How do I know which vocal exercises are right for me?

Last week I received this question from a viewer from our ‘How To Learn to Sing At Home’ video (which you can find a few episodes back).

This is a great question, because knowing which vocal exercise is right for you can make or break your progress with singing.

Approach it wrong and not only does your progress slow down, sometimes it can actually get worse! More on these later.

So really for today, I want to share a couple of pointers when it comes to deciding if a vocal exercise right for you.

P.s. Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

So how do we know if a vocal exercise is right for us? And also should vocal exercise bring immediate change?

1. Know your outcome

Why? The analogy here is simple.

Imagine travelling to a destination. Say you wanted to travel to the other side of the city.

There could be many ways. You could travel there by car, ride a bicycle, you could even catch a ferry there.

Now of course there are certain ways that are better, quicker and more efficient. But ultimately they all get you to this destination.

What matters more here is knowing where you are trying to get.

This is the same case as learning how to sing.

The trap I often see, is that students will get stuck on the medium of which vocal exercises. But the answer should always be what’s my destination.

What am I trying to develop/build with my voice?

What challenge am I trying to resolve with my voice?

For example, if you’re trying to improve your pitch. The exercises I give you might be very much different to the exercises if we were working on range.

So what are you suggesting Ivan?

The first step here if you’re trying to decide if a vocal exercise is right for you.

Is becoming clear on what outcome you’re working towards.

Can you see how this exercises could get you there?

If you’re just mindlessly doing exercises in hopes that your voice will get better.

You need to get a bit more specific on your outcome.

Should Vocal Exercises Bring Immediate Change?

Say you know what your outcome is. And you’ve found a vocal exercise that can help you work towards that.

Should I only keep a vocal exercise if it brings immediate change?

Well firstly, if you’re seeing results. Keep doing the exercise!

If you’re not, here are a couple of things to consider before sacking the exercise.

Firstly, are you doing the exercise correctly?

Why? What I’ve found working with students all around the world, is it’s less about which exercises.

But HOW you’re doing the exercises.

For example, a common exercise is working up and down scales on the word MOM.

For a lot of beginners, a big mistake I see is not realising that they are changing everything.

From the vowels to the intensity.

What some of you may not know is that the goal of this exercise is to maintain a very spoken MOM across your range.

Why? When you can maintain a stable vowel, volume. This isolates just the pitch stretching mechanism and allows you to feel every note very evenly which feeds into singing.

So this is a good example that it’s not that the exercise isn’t right for you. But rather you need to do it better.

So take the time to examine your form when you’re working through your exercises. Have you taken the time to understand what “good” form of the exercises are?

Secondly - are you choosing the right variations?

Also consider the difficulty of it! For example, you wouldn’t go into the gym and do the heaviest weight or variation.

This is the same with vocal exercises.

For example, MOMs on a 1,3,5 scales. Can be much easier than a rossini.

So whilst the “form” is ultimately the same. The variation can add more of a challenge.

The challenge here is you might be following a Youtube video, which is designed to cater for a bigger audience.

What can happen here is you end up doing a variation that isn’t the right level for you.

Maybe it’s too easy

Or maybe it’s too hard.

So examine if the exercises you’re doing are at the right variation/difficult level. Ultimately this is where a voice teacher can really help. To give you the right variation for where you’re at.

That’s a wrap

In summary, when you’re deciding if an exercise is right for you. Know your outcome first then make sure you’re executing the exercise right AND choosing the right variation.

If you found value from this episode team, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a review or shout-out this podcast on your Instagram story. This would really mean the world to me and help my message reach more people.

If you feel stuck! Reach out for a voice lesson or check out the links down below for more. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

Thanks for joining me! I'm Ivan - your voice teacher. See you next Thursday/Friday for our weekly tutorial.

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