01.05.08
The Importance of Personal Practice
“Is it important for me to practice on my own, outside of lessons?” - Virginia W.
Virginia,
Singing is a physical discipline as much as yoga or swimming. As with yoga or swimming, practicing for an hour, once a week will yield some improvement, but ridiculously less than if practicing, say 30 minutes a day. Much of singing practice is about retraining muscles and breathing patterns. So, basically our practice time of 30 minutes has the mammoth job of fighting the other 23.5 hours a day that we “practice” our bad breathing habits.
Also, singing is a collection of techniques that must be practiced in order to sing the range, rhythm and notes that we need to. Imagine how capable a pianist would be if he knew the notes to a piece of music, but never practiced moving his fingers as needed to play it. The outcome would be a lot of wrong notes and sloppy rhythm - which makes for bad music.
So, Virginia, I suggest starting with four, 15 minute practice sessions a week. If you take voice lessons, ask your teacher to recommendation a practice CD. If you do not take voice lessons, and you are a beginning singer, I suggest checking out Lisa Houston’s practice CD, Lisa Houston Voice Studio Practice Session 1 (available on CD Baby).
Above all, be consistent and enjoy the results of your hard work!
Rebeqa
