In a book I’ve recommended before, author and table tennis champion Matthew Syed tells this story.
Serving consistency
In his early years of training, Syed was fortunate enough to study with a Chinese table tennis champion who moved to his area. Despite Syed’s already fairly high level, the coach required him to learn and refine a particularly simple serve.
Syed could already do this serve, but he was required to learn it to such a level of consistency and precision, that it would ALWAYS come out the same way everytime. Such that when this serve was executed, the ping pong ball would land in exactly the same spot every time on each side of the table.
This was an IMMENSE amount of work. Syed was already quite precise across a plurality of different serves, but this required him to get incredibly precise, and to drill deeper into consistency than he ever had before.
But why?
The primary purpose of doing so was this:
– preparing a single serve that Syed could reliably deliver identically 99.9% of the time, meant they could reliably measure the results of even the tiniest change in his approach.
If he gripped the handle of the paddle even 3mm lower down, then they’ll see a change, and they’ll be able to measure the degree of that change. If he changes the angle of how he holds the paddle or even the ball, they can see what changes and by how much. This becomes a hugely valuable tool for further development and training.
But consider the reverse.
What if he had a serve that was (say) only 80% consistent? That would mean a 20% inherent variability in his execution. While still excellent, this means there’s no way to reliably tell if a change in output is a result of some intentional tweak, or if it was down to some randomness in his serve.
Even 80% consistency simply isn’t enough to improve skills and ability in a predictable manner.
This 100%/99.9% consistency enabled Syed to turbocharge his training. He had cultivated an intense fixation on breeding consistency into all his practice, AND because his ability to monitor every little thing he was doing had levelled up enormously.
Which brings us to how this can help you working on your voice…
Consistency requires simplicity
The biggest error I see with people looking to improve their voices is that they vastly underestimate how consistent they need to be in their practice and their approach. The exercises we use in sessions are trying to build a highly consistent neuromuscular behaviour in our bodies.
This means we need to do these exercises with ever increasing consistency, over a very manageable range, with minimal complexity. When we stray from these tenets, we build inconsistency into our voices and our ears, and increase frustration as this is what leads to our voice sounding and feeling inconsistent day-to-day.
This is what I suggest for those looking to improve the consistency in their practice time.
1) Spend dedicated time practicing (at least some)
Try wherever possible to spend time practicing without doing other things. Sure, if it’s a choice between practicing in the car driving to work/gigs or not at all, then go for car practice. However, when people practice while pottering around the house, or reading emails, or something else that requires brain power/distracts you, that is eroding the ability to:
a) deliver a consistent practice routine; and
b) monitor whether your practice is/was consistent.
If we are doing other things, we cannot possibly be doing the practice as consciously or intentionally as if it was the ONLY thing we were doing. In turn, it also means we cannot possibly be accurately monitoring what we are doing. This only encodes imprecise and inconsistent neuro-muscular behaviours, and also trains our ear to accept highly inconsistent results. This is not helpful for vocal development, and works against us.
2) Stay within a manageable range
If we exceed the range our voices can handle comfortably, we enter into the realm of inevitably inconsistency. If we are working at the very edges of our range, that means the voice is at/slightly beyond it’s limit of control. This is why singers who keep insisting on putting songs in particular keys, or that if they just keep hammering away at note X they’ll get it, seem to get stuck or even regress in their vocal capacity.
3) Keep the practice short and simple
Effective vocal practice doesn’t requires hours and hours in one go. We need to stick to a length and complexity of routine that is so within our ability that it feels almost pedestrian to do. That’s how Syed built his serve (they even picked an easy one to help iron out) and that’s how we build voices. 15-30 minutes is a very manageable chunk of time to stay focused for, but even 5-10 minute chunks (but repeated over the day) can be very effective.
All of these suggestions apply equally to song work. But if we cannot get it right on super-simple exercises designed to give you maximum success, then there’s no way you can be cultivating that consistency in songs.
Conclusion: Keep it simple, short and conservative
By keeping your practice short, you help increase focus on what you’re doing. By playing it conservative with what you’re working on, you ensure you get whatever you’re trying to accomplish correct. By keeping it simple, it makes it almost a foregoing conclusion you’re going to get it right, both in pitch and quality. And if we can sound amazing every time we open our mouths to sing, then I would count that as a success!