As your teacher, I obviously want to help you become a better singer and that will only happen if you develop consistent, healthy practice habits.
It is my hope that as you use this site it will help you better understand your voice and you become more confident in feeling, hearing and understanding what is happening in your voice and body while you sing. You will then be able to self-direct your practice sessions in an effective and healthy way, all the while becoming a more confident singer with a healthier and more beautiful tone. Happy practicing!!
A good practice session looks something like this:
Physical warm up (3-5 minutes)
Make sure you are relaxed, your posture is straight and comfortable and that you are feeling calm. If you're angry or agitated, maybe now's not the time to practice. Go do something to calm down and relax then try again when you're feeling better.
Vocal Warm-Up (25-35% of time. If you're going to practice for 30 minutes, use about 10 on warm-ups.)
Lip Buzzes are the absolute best warm-up I know of. I try to start every lesson and all of my own private practice sessions with lip buzzes. The physical coordination it takes to keep the lips buzzing allows all the lower muscles in the throat to relax completely, allowing them to remain free and healthy throughout the exercise.
The breath required to keep the lips moving is also exactly the right amount. Too much, and the buzz will be unsustainable. Too little and it will peter out. If you haven't mastered the lip buzz yet, keep working on it. Experiment using more and less breath...eventually you'll find that perfect balance that allows the lips to keep moving. Once you can buzz, add pitch (sing through the buzz) and you're ready to do the exercises.
Let's do a set of lip buzzes now.
Don't worry about making it to the end of the exercises. They all go quite high so just drop out when you become uncomfortable.
Follow that up with another Lip Buzz exercise, this time with wider leaps between notes.
You could also follow up your lip buzzes with tongue trills or quiet humming. Neither ensures quite as relaxed a throat or perfect placement as the lip buzzes, but both can provide effective warm-ups as well. Use the same exercises as above with either one.
Technical Exercises (25-35% of time)
If warm-ups are the stretching, technical exercises are the resistance and cardio routine. You won't get much of a workout if all you do is sit and stretch your hamstrings, all you'll get is relaxed hamstrings. Just as in sports, you need to exercise your voice in order to gain strength, coordination and flexibility.
Each exercise or group of exercises has a specific function and goal and in doing these exercises and understanding the reasons behind them, you will gain a better understanding of how your voice functions and you will begin to have more control over your sound.
Coming soon:
Coordination/Passagio Exercises
Flexibility Exercises
Range Extension Exercises
