Do I Really Need to Practice Everyday?
The idea of daily practice can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re also juggling school, work, parenting, and all the other things that fill our lives. Is it really necessary?
Believe it or not, daily practice can be a large contributor to your vocal improvement. But daily practice may not look like what you think.
Daily Doesn’t mean rigorous
When you hear daily practice, it probably makes you think of thirty plus minutes of vocalizing time. While it’s great to practice as often as you can (without practicing too much and causing strain, of course), even some soft vocalizing helps your voice stay stretched, warm, and can help build the muscles and familiarity of producing the vocal sounds you want!
So, what does this mean? It means that even a little bit of practice everyday is better than none.
Quick Vocal Exercises For Busy Days
Raspberries/Lip trills
This is a great exercise that is gentle on the voice and easy to do anywhere. You can vibrate your tongue on your lips or vibrate your lips together - sort of like a horse. You can look up tutorials on how to do this. (Tip: if you’re having trouble, try to engage your core!) You can do lip trills on descending and ascending sirens, 5 tone scales, or even on the melody of a song you’re working on.
Sirens
Sirens help your body learn how to transition into different registers, and along the vocal scale. When starting out with sirens, make sure to do them at a soft to medium volume as you warm up. You can go from mid-range to low, mid range to high, high to low, low to high, or play around in your middle, lower or upper range.
5-tone scales
A 5 tone scale is the first 5 notes in a key. If you know solfege, that’s Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol. You can work on these descending (Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do), ascending (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol) and even ascending/descending. (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-FA-Mi-Re-Do). I recommend starting from your mid range, going down and then going into your upper range. You don’t have to have your keys and notes exaclty right to get some benefit out of this, but it’s even better if you have a piano or recording to play along with you!
Straw Phonation
Straw phonation is when you put a straw in your mouth and you hum or buzz your way through your exercise or song. This helps to build breath support and coordination as you work into different registers of your voice. Make sure your straw isn’t too big or else it won’t provide the support you need! A regular straw or two small coffee stirrers will do.
There are so many more exercises you can do on the go! These will give you a great start to keeping your vocal fitness at the front of mind everyday and help you improve. Pracicing between voice lessons is crucial to improvement, so make sure you’re getting your practice time in!
