Singing Practice: How Much Is Enough?

Author

Ivan Lu
September 04, 2025

Singing Practice: How Much Is Enough?

How much practice is enough?

Say you’re practising.

Is it until your voice gets sore? Until your voice gives out? Or maybe it’s something else.

Today I’m going to challenge that idea. I want to share with you, instead of just getting “sore” and then calling it a day. The purpose of each practice is simply “getting a stimulus”.

And that if you do this frequently enough, even just 10-15 minutes a day will allow you to come back better and more coordinated.

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

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Now this idea of “achieving a stimulus” comes from the world of building muscle.

Because like singing, you don’t suddenly get jacked. No matter how hard you trained on that one day.

Rather it’s a slow continuous process.

Now for those of you who don’t know.

The process of building muscle, is you come in and you do some form of resistance training. You bring those muscles close to failure

This gives your body a signal that you want to build muscle.

And so that when you rest, give your body adequate recovery. The muscle repairs itself bigger and stronger.

So how does this apply to singing?

Whilst some people suggest there is a slight physical change. Like the vocal ligament gets denser, or the muscles around the folds get stronger.

For beginners, I think most of the gains comes from better neuromuscular connections. Which means to sing better, we’re just trying to get our brain to fires the right muscles more accurately.

So instead of “getting close to failure”, what I think gives our brain a good stimulus and signal to get better is when we have better reps. Let me explain.

The process of learning to sing for most singers is we generally start with clumsy coordinations.

Maybe we push a bit of air.

Maybe we don’t stretch the cords like we need to.

But occasionally we’ll hit a better rep. This happens because the muscles works a bit better together.

Then we miss some more and then we hit it again.

The idea here is, if we can really focus on getting those occasional good reps, stay there a bit longer. We might even try to translate that to a harder sound.

This is what gives our brain a signal that we want to keep doing it more.

Simultaneously this means we also spend less time on the clumsier bad coordinations which allows the old wirings to die off.

Over time as we repeat this process and literally sleep on it.

This is what gives us the “vocal gains” or allows us to go from “clumsy” to “more coordinated movements”

So what does this look like in an actual practice session?

Step #1 Finding clean technique

Now for some of you, you might not even know what clean technique is. If that’s the case, I highly recommend checking episode 219/220 after this so you know what to work on daily.

But generally for me, this means

Where can you change pitch only?

This means at least on a scale, as you go up and down. No changes in volume, vowel, or even posture.

For those of you who can find it, a big part of improving is can you get there more consistently and faster. This will give your brain a cue that you want this to be the new way of singing.

Once you have that in,

Step #2 Translate that clean technique to harder contexts

The purpose of this is we want to bring it back to the level of singing which requires different words, different melodies. You might have to hold onto notes.

Initially some contexts will be harder, but that’s why step #1 is there. You’ve got a reference, so you don’t get lost.

Step #3 Rest and recovery

And so whilst the first 2 steps are about getting the stimulus.

The last step here is we want to give our brain time to rewire.

Now how do we decide when to rest?

This is still a tricky question. But at least personally and with the experience of my students. If we’ve found better reps, even if I stopped practising there. I still see progress even if it’s only 10-15 minutes of practice.

Now of course you can keep going especially if you’re in the pocket.

Now why don’t I advocate training til you get “sore” or until your voice “gives out”. This is for 2 reasons.

When you’re sore, the first reason I find that this just a sign I’ve picked up too much inflammation and this actually makes it harder the following day since my cords might not have recovered.

The other part is, if think of the goal practicing is to give our brains the correct signal. When you’re start to use incorrect muscles from fatigue or lack of technique. What you’re doing is giving your brain a mixed signal.

Now if you do this correctly, what you’ll notice is that some of the better reps you had today or two days ago. Suddenly becomes a lot easier to find the following day.

Anyway! I hope this answers your question.

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