions a week. By the end of that 6 month period, I know they were skipping more sessions than they were making. Then they quit. They said they had “given it their best shot“, but it “wasn’t for them“.

In trying to explain why they had quit, they felt it important to state “I’ve actually been doing more stuff outside, and I’ve just realised I’m more of an outdoors person, so that’s why I never got on with the gym“.

Benefit of the doubt
Look, let’s be reasonable: just because I like the gym, this doesn’t mean everyone will. I get that. It is also unquestionable that forcing oneself to do early morning sessions doesn’t always work for certain individuals. And at the end of the day, it’s also 100% their choice to go to the gym, or whatever activity is in question.

In this regard, it’s very easy to look at the situation as an outsider, not give it a second’s thought, accept their answer as perfectly reasonable and move on. But here’s what stuck in my mind about this conversation… Continue reading “Four Simple Steps to Not Sucking (or at least, getting past it)”

December 12, 2021July 5, 2025

Practise Makes Permanent

Let’s talk about the concept of practise.

I was having a conversation with someone outside of sessions recently about the concept of “practise“. They are not a musician/singer, nor do they have a particular hobby that they have spent years practising, so do bear that in mind as I relay the jist of the conversation.

During the exchange, they made the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“Practise Makes Perfect”

Now, as someone whose entire career focuses on training people in acquiring a finely controlled skill such as singing, I happen to have a few thoughts on this. Namely, that this statement – if left unqualified – is not true.

Let me explain why, and we’ll look at both aspects of this statement:

1. Practise

When we talk about practising, we usually mean the following that someone is repeatedly doing a particular set of actions in order to ingrain such behaviour and make it permanent.

Often, there is also an implicit assumption, that the actions being repeated are actually improving someone’s skills. But is this always the case? Continue reading “Practise Makes Permanent”

October 31, 2021July 5, 2025

How to Use Songs as Exercises – “Etudes”

This week I want to talk about how to use songs as exercises. Those of you who have read my prospectus will know that the later stage of building a voice is to sing songs, both in lessons and as long-term goals.

Here’s the challenge

Singing songs without any consideration to the technical demands of those songs will generally exacerbate existing vocal/technical issues. This is why technical assessments and exercises to address technical issues must be dealt with first.

However, once you’ve begun to address your technical issues, we have got to get you stuck into songs. Exercises are just the forerunner to singing songs, not a replacement for them.

We are not going to just put off singing songs until your voice is “ready“. We’ve got to get you and your voice stuck into the very material you want to sing. Through doing so we will integrate your on-going technical development into the songs themselves.

This is the whole point of voice training, for everyone, at all levels of development

Sing songs every day

It’s important that songs form a regular daily part of your vocal development regime. For example, even just 10 minutes of exercises to get your voice warm and co-ordinated, followed by 10 minutes (or as long as you like) of singing songs, can form a very potent protocol to develop your voice.

This is not just from a performance/rendition perspective, but as a form of etude… Continue reading “How to Use Songs as Exercises – “Etudes””

June 27, 2021July 5, 2025

Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice

There’s a quote attributed (incorrectly) to Albert Einstein:

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”

While Einstein appears not to have been the one to coin this phrase, and while this quote can often be misapplied, the underlying sentiment is an important one when it comes to getting the best out of your voice.

Make sure the song itself is not leading your voice astray

When we sing songs we are judging both our version of the song, but also our voice. Which means that if the song doesn’t best suit our voice, we will forever be disappointed in what we can do.

Perfect song choice is so case-by-case that it’s hard to give generalised advice, so I won’t try to. However, almost any song can be adjusted to work better in someone’s particular voice. Often the difference between sounding awful, decent, or even great, is just down to key choice. Even subtle key change can radically transform how the song feels to sing.

But a key that’s too high/too low (often by even just one semitone), will often leave us disheartened and frustrated by how “off” our voices feel and sound. This is especially true for those who sing in bands, where key choice is imposed upon them. And very often in bands, other musicians simply don’t appreciate how critically important key choice is can be. Continue reading “Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice”

December 13, 2020July 5, 2025

Building a vocal practice routine

In a recent article I mentioned how the pandemic has screwed up a lot of people’s routines and schedules, especially in relation to voice and music. For others it has introduced the space to build a vocal practice routine. Yet for many people in the modern world, carving out and sticking to a regular routine in anything doesn’t come naturally.

The writer James Clear talks about how building a new habit into your life can take anywhere from 18 days to 254 days to establish. It takes time, and building sustainable habit is the key to this.

Today, I wanted to talk about the easiest way I’ve found to build a practice routine for yourself, why it’s important, and the mindset involved. Continue reading “Building a vocal practice routine”

November 15, 2020July 5, 2025

Discipline vs Motivation: The Power of Sustainable Habit

All my clients are singers, and a large number are professional/professionally-minded musicians and artists. For various reasons, the kind of client that works with me tends to be at the higher end of the self-development mindset. This means that whatever they do, they tend to take it seriously and work hard at the things they do, to whatever extent they can.

Discipline vs Motivation

Something that often comes up with clients is the topic of discipline and/or motivation. This is true when there is often a lack of a specific musical outlet, or just when people have been doing the same thing for a long time. While I love my job and every day is different, I am at the same coal-face every day. As such, discipline is essential when it comes to working on my voice and continuing my own development.

To some extent, when external factors aren’t motivating us emotionally, this often highlights the difference between those who are highly disciplined irrespective of external circumstance, and those who are highly motivated primarily because of external circumstance. Continue reading “Discipline vs Motivation: The Power of Sustainable Habit”