“Amateurs practise until they get it right, a professional until he can’t do it wrong.”
Extract from “Psychology for Musicians” by Percy C. Buck, circa 1944.
I’ve talked before about the importance of putting in the reps. To be honest, I feel like I should have multiple articles devoted to this very topic. That way I can can illustrate the importance of repetition, by writing repetitiously about it!
Recently, I’ve had a large number of clients asking about application of vocal technique to song. For example, seeking further ways they can take what they are doing in technical portions of lessons and taking that into song (e.g. a good vocal workout routine).
Also, how they can practice songs at home to ingrain good technique more fully, and how to make the songs into a form of exercise in themselves. And in every one of these specific cases, the best answer I could give was to point to the power of repetition in their practice time.
Ask yourself: when you’re learning a new song and getting it up to performance level, how many times do you run through it?
How many times do you practice a song til you get it “right”, or at least decent? And after that, how many more reps do you put in? Go on, have a think, make sure you’ve got a number in your head.
For context, when I’m working on a new song, it takes me about 20 attempts to get the song to fall into place, and about 60-80 reps til I feel it’s performance-grade. Add those two numbers up: this means that I start to feel a song is so locked in that I can’t get it wrong around the 80-100 rep mark.
On an average day for a new song we’re looking at around 5-10 reps a day. That way I’m usually getting on top of it in a week, and I can perform it or record it a week or so after that. That’s the whole song, from start to finish, and typically multiple times through in a row with no break.
There’s no magic number
I’m not saying 100 is some kind of magic number. Some songs I’ve done literally hundreds of times, there’s probably even a few songs where my rep count is running into the thousands. Other songs I’ve got to a performance-grade level in 40-60 reps. Regardless, we’re talking on the order of tens to hundreds, not a total of ten.
For some of you, even the thought of doing the same song 5-10 times through, even just for one week, may fill you with at least one of the following two thoughts:
1) That’s so boring!
– If you find running through one of your songs boring doing it this way, at the very least I’d suggest you need to change your material.
More seriously, the discipline required to get a song to a high standard is far greater than most people who like to sing realise. It’s not just a matter of reading the lyrics off your phone when you fancy singing it. You’ve got to truly install yourself into the song.
Think of it like a workout routine you’ve got memorised and your body does perfectly, or your favourite long joke you like to tell. In each case, repetition is what helps you refine each routine to make it slicker and slicker, getting better results every time.
That’s the attitude we need to approach working on songs with. We should derive increasing amounts of pleasure from doing each one better and better, not boredom.
2) My voice would be struggling to sing *THAT* song 5-10 times through non-stop
– If your voice is dying after 5-10 repetitions, there’s a problem. This shows that the demands of the song outstrip your current technical ability and/or capacity to sing the material you are trying to sing. This is yet another benefit to putting in the reps and adopting a more conservative approach to utilising your voice.
This shows you where you’re kidding yourself and where you’re actually competent. It’s like watching the professional athlete lift a heavy weight with perfect form regularly every day, and some gym-bro wrenching the same weight off the floor once with horrendous technique and claiming he can lift the same.
It’s not even close to the same thing, and you can’t cheat your way there. If your voice is freaking out or going hoarse/struggling in your practice, I’m sorry to tell you, you’re being a gym-bro. Consider changing the key, altering the melody, or other such approaches to make it fit your voice.
Moral: Put in the reps.
The moral of today’s article is practice as often as you can. Even if it’s only 5-10 minutes every day or thereabouts. Done right, practice can be a truly rewarding experience. Done right, it can become something you look forward to, like the workout example above.
Each time I run through a song I find it incremently more rewarding every time. This is because I get deeper and deeper into the song, and I’m able to do more and more, for longer and longer, for less and less energy, at higher and higher quality.
Quantitative vs Qualitative
We’ve got to move away from treating song practice like a box-checking exercise, e.g. if it was in tune, and didn’t sound awful, then we’re all good. Such a mindset is a purely quantitative assessment of singing. Instead, through putting in the reps with an emphasis on quality, this requires us to think and listen more critically. When we shift our mindset from quantitative to qualitative, we start to cultivate taste. But that is a topic for another day.
These are the rewards to be gleaned for spending 5-10 minutes singing songs every day. I can’t really see a downside, can you?
Go and have yourself some self-rewarding practice!
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about vocal technique and great singing, you may enjoy these related articles:
The problem with trying to teach voice using ONLY voice science
Vocal Pedagogy: Past, present and future
Singers: The Difference Between Vocalists and Performers
Can vocal technique help laryngitis?
Vocal Tessitura: What is it?
What is vocal fach?
The Key to Vocal Consistency