10 Simple Ways to Get More Out of
Your Voice Lessons
By
Corie Auger
Want to get more out of your weekly
voice lessons? Ever feel like you’re having the same lesson, week after week?
Read on for a few simple tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of your
time with your teacher.
- Practice every day for at least 30 minutes.
When you practice, you reinforce
techniques you work on with your teacher in your lesson. Practicing
consistently allows you to gain coordination and improve upon your abilities
each week. Without consistent practice, you’ll likely end up having the same
lesson you had last week.
- Arrive already warmed up.
Coming into your lesson already
having sung and warmed the voice up allows you and your teacher to dive right
in to any technical exercises and repertoire without wasting any time.
- If you don’t already know how, learn to read music.
Reading music can feel like learning
a new language. It takes time, patience, and lots of practice, but once you
begin to read music, you will learn new repertoire much more quickly and
accurately. Ask your teacher to help you learn how!
- Have new music learned before you go to your lesson.
While your teacher might help you
break down a passage you are having difficulty with if the rhythm is tricky or
the pitches are seemingly disjointed, having them teach you the melody is not
an efficient use of your lesson time. Only after you have put in the initial
time to learn your music can your teacher help you explore paths to vocal
freedom. If you’re still shaky on words, pitches, or rhythms, you will be too
focused on those things to be able to find vocal freedom.
- Record your lesson.
Have a smart phone? Start up the
voice recorder app! If you don’t have one, you might look into obtaining a
cheap, portable recording device to record your lessons with. If you record
your lessons, you can listen to it over the next week to not only remember
exercises you worked on, but to hear the different sounds you made to help you
recreate them in your own practice.
- Keep a lesson & practice journal.
As you listen to your lesson on your
recording device, take notes! What exercises did you do? What differences in
sound did you hear? What did you like? Then as you practice, you can re-visit
these exercises. When you practice, write down anything you find that is
particularly helpful or difficult – these are the things to share with your
teacher during lesson!
- Have a goal.
Go into your lesson with an idea of
what you’d like to accomplish that day. For example: “My tone always gets
really breathy when I sing this particular passage of my repertoire, so today
I’d like to work on making the tone a little clearer.” Your goal could also
cover a broad spectrum: “Today I’d like to sing with energy.” Don’t have a goal
in mind? Ask your teacher! This goal will help give your lesson focus.
- Be organized with your materials.
Have your music hole punched in a
3-ring binder. Bring a pencil so you can mark your music. Have a water bottle
handy. These may seem like small details, but I can’t tell you how many minutes
students waste during their lessons fishing to get the pages of their music in
the right order or looking for a pencil.
- Keep a spirit of adventure about you.
Your teacher might ask you to try
new things, make unfamiliar sounds, and expand your comfort zone. Embrace these
new, different sounds and experiences with enthusiasm, and understand that only
by stretching our boundaries are we capable of growth.
- See #1.
