Category: Singing Practice Strategies

Master Your Voice with Structured Singing Practice Strategies

Your growth as a singer depends on HOW you practice, not just how much. This section shares expert-backed strategies and techniques to help you get the most out of every rehearsal session. Covering topics like warm-up routines, effective repetition, goal setting, and vocal maintenance, these articles guide you to build a practice system that drives consistent improvement and vocal health.

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Guide to Singing whilst Self-isolated

Well, what a week this has turned out to be, not just for those in the UK but all over the world. It’s been great to work with everyone online, especially for those who are brand new to online lessons.

As many of us are doing our bit by staying at home, I thought as someone who spends most of his day teaching and making music from his home studio, I’d share some great resources, suggestions, and advice on how to make the most of singing at home. Continue reading “Guide to Singing whilst Self-isolated”

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The Danger of Doing Too Much: Intentionality in Singing

There were a few lessons this week that reminded me of the importance of intentionality in vocal arrangement. It’s very easy, as one gains technical facility, to want to do various things with our voice just because we can. And why not! Doing exciting things with our voice is fun. The problem is, with increasing ability, we tend to overdo things – worse still, it can often be less listenable to our audience as a result. Why should this be?

“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should”

And never more is this true, than in jazz.

Jazz is reknowned for (allegedly) being all about ‘breaking the rules‘, playing whatever you like, outside-the-box sounds, etc. The thing is, there are rules and guidelines about how best to do this without confusing or losing the listener, but taking them along for the ride. Jazz musicians are the masters of following these rules. Let me explain. Continue reading “The Danger of Doing Too Much: Intentionality in Singing”

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Vocal Warmup Routine: My Morning Routine

I was talking with a client this week about how we get our voices going each day, and I thought it might be worth sharing my morning routine for getting my voice warm. If you struggle to get your voice going in the morning, then this is for you.

Maybe you’re not singing everyday, but you find that most mornings you’d like to be able to speak on the phone without constant throat clearing, or avoid feeling like you’ve been a chainsmoker for the whole night, or maybe you just regularly feel a bit heavy in the throat, cultivating this kind of routine for yourself can be a lifesaver.

If you want to read about the exercises I typically use, I’ve written about that previously here. This article is about the overall routine I have each morning to get my voice going, from waking up, to the first client of the day.

The demands on my voice

I need my voice to be pretty close to peak functional state by 10am. Given how difficult most people find their voice in the morning, I’ve had to develop a fairly comprehensive routine to get my voice to that state quickly, but without hammering a voice that’s just woken up. Continue reading “Vocal Warmup Routine: My Morning Routine”

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Ability, Capacity, and Efficiency

Very quick thought today, with the intent of helping you to think a bit more critically and with neutrality about your singing.

Believing the wrong thing

Many people convince themselves that they can or cannot do something based on incorrect or incomplete information.

For example, just because you can squeeze out (say) a particular note in a song with a good run up and a following wind behind you does NOT necessarily equate to having the ability to hit that note.

Similarly, if you find you can do something (say) during a lesson in exercises without issue but then coming to a song it doesn’t carry over, this doesn’t mean you lack the ability to do that specific thing – if you can do it once, you can do it twice, thrice, and repeatedly… what you lack is the capacity to repeat it in a more demanding context.

What I’m trying to point out is that there is a difference between ability, and capacity. Continue reading “Ability, Capacity, and Efficiency”

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The Two-Factor Model in Strength Training, and the Voice

I was doing some reading about strength training the other day, and came across this excellent article about the Two-Factor Model in the world of strength training. As I was reading it, it struck me how similar this model was to the philosophy we have in our vocal coaching system, and also how we effectively build a voice. It’s relatively straightforward in principle, but the outworkings are profound. Let’s have a look at the two-factor model. Continue reading “The Two-Factor Model in Strength Training, and the Voice”

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Style Exploration: Expansion and Contraction

I was having a chat with a local artist recently about developing vocal style and development of artistry. One of the topics that came up was about learning new things and expanding one’s palette of available musical ideas, genres, musical phrasing etc. The whole point of doing so is to expand and grow one’s musical vocabulary and knowledge, to understand more of the nuances to the musical landscape than we did previously. Continue reading “Style Exploration: Expansion and Contraction”

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Putting in the reps

This is a simple tip this week, and that is the power of putting in the reps.

What do I mean by this?

So often people look for a silver bullet to either fix their vocal issues, or take their performances to another level, polish their songs, or whatever it might be. Now whilst there ARE certain things that can be done to radically improve any one of those things, the real development comes from putting in heavy repetition of those changes. Continue reading “Putting in the reps”

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5 Reasons: Why singing is like clothing…

I’ve got an analogy I use a lot in lessons, and I want to share it with you.

Building your singing voice and establishing your style takes time. It involves capitalising on the things you like about your voice, fixing things you don’t like whilst accepting the things that aren’t fixable. In turn we have to spend time finding songs that work for us, and that show off the best of what we’ve got.

This whole process is very very similar to trying to find a clothing approach and fashion style that suits you. Not everyone suits every type of clothing, sometimes we can’t even fit in certain types of clothing, and there’s many more comparisons I could make.

Let me give you five comparisons that illustrate my point. Hopefully by the end, you’ll understand why I think this analogy is helpful for determining what you should/shouldn’t be trying to do when singing songs. Continue reading “5 Reasons: Why singing is like clothing…”

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