Practicing is an area of musical study which every student and musician is faced with every day (or at least several times a week!) We all must find strategies to develop skill as well as learn repertoire and the will or indeed discipline to do it, even when it seems a chore.

In the early days of any instrument learning, practicing generally is not a particularly musical activity. It’s about developing the mechanics and muscle memory in order to deliver the music. Later on it concerns enabling us to deliver ever-increasing details in the music. It’s about working on the PROCESS so that the product can happen more easily.

As a teacher, I am clear that my job is to enable the student both within the lesson and afterwards. Why should a student know how to practice effectively? It’s a skill, like anything else, to find the most efficient method which facilitates development – and not just in skill level. A lesson is often a good way to model a good practice regime and to sign-post the reasons for particular exercises, the ways in which you want them done and goals to aim for. These may be long-term goals or simply until the next lesson. There may be several focuses to one exercise to tackle in isolation or in tandem. Each time you see your teacher, you may find that the goals change, as you develop.

For me, there are two distinct strands to practicing, the technical work and then the musical details and music you are learning. Warming-up falls into the former category.

My own personal warm-up and technical regime involves working on scales (often in 5ths) where I would be looking for seamless legato, impeccable intonation, quality tone and resonance and precision of all the above throughout the range. The 5-note pattern may later extend to an octave. During any pattern, I will be listening (hard for us singers because we are the sound-source) and monitoring the sensations I am feeling. Dependent on that bio-feedback, I might modify the exercise. For example, if my voice is feeling sluggish as I speed up, I might alter the rhythm of the pattern to do a dotted, or inverse dotted rhythm. I may also change vowels to check the quality of the voice is constant whichever vowel shape is sung. I will pay especial attention to the quality of tone moving from one register to another and make sure that the resonance still feels forward.

Once I am happy with what I hear in the mid-register and moving upward (but not the extreme top) I will turn my attention to the bottom of my voice. I work on this area, first in single notes, thinking particularly about a freely dropped larynx, keeping core in the sound without pressing it and allowing it to vibrate as sonorously as it naturally can. I’ll then move to the movement from the bottom half of the voice into the middle register. Because my voice knows how to navigate this area itself after years of technical thought, I try not to interfere too much with this mechanism, as it has to work smoothly without me having to think in music. I may then move on to exercises based on leaps in arpeggios or octaves.

Dependent on what music I am planning to sing and it’s technical demands I might work further on technical detail or specific corners which are in that music

For anyone, I believe, there is little point in trying to sing music without making sure the voice has woken up and is functioning properly. That may sound obvious, but when practice time is short, we can be pulled into the idea that we don’t have time for that process. In my humble opinion, we do not have time to bypass that process as it can be the difference between having a productive time on our music, or a disappointing screech-through! However you approach that warm-up, it must be a process in which you fully engage your brain’s critical faculties. You cannot simply go through the motions and not make any adjustments to what you do. It has to be an organic and enquiring and you need to be prepared to try to troubleshoot yourself, by checking you are aware of and actively trying to process all the issues pointed out to you in your lesson.

Of course a beginner or child is still learning sensations and listening skills, so in their lessons, they should be given smaller specifics to look out for or practice in their warm-ups. They may not be so good at the trouble-shooting, but this is also part of developing skills as a musician and being mentally open and active is essential. A good teacher will help students with this in lessons by asking them to comment on their own performance and asking them to think more analytically about how they approached something that went right or wrong. It takes time, so keep listening and monitoring the sensations.

It’s always a good idea to take notes in lessons, and record the sessions; it’s listening back to these sessions that can be incredibly informative, as you hear everything your teacher was saying (not just the bit you took notice of whilst trying to do what they asked for). You also hear the responses which got more enthusiasm from your teacher and will probably be able to remember back to the session and perhaps the sensation you felt during that exchange. Recording your own practice is also helpful, as you can sometimes hear more clearly what is going wrong in the moment you produced the sound.

Good practicing may lead to questions for your teacher and you should make sure you note these down to ask in your next lesson. If a diary of practice is helpful to record your own thoughts, do it; there is nothing more frustrating that feeling like you achieved a sound one day and then can’t recreate it the next. Writing things down can help.

Warming-up and technical exercises can take as little as 5-10 minutes, 20 minutes or you and your teacher may feel that technique requires even longer. It is often dependent on what your voice needs at that moment.

The next step will talk about the ways in which you need to prepare and practice your music.