Is Your Singing Routine Effective? Let's Analyze!

Is Your Singing Routine Effective? Let's Analyze!

So I recently came across a post on Reddit. Basically it’s a singer asking for feedback on his daily routine.

And so today I want to break down this routine because I think it highlights a fundamental gap in the way most of you are currently approaching your practice routines. Especially if you aren’t seeing results.

Then what I’ll do is share some suggestions on how I would tweak this routine if they were my student.

So for some context. Here is the routine.

Now first things first. You have to hand it to this singer.

This singer is committed. This is easily 2 hours they are putting into their singing each day. So a lot of respect there.

The other things is results are king. If you are seeing results with your routine, your singing is getting easier to control and use each day. Then ignore everything I say.

But I suspect he’s asking because he’s not seeing this. Or at least to the level that here wants.

Now as I mentioned. I chose this post because I think it reflect the underlying assumption/thinking for a lot of you.

Which is

“If I do vocal exercises consistently. I will improve my singing”

And there are some tell tales signs from this post.

The first one is he’s basically shared his routine from a “WHAT” lens.

For example, he’ll do these massages or these vocal range exercise.

But there’s no mention of how he does it? What is he focusing on?

The 2nd one is in main question. “Is this too little or too much to improve my voice from strain”

But here’s where the problem lies.

That’s an impossible question to answer.

What would ultimately improve your voice (or vocal strain in this case)

Isn’t how much vocal exercises you’re doing. It isn’t even necessarily what exercise you do.

But it’s what the EXERCISES are teaching you. And are you doing the exercises correctly.

So when we approach our practice and we’re thinking

Let’s do this EXERCISE A, EXERCISE B. Let’s practice for 1 hour a day. This is great from a discipline lens, but unless you can do it with good form OR at least know what good form is.

It’s like committing to doing push ups every day but with terrible form and then wondering why you haven’t gotten stronger?

Now before I share some more specific suggestions on how to improve this routine. 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.

Okay let’s talk about how we can improve this routine.

So how can we improve this routine? Or the approach to this routine

First suggestion: Start with the fundamentals

I think the reason a lot of us dance between different exercises or have these crazy long routines.

Is because we don’t know what exactly to focus on.

What exactly makes a voice more easy to use? What makes it more efficient? How do I know if I’m actually doing this. Now this is where a teacher can come in who can show you the why/form behind a exercise. I think it’s irreplaceable.

But I think a good starting place for most singers to at least get an understanding of fundamentals. Because one you know this, you’ll realise a lot of exercises are just variations to work on these fundamentals. Now the fundamentals for me are 2 things

1) Adjust for pitch easily & efficiently

2) Adjust for dynamics easily & efficiently

I mean if you just knew how to do these 2 things correctly. That would solve most of your singing challenges.

Now I won’t go into detail. But I recommend checking episode 129 and 131 after this episode.

2nd suggestion: Get rid of junk volume

There’s nothing wrong with a lengthy routine. Especially if you see results.

But in most cases I find. It’s just a lot of unnecessary work and it tends to distract us from working on the real fundamental challenges for these voice.

If anything I have noticed as I’m getting better and a stronger fundamental understanding of good technique, my warm ups are getting simpler and less.

And I think it’s because I don’t have to weave through all these different exercises and changes just to feel good technique. I’m much clearer now.

And so if you have these elaborate routines, I’d challenge you to keep it simple. Do you really them?

3rd suggestion: Structure your practice in 2 parts to see daily progress.

I’ve personally found more success in daily improvements through thinking about my exercise in 2 parts.

1) Establish home base. I might just do 1 or 2 exercises that just help me feel good. It should only take a few minutes. These are also my warm up exercises.

2) Then immediately finding a small deliberate challenge.

Simply repeat this process daily, allows you to build on those 1% improvements.

Now I talk about how to build a routine that helps you see daily progress in the previous episode. So if that’s valuable to you. Go check it out!

Anyway! I hope this episode was useful. If it was, please support this channel through all the usual social media stuff. Like, comment/subscribe.

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Last but not least, if you’ve always wanted to improve your singing faster and with less confusion. Remember you don’t have to do this on your own.

I’ve got ways to work with me in the description down below. Make sure to check it out. Apart from that, my name is Ivan, I'm your voice teacher, and I'll see you for our weekly tutorials every single Thursday or Friday.

Take care.

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