How to Practice (part 2)
Let's dive even further into practicing and how to make the most of your time.
What To Actually Do In The Practice Room
Listening back to your lesson and redoing the work you did is a great use of your time in the practice room. It allows you to have an exact reminder of what exercises you did, what range you did them in, hear yourself describe sensations and experiences in the moment, and it allows you to hear your teacher's adjustments. These are all wonderful things to revisit and help you understand how to practice on your own.
As you move along in your journey as a singer, you should work to gain more agency in your practice. Learn which exercises work for certain parts of your voice and what ranges are appropriate for each exercise. Learn how to mix and match exercises in order to get what you need from your practice and/or warmup. I recommend that you listen back to a lesson with a piano so you can get a sense of the range that your exercises are in. As teachers, we are specific about what patterns and what vowels work in certain parts of your range, so getting a strong feel for what works where is helpful.
If you've amassed years worth of voice lesson recordings, you can always take your lessons and drop them into GarageBand or a similar program and splice out exercises that you like. This allows you to create warmup or practice tracks that might focus on specific parts of your voice or specific styles of singing. I recommend this often for my students so that they're able to pull things from different lessons that worked well for them. This doesn't replace listening back to your most recent lesson (you want to hear the feedback and adjustments so you stay in line with your goals), but it can be helpful to have a streamlined practice track.
If you use your phone to record your lesson (and let's be honest, who doesn't these days) you can name the recording after the focus of the lesson. If it was a lesson that focused on your upper legit range, you can label it as such. If you focused on nailing Defying Gravity in the lesson, you can name it appropriately. This can help you know what lessons to listen back to when you need something specific.
Interleaving vs. Blocked Practice
Interleaving practice is a process where you interleave different topics or skills, going back and forth between them as opposed to blocked practice where you work towards mastery on one task before moving to the next. There's been a lot of research about learning and how to use your time in order to learn the most effectively, and we now know that interleaving practice has better results than blocked practice.
So what does interleaving practice look like for a singer? Let's say that you're working on your belt. Your teacher has given you some new belt exercises and a new song to work on improving your belt skill. Let's say that you are hit and miss with the belt exercises. Some days they feel great and some days they don't. When you get to the new belt exercises in your warmup progression, set a time for 5 minutes (or 8, or 10, or whatever feels appropriate). Spend those minutes really focused on the exercises. No distractions, no moving to something else, just the new stuff. Once the minutes are up, move on to something else. Set a timer for, say, 3 minutes and maybe do a legit exercise that you love, or whatever feels easy and in your wheelhouse. Then set another timer. Jump back into the belt exercises with no distractions and focusing on what you want to get done.
In a way, vocal exercises are already structured in this manner. We spend only a few minutes on each exercise while we make detailed tweaks and adjustments. What often happens in the practice room is that we get focused on the weaker skills and spend way more time doing the exercises than we need to. Setting a timer allows you to make sure you don't end up spending 38 minutes working your belt when you're really only able to belt for 12 minutes before you start fatiguing. Shorter, more focused practice is almost always better.
Now that you've warmed up and worked the exercises your teacher wants you to focus on, it's time to look at the new belt song that they gave you. Let's imagine that there are some easy parts of the song and some more challenging parts. Set that timer for 5 minutes and pick an easy part. Work it meticulously for 5 minutes. Don't move into any other part, just the few measures that feel easy. Check your notes, rhythms, lyrics, dynamics, acting intentions, and anything else that can be tended to. Once the timer goes off, set it for another 5 minutes and pick a challenging section. Work it with the same focus. Really work on getting the sounds you worked on with your teacher. Try tricks and tools to help. Work it with no distractions. Once the timer goes off, you move on, whether you mastered the challenging section or not. You can probably get the idea with this. Move between easier and harder sections of the same song, or move between sections of two different songs as you practice. A short practice time helps you stay focused and decreases your mistakes. It's also very helpful for managing fatigue, especially when you're working on a new vocal skill. You can return to sections as often as you'd like, as long as you stay there a short time and move to other things in between.
Let's look at this same thing laid out another way.
New song sections:
A-super easy measures
B-moderately hard measures
C-these measures feel impossible
D-more easy measures
Older songs:
E-the easiest 16 bar audition cut that I sing all the time
F-another easy song that I've sung forever with amazing consistency
Potential 1 hour Practice Schedule Using Interleaving Practice:
20 minutes of warmup and technical exercises as dictated by my teacher and our lessons, not spending too much time on any one exercise.
4 minutes on E 5 minutes on B 4 minutes on A 6 minutes on C 3 minutes on E 5 minutes on C 4 minutes on B 2 minutes on F
7 minutes of a cool down to end
In this made up practice scenario, you've still spent 23 minutes working on the new song that you were given, but it's been smartly spaced out and interleaved with easier repertoire. This ensures that you stay focused during the short time that you have on a section, and helps keep you from getting too fatigued.
If you ever feel stuck or vocally fatigued in your practice, I encourage you to try interleaving practice in both exercises and repertoire. I encourage the singers I work with to use this method and most see great improvements. I also find that this method of breaking down practicing helps people get more accomplished in shorter practice sessions. If you set goals, you can hone in on what you need to get done.
Have more questions about practicing that weren't covered here or in the first part? Comment below or visit me on social media to ask!