A young singer asked me recently why it was that she could sing the way she wanted to in her lessons, but her voice didn't always work the same way when she was on stage in a performance.
I laughed! Why did I laugh?
I laughed because she had hit on the exact reason why we practice. She didn't realize what a simple, but profound question she had asked.
Singers take lessons so that our voice teacher can train our brains as to what needs to happen when we want to sing well. In a lesson, we primarily work on training your brain. OK, we work on training your body a little bit, but training your body takes a lot of repetition. Your brain really is smarter than your body! A half-hour or even an hour lesson just doesn't give us much time to routine things into your muscles. This is where practicing comes in.
During your lesson, you will want to make notes of what we worked on and how we worked on it. Having a recording can really help with this.
Then, day after day, you get to practice doing what we did in your lesson, with the goal of taking what we taught to your brain and convincing your muscles to do or not do what we worked on. Now, we're singers, and because we have a human instrument, as much as I know you want to practice five hours a day, this isn't a good idea. Generally, an hour to an hour and a half, with breaks, is as much singing as the average voice student wants to do in one day. You can add extra time for writing out the words, listening to your song and your lesson recording, researching your character and other non-vocal kinds of pursuits.
In the end, what will serve you best is consistency. Keep the practicing going on a regular basis and you'll find that you're able to get your voice to do what you want it to more often than before.
Oh, and you'll have a much better chance of having that voice cooperate on stage in performances.
I laughed! Why did I laugh?
I laughed because she had hit on the exact reason why we practice. She didn't realize what a simple, but profound question she had asked.
Singers take lessons so that our voice teacher can train our brains as to what needs to happen when we want to sing well. In a lesson, we primarily work on training your brain. OK, we work on training your body a little bit, but training your body takes a lot of repetition. Your brain really is smarter than your body! A half-hour or even an hour lesson just doesn't give us much time to routine things into your muscles. This is where practicing comes in.
During your lesson, you will want to make notes of what we worked on and how we worked on it. Having a recording can really help with this.
Then, day after day, you get to practice doing what we did in your lesson, with the goal of taking what we taught to your brain and convincing your muscles to do or not do what we worked on. Now, we're singers, and because we have a human instrument, as much as I know you want to practice five hours a day, this isn't a good idea. Generally, an hour to an hour and a half, with breaks, is as much singing as the average voice student wants to do in one day. You can add extra time for writing out the words, listening to your song and your lesson recording, researching your character and other non-vocal kinds of pursuits.
In the end, what will serve you best is consistency. Keep the practicing going on a regular basis and you'll find that you're able to get your voice to do what you want it to more often than before.
Oh, and you'll have a much better chance of having that voice cooperate on stage in performances.