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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…

Continue reading “How to practice consistently”

The topic of ‘falsetto’ comes up a lot in lessons. Questions like “what is it? when should I do it? SHOULD I do it? Where is it useful?”, etc.

Recently I’ve had some clients ask me whether I even like it when singers sing in falsetto, as I’ve often given the impression that I don’t like it when singers do this. As such, I thought it worth covering here to clarify a few things.

Firstly, let’s be precise about what falsetto is, what it isn’t, and then we’ll get into the details on falsetto usage.

What exactly is falsetto?

When singers sing in true falsetto, their vocal folds are no longer operating normally – or ‘modally’ – like they would when speaking. Continue reading “Why I don’t like falsetto”

If you’re reading this, you likely love singing. If you’re over 25-30, then you’ve likely noticed that your voice has changed as you’ve got older. If you’re under 25/30, then keep reading as this is relevant for you too.

What many singers start to find as they get older, is that their voice seems to suffer or even get worse as they get older. They find that things seem to hurt or feel unpleasant when they sing, and that these issues start to happen more often and more quickly whenever they start to sing.

Notes may feel way too heavy, way too light, raspy, lacking depth, or strained/strident when trying to sing material they used to take for granted.

Many singers may even feel like they can’t hit notes they used to be able to hit. Even then, if they can, then the tone is often weaker, wavering, or even a bit pitchy/out-of-tune.

What I’ve noticed…
This leads to many singers:
a) running themselves ragged trying to keep up with repertoire that (seems to be) slowly slipping away from them;
b) completely changing the material they’re singing; OR
c) giving up entirely.

It doesn’t have to be this way

There’s something really important I must stress: voices are actually meant to reach their peak in the late 40s/early 50s. And it is not meant to be a rapid downhill slope thereafter. Properly trained singers have incredibly voices in their 50s and beyond, but somehow the modern era makes us think it’s only younger voices that have it all going for them.

Voices reaching their peak in later life is especially true in classical and opera… but why? Continue reading “My voice seems to have got worse as I’ve got older”

This question gets asked a LOT. In fact, I can see it’s one of THE most searched for terms on the internet. And understandably so…

People have set their sights on improving their voice, so they want to know what’s involved, how long it’s going to take, how much time do they need to commit, etc.

Of course, I’m sure most reading this will grasp that there isn’t a single definite answer, as the nature of progress in any skill is dependent on many factors. But even accounting for all those “it depends” factors, there is a lot of predictability in the process of training the average voice.

So in this article, I’m going to get a bit more precise with the phrasing of this question, and then tell you how long certain things tend to take based on certain conditions. All this is based on my experience, and is based on the average rate of progress for the average voice.

A more precise question

When someone asks, “how long does it take to learn to sing?”, this is actually several questions all packaged up into one. Here’s how we break them apart:

1) Point A – where is this singer presently at with their voice?
2) Point B – where is this singer looking to get to with their voice?
3) How quickly can we cover the distance between point A and point B?

All three of these questions need to be framed correctly to arrive at a more complete answer about learning to sing well. Continue reading “How long does it take to learn to sing?”

A while ago I wrote an article on what I love about getting sick. But there is an ENORMOUS drawback about getting sick enough I can’t sing… beyond the obvious not being able to sing.

And that is not being able to sing and work on my voice every day seriously impacts on my mental wellbeing.

When I get to sing everyday, the mental, physical and emotional levelling that occurs is really quite remarkable. The difference in my mood when I can use my voice well vs when I can’t… I am GRUMPY when I cannot sing or work on my voice.

But why should this be?

The answer has actually been revealed in many studies done over the years. So I thought I’d cover a few of these here, some of which are quoted from this article.

Your brain gets into a higher state

I notice how elated and positive I feel before, during and especially after a good session of singing and working on my voice. But is it just in my head, or is something else going on? Continue reading “Singing, Mental Health and Physical Health”

This week I was having a discussion with a client about vocal weakness. Many people who come to me for voice coaching suffer from similar complaints of their voice feeling weak/not strong enough, though these are often in different arenas.

Some are professional performers who experience vocal decline in power/tone. Others require their voice for speaking and communicating within their job and notice it cannot deliver what they are looking for. Many are in choirs or sing for pleasure, and they’ve noticed their voice change for the worse over some period of time, and they want to remedy it.

Traits of a weak/weaker voice

The exact traits of a weak voice are fairly idenitifiable for most, e.g.
– lighter or thinner timbre,
– excessive breathiness,
– instability in the tone,
– quiet speaking or singing volume, etc.

However, we need to put this in greater context, in that all voices are unique and different. Even WITH training and maximum vocal development, some voices will be lighter and quieter than others and others will be louder and weightier than others (and some will be in-between). Some voices when trained perfectly will have more breathiness in their tone, others will have less/none. We perceive this as vocal weakness when these traits seem EXCESSIVE.

But what factors can cause this? Continue reading “What causes weak voices?”