4 Steps to an Ideal Vocal Practice Session

1. Introduction: Welcome to the 4 Step Ideal Vocal Practice Session!: got the sun. Hey kid, happy Hi and welcome to the Four Steps to an ideal practice session. My name is Double Ray, and I'm a full time musician vocalist specifically, and I'm also an educator. In all of my tours and travels, I've encountered hundreds of singers who really want to take their singing to the next level. They want to sure fire away to improve their singing ability, something that's simple, that's scalable and, most importantly, trackable. Now I'm a believer that having a good foundation of practice is a priceless way and super effective to get a great experience in music, and this class will show you how to build that foundation. In this class, you'll learn four integral parts to an ideal practice session that will take you from simply singing songs that you know to mastering them. By the end of this class, you'll know every single part in detail. You'll have a bunch of exercises that you can use and incorporate into your practice sessions, and most importantly, you'll have an ideal practice session that's customized to your needs. Now this class is made for anyone to take it, regardless of your singing ability whether you're a beginner or advanced, whether you have an hour to practice or only five minutes a day, you should be able to get something from this class. In addition to these videos, you'll also find a worksheet that you can use to track your practice sessions. It's gonna come in handy for the class project, and here's an incentive. The 1st 3 people who are able to finish the entire project will receive a complimentary 30 minute one on one lesson with me. It's time to improve our practice session, so grab your water bottle and I'll see you in the next video. 2. What is a Good Practice Session?: thanks for joining me in this class. Now, before we get into the nitty gritty of practice structure and the four steps themselves, it's important to first identify what qualities you should look for in your ideal session. Here are three really important ones. Ah, good session will be number one, something that you can commit to doing every single day. So it shouldn't be so long that you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel or so short that you don't actually effectively get through every single step. My sweet spot is around 45 minutes, but it depends on you. Determining the right amount of time to practice is all about balance. I recommend between 30 and 90 minutes procession to make sure that you get a good session in without wearing yourself out. Ah, good session will be number two moderately difficult. It should work you out a bit, but it shouldn't overextend you or feel impossible for you to perform and at the same time not be so boring that you don't want to come into doing it. Number three and probably most importantly Ah, good session will be trackable. You have to be able to understand what it is that you're practicing and write down your findings. This will keep you from practicing something that's so boring that you don't even notice what's going on or practicing something that's so hard, so difficult that you just want to rage. Quit before your session ends. These three qualities will show up in all four steps of the ideal practice session. Use it as a measuring stick to see how long or how often, or how rigorous your practice should be. Well, okay, so now that we have all the qualities, it's time to talk about each of the steps in depth. 3. Step 1: Warm-up: the first step in your session should be some warm ups. We want to make sure that our bodies are in as relaxed estate as possible so that we don't carry tension into our practice and inadvertently incorporate that into our technique. So first start by warming up your body with some stretches and massages. Yeah, get those muscles nice and loose. Try standing up and imagining that you have a threat coming out of the center of your head , kind of like a marionette doll and engage your core. You want to make sure that you feel nice and sturdy, but without your shoulders getting too tense, and if you're sitting down, you could still imagine that the threat is holding you up right in your seat. You want to make sure that you're not slouching in your seat or moving forward, just completely sturdy Back Street. Once your posture is set, it's time to really focus on your face. Use this time to massage the muscles in your face. This is where you're going to have the most activity in your body. Facial massages are awesome. Once your body feels completely relaxed, focused specifically on the lair rings and warming data. The layering is the voice box and inside of the voice box you have these things called vocal folds. Those are the things that vibrate super quickly together to create tone. You want to use exercises like hum or a trill to make sure that your phone ating or creating tone. So for a hum, just a simple hum for the trills, I use two different types of trills. Either I use a lip trill which sounds like this we owe or do a tongue trill, which sounds like this thing trick with this exercise is you want to make sure that your phone ating for the entire duration of the exercise. If you feel like you're getting breath fee or airy, that means that those vocal folds are not vibrating at a fully closed position, and that can turn into some issues down the road with your local health. If that starts to happen, use the syllable, huh? Like this, huh? Huh? Huh To make sure that your phone ating correctly, you can feel the tone like in your chest in your head, and you can also hear the tone fully. Once that happens, you can go back to humming and trilling. Here's an example of a typical warm up that I would do in my practice session to warm up my body. I would do a few leg and arm shakes, make sure that my spine is nice and elongated and do some tongue and jaw exercises to massage my face to warm up my voice. I would use lip trills like I said before, as well as hum sirens or regular sirens. I do each of these exercises for about 30 seconds each, or until I feel like I'm completely relaxed. Play around with these exercises and see which ones make you feel as relaxed as possible as quickly as possible. In the next video, I'll show you these exercises in real time for you to follow along with me. I'll do them standing up as well as sitting down 4. 3 Minute Warm-up Demo: thin this video. Follow with me as I do a three minute warmup of my body and voice. I'll be doing a standing position as well as a sitting position. Let's put the time on the clock 30 seconds each exercise, and here we go. We're going to start with a leg shake, isolating each leg at a time, shaking it out. You can also do some side lunges, some leg kicks, getting those legs nice and relaxed following up. We're going to do some arm shakes. Really Pay close attention to your wrists as well as your shoulders. Do some shoulder rolls forward and backward. Next up, we're going to be twisting our torso. Now, if you're standing up, you'll just twist from side to side while keeping your feet in the same position. If you're sitting down, use the back of your chair to help you turn your torso, and then we're going to do some neck rolls. Okay, my favorite part face massages gonna focus specifically on your temples as well as your cheeks and your jaw. Next up is my favorite to scare people away its jaw and tongue exercises where we're going to be opening up our mouths as wide as we can and sticking our tongues out from side to side to make sure that we have everything this stretched out way have our hum scythe. We can also do trills here and that's it. I hope that you've enjoyed and I hope that you have a great warm up. 5. Step 2: Vocal Exercises: in step two. Vocal exercises will be your focus. In terms of this four step structure, vocal exercises will mean these small, calculated vocal movements that focus on a particular singing technique. Techniques could be scales, arpeggios, interval leaps, breath support exercises pretty much any vocal exercise that has some limitation. So it makes it easier for you to track whatever exercises you end up. Choosing should be the ones that you want to improve something in. Like if you want to work on your breath support, you're going to do breath support exercises and so on and so forth. Now it's so easy to do these exercises and get all technical with them. But that's where your tracking is gonna come the most. In handy, you should be looking at how making small changes to the exercise will change the way that you sound when you sing it. Things like the tempo or the speed, the duration if you're holding it for a short time or you're holding it for a long time, or even things like the range, how low you can sing the exercise or how high you can sing the exercise. In the next video, I'll be outlining four exercises that you can track on your I PS worksheet. Follow along with me 6. 4 Vocal Exercise Examples: Mm. Oh, right. So now that I'm at the piano, I can show you a few exercises that you can use to track on your I PS worksheet. Now, these particular exercises that I'll do are going to cover four different aspects of vocal technique. You're going to cover intonation, breath control or breath support, diction and rhythmic accuracy. But there are so many other things that you can track. I'm just gonna focus on those 44 today. That said, I'm also going to break it down further and do two different versions, one for beginners and one for more advanced students. I'm going to play through each of the exercises and give a brief explanation of each of them. And the full versions could be found in the resource is tab of this class. So download them and use them to practice. Here we go. I don't know. In this exercise, you're trying to go and focus on intonation. Now, the whole point of this exercise is trying to stay as much in tune as possible. Try to find out what your range is with this where you feel the most comfortable, so you're not straining to create that tone. And remember, the vowel sound is oh, put a constant like an L in front Lou, or move or knew something that can vibrate with the vowel to create the most town. Ah, uh, this exercise is focusing on breath support. You want to make sure that your core is engaged while you're doing this exercise. So something that I try to do to kind of psych myself into breathing correctly is I put a hand in front of my face and I try to have a constant flow of air coming out as I do this exercise. If it feels like when I go to the higher pitches, I'm creating more air when dial that back of it. You can do this on any vowel that you'd like. I would suggest trying an ah vowel because it's the hardest to keep that extended breath on an ah vowel. But try and or an old vowel to go and challenge yourself for today. Todo Ah, this is one of my favorite exercises and addiction and support. Now this one, we're going to use specific lyrics toady today and today the two D is very wide, e like cheese today is a little bit more elongated, like everywhere and today Aw, that eyes nice and long, fully expended jaw like awesome. And that t you should feel your tongue at the tip of your teeth. Addiction is done with the tip of the tongue in the teeth Teoh of ah 234 And now this more swinging exercise deals with rhythmic accuracy. The group that we're using for this exercise is what's called Swing. So instead of doing it straight 12341 and two and three and four were swinging it and making that backbeat or that and a little bit pulled a one, not two, but three year four of Wana to with three year four, it should make you feel like kind of bouncing or flouncing around. What makes this exercise so great is that we're using something called Anticipation. We're not singing some of these notes right on the beginning of each beat instead of do, uh oh, are dubah? Uh, we're pulling the note back in time a little bit, so it's landing before it gets to the beat. This creates this type of forward momentum. 123412 Hungry for 23412341234123412345 What I love about these exercises is that they're super customizable. Maybe wanted to slow them down, speed them up, seeing them in a higher key. Sing them in a lower key. Change your vowel sounds All are totally up to you and your needs. Start with what I've shown you and depart from it. If you feel like you want to customize it further, do you want to be consistent in the actual practice session and not just change up the exercise just because you feel like it? Stay the course. You want to make sure that you're keeping true to whatever the exercise is from beginning to end, Go to that resource is folder download Whichever exercises you'd like to dio and have fun with this, Do that 7. Step 3: Song Study: Step three is dedicated to song study, and this is the step where you finally are able to sing an actual song thing. Step is also pretty crucial in building your musical proficiency as well as increasing your song repertoire. In this step, you want to really get to know the song in depth, so break it down into its many specific parts and study them. Study things like the melody, how the song is sung or the lyrics. What does this song mean? Or you can study other singers performances of the song, especially if it's a cover. This is a way for you to understand why a singer sounds the way they dio. If the song that you're studying is an original, you can study your own performances. Record yourself. Listen back. Make changes, big notes to things that you want to fix or improve, or things that you like. One last experiment to try is what's called free singing. That is, it's when you just sing for the joy and the love of singing. You spent a lot of time in your practice going through the theory and the technique and breaking things down, so this is your opportunity to sing the song from beginning to end and really feeling the essence or the vibe or the groove of the song. I recommend that you do this at least once in every single practice session simply to get re integrated into your body and understand what story you're trying to tell. 8. Step 4: Cool Down: cooling down is the fourth and final step in the ideal practice session, and very often it's the most neglected step in a singer's practice session. In cooling Down, you're bringing your body and your voice, which were under a lot of rigorous use back to normalized state. It's similar toe athletes who stretch out after a workout. It's essentially the reverse off the warm up, so you're massaging your body. You're using your hums and your trills. And remember to phone eight. If you were singing with a different register than you usually speak, that issue were singing a lot higher or a lot lower, or it was resonating in a different place than where you usually talk. This is an opportunity to slowly and surely bring it back to wherever you normally speak. For example, if I'm singing up here and I'm singing all the time of here, I don't usually talk like this, do I? So I will calmly get back to wear. I speak. This exercise will prevent some unintentional strain that can lead to vocal injury. But think about it this way. Singers have a tendency to sing their hearts out and then dash out the door. But your voice needs a moment to come back to that relaxed state in order that it remains elastic, like any muscles so it doesn't rip or tear. I would definitely set aside just a few minutes to go and make sure that your voice is back to that normalized speaking range. And this step is also an amazing opportunity to grab that water and drink up. Keep hydrated. And lastly, you can use this as an opportunity to go into your I PS worksheet and write down anything that you missed writing down earlier in your practice session. After that, your sessions done, and that's a wrap. Good job. 9. Your Class Project and IPS Worksheet Walkthrough: We spent a lot of time talking about the four steps, and now it's time to apply what you've learned in your class project. First, let's lay the groundwork with where we are right now. You should upload an audio recording of you singing your favorite song to your project. It should be about a minute toe a minute and 1/2 in life. Next, download the I Pass worksheet and used that in your practice sessions for at least the next week. E Once a week has passed, it's time for you to re record yourself singing the same song and upload that to your class project. Also include the I PS worksheet from the most recent practice session you had for the rest of this video out outline what's in the I PS worksheet and how to use it effectively to track your progress for a start off with putting the date and the time in which you're practicing. That's to see if there are any changes in your voice, depending on whether you saying in the morning or saying at night Next up there are three slots with which to put some practice goals. It's always a good idea to set an intention before your practice. Now you don't have to use all three. You certainly don't need to put three goals down, but put at least one goal for your practice session that day. Next up, right down your vocal exercises. There's enough slots to put three down. You'll put the name of the exercise, the range or the lowest and highest pitches that you could reach doing the exercise, any areas of tension that you might have felt doing the exercise as well as the temple marking. And finally, you have the section for song study. First, get through the logistics, writing down the name of the song. And if it's a cover, the name of the artist or the name of the show it's from. And if you're using sheet music, make sure to delineate which measures of the song that you're going to be singing. If you're not using sheet music and you're just using an audio recording, give the second values around where you're going to be practicing. Then you have a long section that you can use to answer any questions that you had about the song that you're studying now The question area of the song study section is meant to give you space to really think about what you're taking away from the song. If there's certain things that you need to work on, write those down. If there are certain things that you felt really, really good, write those down. If there are other things that you want to explore, like listening to another singers interpretation, write that down and that should be it for your i PS worksheet. Super simple and a reminder the 1st 3 people who are able to complete their projects will have a complementary lesson from me. Enjoy your practice. 10. Thank you and Additional Resources: Thank you so much for tuning into this class on the four steps of an ideal practice session . I hope that you received a lot of value out of it. And if you want even more value, check out the resource is tab where there is some other tools, some of which are free and some at a low cost that will help you so much to go and increase the value of your practice session if you feel up to it, I would love if you left a review. It helps me to understand what you took away from the class as well as any other things that you'd like me to teach you. And if you'd like to follow me, you can find me on facebook dot com slash double ray music or on instagram at DeBary music . I'd love to keep in contact with you until next time. Enjoy your practice base