I always get the same questions when it comes to practice.

• “How should I practice?”
• “How long do I need to practice for?”

and the big one:

• “Do I really even need to practice? “

Lets face it. Singing your favourite songs is fun. That’s not practice. Doing warm up scales is… well can get boring after a while but that’s not practice either. Real, hard-core, going-to-help-you-improve-dramatically practice is what noone ever wants to do because we all think it’s REALLY BORING.

Well the bad news is, that it is the only thing that will help you improve. (Sorry!!!) The good news is, that actually only needs to take you ten minutes to get done and dusted.

Yep, that’s right. Ten minutes is all you need. (Yay!)

You see, ten minutes of concentrated real practice is better than hours and hours of singing mindlessly. And ten minutes is all it should take for you to practice a new technique by repeating it a few times until you get it right, then applying it to a song you are learning.

I’ll give you an example. Say you are learning how to avoid sliding up to notes all the time. Start by hitting a note on the piano that is in your vocal range and sing it back. Make sure you sing it straight on and are not sliding up or down to it.

Have a go at recording yourself and listening back to hear for any nasty sliding. Once you have that one note right, then go to your song and practice singing the first note of the song straight on. If you get that right, then sing along a bit until you get to the next pause in the music. The first note after the pause should be sung straight on again.

And repeat and rinse  😆

That’s pretty much it. That right there is concentrated, hard-core practice and doing something as simple as the exercise above will help you to improve dramatically over time. It is because it all slowly adds up. Next time you practice your song, you will automatically become aware of whether you are sliding up to your notes and you will correct yourself. This happens until singing notes straight on becomes a good vocal habit.

So my advice, is to not make things so tough on yourself. Scratch out that massive list of things you need to work on for your singing and take just ONE thing and practice that for ten minutes. Go do it now. You’ll be so glad you did.

See you in ten minutes!!

Nicola x