I started this blog last year as a way to encourage us all to be regular and disciplined in practicing our voices. We all sing, all the time. But practicing is more than just singing. It is coordinating specific muscle groups, it is heightening our awareness of physical sensations as they relate to singing, it is sometimes tedious repetition in order to get our music completely accurate, and it is drilling the technical elements of singing often enough for them to become so ingrained that we can focus more of our attention on expression and the emotional intent behind our singing.
This summer I read a book called The Yoga of Discipline by Swami Chidvilasananda. It provided some great perspectives on how the everyday choices we make impact the direction of our lives. One paragraph related specifically to singing:
“You have heard great singers. Do you think they could sing the way they do without discipline? Because they have led disciplined lives, now they can go beyond what we think of as the limitations of the human body. They can reach people’s hearts.”
Of course, we all know singers who do not lead disciplined lives and still manage to be effective performers, more or less. When I encounter those people I always wonder how much better they would be if they were serious enough about their craft to work harder at it. That’s our challenge. Anyone can get really fired up about something once in a while. The successful ones, however, make their art a daily discipline.
So, this first blog is about sharing ideas that help you stay disciplined about practicing your voice. What works for you?
Here are some things that help me:
-Scheduling regular time for it. If practice time is not in my calendar at a specific time, it’s too easy not to do it.
-Allowing myself to stop practicing after a certain amount of time. Some days it feels great and I just keep going. Some days are more difficult so after I work for my designated period of time, I stop and do something else.
-Alternating between brain work and voice work so I don’t get too tired or overwhelmed. A lot of your practicing can be done silently.
-Starting simple. Jumping right to the hard parts tends to frustrate me, partly because I try to take on too much before I'm physically warmed up and prepared.
-Having a goal or something specific I'm trying to accomplish. Maybe that’s just getting a certain rhythm down, maybe that’s memorizing a section of music, maybe that’s an ongoing goal like smoothing out the passaggio or getting better dynamic control.
What works for you?
Now go practice.
