OVS Blog

Practice. How do you feel when you read that word? Perhaps it brings back memories of a favorite performance or song, something good. Or perhaps it brings with it dread and guilt and maybe even worry that your practice isn't enough or isn't good enough. While practicing is the source of the repetition that allows us to make changes in our muscles (instrument), and allows us to learn and memorize our music, it can also be something that brings a dark cloud with the very thought of it.

There are many things to consider about practicing, such as why we do it, how to do it in an effective way, and what it is in the first place. Lack of understanding about ways that we can practice might add a whole extra layer of pain into the process. Practice is certainly something that we can discuss during lessons, including specific ways to practice and specific ideas for what you are working on at that exact time. (It's often a very personalized thing!) In fact, there are some teachers who require certain amounts of practice for you to study with them. In real life, however, it's not necessarily possible for most people to maintain a specific requirement, and some don't even want to. When you start to realize all the things that can become practice, and all the times that you're actually adding memory into your muscles (i.e. practicing!), you'll realize that you're probably getting more than you think. And the reality is that while the amount you practice will have a direct effect on your progression in singing, that amount should be completely up to you and your needs and your desires. 

Practicing doesn't only happen during special blocks of time you've set aside to work on your singing. The purpose of practice is to form new muscle memory (or habits, if you will), and whether you know it or not that happens every single time you sing. Wake up and start humming first thing? It's practice. Singing in the car? Practice. Choir or show rehearsal? You've got it - practice. So, what really matters isn't when you sing or how long, but how you think while you're singing. If you are trying to bring in a new technique and for most of the week you aren't thinking and revert back to your old habitual way of singing, you're still practicing that old technique into your singing pattern. 

Start thinking of practice as not a when or a how long, but a how. You can do it all throughout the day and even multitask it along with something else (to a degree - as long as you can focus on your thinking). A future post will talk about constructive thinking which is what will be important in the how of practicing. Keep a look for it in a few posts!