Welcome to the new school year! Here we go...
Let me state something obvious: If you want to improve your skills, you have to practice. It doesn't matter if the skill you want to improve is yoga, archery, skateboarding, or singing—a crucial element is consistent, quality practice.
Quality practice, however, can be difficult to accomplish. This first obstacle is just motivating ourselves to do it. The second obstacle is knowing how to practice in a way that will actually lead to results. Authors Janice L. Chapman, Ron Morris, and James Platt refer to practice as “The Dreaded ‘P’ Word” in their book Singing and Teaching Singing: A Holistic Approach to Classical Voice (Plural Publishing, 2023). They point out that both student and professional singers can be confused about how to practice, which often leads them to avoid it entirely. In Practicing for Singers: A Guide to Solid Practice Habits, author Joanie Brittingham states, “We singers often don’t practice because practice intimidates or frustrates us.” Because of this, she believes that many singers give up before they are really able to make technical progress, resorting to repeatedly running through their songs, which can just solidify the errors and inefficiencies that already exist.
To address this, last year I wrote an article for the Journal of Singing called "The Four Rs of Effective Practice: Resolve, Repeat, Refine, Reinforce." This semester, I'm going to examine each of these aspects to see how they might help us find ways to engage in meaningful practice that will help us reach our goals.
The first "R" of effective practice is "resolve." Since this word can be defined a couple of different ways, I'll focus on the first definition for now. As I blogged last January, according to Dictionary.com, when resolve is used as a noun it is defined as "A resolution or determination made, as to follow some course of action; firmness of purpose or intent; determination. Synonyms: decision.” Essentially, the first element of effective practice is that we have to decide/resolve to do it. That may seem like a no-brainer and not that hard to accomplish. But for real progress to occur, we have to resolve to practice regularly and consistently, which can be difficult to commit to when schedules gets busy or when we just don't feel like doing it.
As stated, resolve also requires determination and firmness of intent. Meaningful practice takes effort and planning (we'll get more into this in the next blog). Therefore, we don't just need to commit to practicing, we have to commit to effortful practicing. This doesn't mean physically effortful, where you engage in excessive tension or muscular hyperfunction. This refers to cognitively challenging practice where you set yourself tasks that are just a bit beyond your capabilities. This sort of practice, where success is perpetually just out of reach, can be frustrating and forces us to dig deep (to find our "resolve"). But this is the sort of practicing that leads to the most beneficial results. There is a reason these tasks are referred to in the motor-learning literature as "desirable difficulties."
So, as a first plan for the semester, we can resolve to practice regularly and consistently by making a practice schedule and sticking to it. We can also resolve to make practice meaningful by giving ourselves clear goals, challenging tasks to help us build skills (I can help come up with these), and seeing each practice session through. Understanding that these sessions will often be difficult and frustrating, we can resolve to complete them anyway.
For this first blog of the year, identify some of the goals you have for your singing, whether that's related to sticking to a practice schedule, identifying technical or expressive capabilities you'd like to develop, or any other aspect of your singing that you'd like to see improve this semester.
Let's have a great year.
Now go practice.
