Discover Top Posts Tagged with #voice lesson

Started a new series on my TikTok. If you’ve ever been interested in being able to sing The Ballad of Jane Doe, I’ll be posting some tips and tricks! 😊

#musical #musicals #theatre #ride the cyclone #jane doe #rtc #jane doe rtc #jane doe ride the cyclone #voice teacher #voice lesson #how to sing #singer #vocalist #singing

—Kiki Petrosino, Voice Lesson

#kiki petrosino #voice lesson #words #my post #winslowcore #queue

HI IK I HAVENT POSTED IN A BIT

BUT I HAVE ANOTHER VOICE LESSON WITH BEN FANKHAUSER AND I CAME OUT TO HIM SO HE DIDNT MISGENDER ME WHEN IT CAME ON SEPT 3

#ben fankhauser #ben fank #newsies #voice lesson #omg

What makes a GOOD practice session?

“Practice makes perfect!” We hear this alllll the time. What else do we hear all the time? “Talent gets you so far but hard work and practice gets you farther”. But what do these statements really mean? What is it that goes into our practice sessions that will make us better artists? I know this might sound like common-sense, but there’s more to practice sessions than just running through material for a bit.

Fun fact: I hate practicing. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m nowhere near a perfect performer. I love learning about the craft, I love getting better and I love my lessons where I’m told what I should be working on. Therefore, I hate practicing because no one is actively telling me what I’m doing wrong. When I first started taking consistent voice lessons (and even currently) I had the hardest time figuring out what I should be doing in the practice room in order to better what I was doing in lessons. I’d get so frustrated and felt like I was getting nowhere (not to mention the fear of other people hearing me which is a subject for an entirely different post). Over time, and through talks with my voice teacher, I’ve made some discoveries on what makes a good practice session and how to go about it. So, here some of the things that help me get a good session in!

(Note: This post focuses mainly on singing practice, but the tips can be applicable to other types of practice)

Showing up for any amount of time: You might hear endless opinions from others on how much time you should be spending practicing. There’s weight to this of course, but we often equate quality to quantity. A difference will be made because you’re investing an amount of time into your craft. It takes a while to build in the habit of blocking out some time during your day. It should not be how long you practice but what you’re doing while you’re practicing that’s effective. Which brings me to:

Fifteen minutes of dedicated practice will be more effective than 30 minutes kind of practicing: If you only have time to warm up/do exercises and steadily focus on one phrase of a song, that’ll be more effective than 30 minutes of directionless singing. It’s not about how much time, it’s about how you use the time. And what I mean by directionless singing is that if you’re singing but not checking in with your body, your voice, your acting choices - then what are you working on?

Checking in with your voice/body: I always begin a practice session with warmups and vocal exercises. These exercises are there to make sure we’re utilizing the technique we learn in lessons and to check in with ourselves before practicing. Sometimes, I spend more time on exercises than I do on the song I’m working on for the day to make sure I’m on track with technique.

Knowing when to stop: I want to emphasize this one a bit more. Sometimes we try to push ourselves more when we’ve run out of energy, or we’ve run into a place where nothing we do is going to be effective anymore. For example, one time I was working on a classical song my teacher and I were doing in lessons. I began to get frustrated and thought I didn’t sound good and I couldn’t do anything right and I got upset. I put the song away and pulled out a Disney song I’d worked on before but I couldn’t get through one phrase because I was too in my head. If you find yourself at this point, stop. At the point where you’re too in your head to do any more effective work, you’ve done what you needed to do for the day. And it’s okay!

Have at least one goal/aspect to focus on: We can’t fix everything in one session. Something my teacher likes to remind me is to have one aspect of technique or the song I’m working on to focus on that day. Some days I’ll focus on the rhythm of a song or part of a song. Some days it’s all about the acting choices and others it’s about focusing on the dynamics. Whatever it is, having a goal or two to focus on during a session is what will make it a good session.

It’s practice, not a performance: This might be the toughest one. I’m such a perfectionist and even when I’m practicing I want to do everything 100% perfectly. But, that’s not the point of a practice session is it? We practice in order to recognize and correct our habits and to make discoveries come time for our next lesson. Say you spend your session only working on the first verse of a song but didn’t get farther than that; great! Practicing is doing things over and over until we have a sense of what we should be working on. It takes a while to understand this, heck I still need to remind myself of this!

There you have it! Of course these tips are here to guide you if you’re having trouble figuring out what to do when you practice. It’s not always going to sound perfect, but the fact that you’re actively taking time to put work into yourself outside of class or lessons is going to take you far, I promise! Also, there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to practice, this is just what I find the most useful when it comes to it. Happy practicing!

#musical theater #Theater #theater tips #singing #singing tips #acting #acting class #voice lesson #actor #practice #college #theater kid #theater major

Here’s what online voice lessons look like when you’ve recorded yourself singing the same song for the 15th time in a row and your frustrated and your voice is tired. I look completely dead inside and over everything because I was :-)))) I literally ended up changing the song the I turned in that week because my voice was TIRED