This week I was having a few conversations around the nature of learning new songs, and refining them to a high standard. It struck me that I’ve not written explicitly about this.
I wrote an article a while ago on misunderstandings that amateurs make about singing. I also wrote an article on how pros practice that is relevant to this topic.
Hence I thought I would flesh out the key difference between beginners, intermediates and pros, and how they approach learning songs. Keep an eye out for where you feel you fit in this spectrum.
Beginners
When people first start singing, whether they have a good voice or not-so-good voice, people tend to learn songs one way. They have a go belting out the tune along with the track, maybe do it a few times over a week, then judge that song as either being good enough or not.
Now when it’s basic songs, with modest range, maybe a few climaxes, we can get a working version pretty quickly. But success tends to be a fairly binary experience.
The singer will have a bash, and either think:
1) “yea, that sounds good enough”
2) “this sounds bad, I’ll leave it”
This is tantamount to just flinging your voice at a song, and hoping it sticks. Pass or fail. Win or lose. No one becomes competent or great at anything with such an approach.
Instead, we have to not only build our voices to be more competent, but we must build an approach to tackling songs. We must train in HOW to learn, how to break down a song, and install ourselves into it. This requires a more nuanced approach to problem-solving a song.
Intermediates
With some training in voice and musicality, that nuance tends to come. Instead of seeing a song as a single challenge, we can break it down into it’s constituent components. Verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, maybe an outro and some adlibbing.
Generally, choruses sit higher than verses. Bridges tend to have some climaxes in there. Ad libs are often complex and tend to impart some excitement, but are ‘nice to have’ options rather than pieces which are essential to the song.
Intermediate singers will first listen to the song and mentally note the structure of the song. They will then work through each section, but accept that perfection won’t appear on the first pass… or even the first twenty passes. I’ve written about this phenomenon in this article right here.
More helpful thinking
This will lead to a far less binary outcome, and generally leads thoughts like:
“These parts went well, this part went OK, and this part is way out of my reach”
Now while this doesn’t necessarily equate to the singer having all the answers, intermediate singers grasp that songs are digestible problems. In more advanced songs, it is normal to have portions that come together quickly, some things that feel like a trainwreck after even a dozen tries, and parts that lie somewhere in-between.
As a singer gains vocal facility, musicality, and patience, they will start to tackle harder and harder songs, and progress to the ‘pro’ level of song practice.
Pros
Pros understand it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the harder a song is, the more reps it takes to polish that song out. In reality, it can take weeks, months or even years to fully realise a tricky song in your voice. That’s true even when you can already hit all the required notes, do so without strain, and sing beautifully in that range.
Tricky songs are more like dance routines. It’s not enough to already know all the moves, you have to sequence all the moves together and refine the smoothness of movement between those constituent parts. The harder the song, the more intricate the movement between each part, and the more time it will take to smooth it out.
This is a reflection of the difficulty of the song, not necessarily a lacking in your ability
Consider that every time you sing a song, you refine it. Which means that no matter how good a song is today, it’ll sound better tomorrow. So you’re always sounding better on a song you’ve installed yourself into.
Conclusion: Making progress every day
There is a wonderful quote from a great cellist called Pablo Casals. Despite being an incredibly accomplished cellist, he still practiced four to six hours most days well into his 80s and 90s. When asked why he still did this he simply replied:
“I think I’m making progress”
Beginners simply fling themselves at a song, and either think it’s good enough, or give up when it sounds bad.
Intermediate singers know that a song has to be broken down and worked on in parts.
Pros do what the intermediate singers do, but without any ego or rush. They know that the more intricate a song is, the longer it takes to acquire and polish. And that’s OK. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
If this is something you’d like to learn how to implement in your own voice and your own singing, you can book in to work with me via my booking form right here.