In this video you'll learn a few vital techniques for how to practice singing
at home. Coming up our vocal instructor Reina is going to share with you how all
beginners should structure their practice routine. So stay tuned and be
sure to click the link in the description box to join one of our free
online singing classes.
-My name is Reina. I will be your instructor today
at "Essential tips for how to practice singing." So let's talk about the perfect
place to actually practice your singing. It should be distraction free, meaning
there's no screens on and you don't have headphones in, you're not listening
to music, you're not in your car, you're definitely standing up. That's gonna be
really really huge okay? Now you only need 10 to 20 minutes every day to
practice. So you totally want to practice every day. You don't need to
practice more than like 10 or 20 minutes but you do want to be obviously building
the coordination and building the muscle memory, but 10 to 20
minutes a day is enough to do that. So just kind of keep that in your mind. So
you have a quiet distraction-free environment where you can stand and move
your body freely. That is your ideal practice space. Now once you get that
space set up and you're able to kind of like, get into the zone for your 10 or 20
minutes, the first thing you want to do is stretch. If you only have 10 minutes,
maybe spend 3 minutes stretching. If you have a half an hour spend 15 minutes
stretching. The stretching that you can do is going to be physical stretching as
well as vocally warming everything up. Your instrument is your body, right, so
it's everything from the top of your head to the bottom of your hips. So you want
to be doing like this kind of stuff, where you're stretching out your back and
your shoulders. You want to be doing this kind of stuff, and I'm doing this super
fast. In your own practice you would never do it this quickly. You're gonna be
stretching out your face, stretching out your eyebrows and your nasal cavities.
This one's a really big one especially if you're congested. You want to open
that up - stretching out your lips, but you want to kind of open up.
Self-massage is really important but you want to make sure that your body does
not feel tight and tense okay? That's gonna be huge because if you're carrying
tension from your day into your practice you're never gonna be able to get the
loose relaxed feeling that you're going for. Okay super duper important. And
then you also want to be making guttural noises while you're stretching. This is
really really big and then you want to practice breathing. Now can you
incorporate breathing and stretching together? Yes, 100% yes. However if you are
brand-new to singing and breathing is not something that's
automatic for you, set aside specific time in your
practice where all you do is breathe okay? And you either want to be doing
your breathing standing up or lying down. Definitely don't want to practice your
perfect breathing sitting down okay? It's super duper important that
you're either standing or you can be lying down, but the goal is to work on that
standing up. Once you've done your breathing and you've done your
stretching, you want to pick a focus. So you can be working on vowel shapes, you
can be working on forward placement, you can be working on extending your range.
That means that you can be working on your low notes through your high notes
right? You can be working on bringing your sound forward to the front of your
nose - that's a really really big one. You can be working on breath support, you can
be working on facial expression, you can be working on relieving tension in the
jaw, you can be working on memorization, you can be working on ear training, you
can be working on sight singing. If you were to pick three topics for the week then
that's what you work on for that week. Maybe like you do one on Monday,
Wednesday, You do another one on Tuesday, Thursday, and then you have your Friday,
Saturday practice, and then maybe you take Sunday off. Here's the other thing -
when we approach our singing, you have all these different topics that you can
be working on but you don't need that many different exercises. You need to
find a few that really really work for you and then target the areas that
you're trying to achieve. If you have a beautiful range, if you really understand
how to go from high to low and you can kind of breeze through
those exercises and do them technically correct, then maybe you spend
more of your time focusing on breath support or maybe you spend more of your
time focusing on loosening your jaw. Within that 10 to 20 minutes you've
worked on your stretching, you've worked on your breathing, and then you pick one
or two topics from that list that I just gave you and you focus on those for your
practice. And then the next day you repeat stretching, breathing, one or two
more topics right? Let's break this down: if you were to spend three to five
minutes stretching, maybe two to four minutes breathing, then that's gonna
leave you about ten minutes to kind of do everything else. So you spend five
minutes working on one topic and five minutes working on another and that's
your practice. You don't need to go overboard okay? Now when you go on
YouTube you could easily type in "vocal exercises to make me sing higher" or
"vocal exercises to improve my range" or "vocal exercises for breath support." This
is really important: you would never ever ever go to the gym and just start using
the workout equipment if you didn't know how to do it. You would hurt yourself.
Please make sure that if you are watching videos on YouTube, that they are
giving you the "why" and the "how." The "why" is really important: why are you doing
this exercise, and more importantly how do I do it correctly so that it actually
benefits me? So that I get the why. Hey guys, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed
this video, make sure to leave a comment and let us know what your practice
routine looks like. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you can stay
up to date with more helpful tutorials just like this one!